Ok before I go & order some components I want to do a super low power mini-ITX HTPC & use all 6 sata ports on it for some good capacity but do those 150w power bricks need something else to go with them & would they be good enough for powering this rig, I also have my eye on a Be Quiet 300w SFX PSU which I could mod the cables to power 6 sata components. Be Quiet SFX 300W PSU - WxHxD 125x100x63mm Asus E35M1-I Motherboard Fusion E-350 AMD FCH A50 Mini ITX (which apparently uses an awesome & cute 18w ) Asus Xonar DX/XD Low Profile PCi-E 7.1 Channel Audio Card (which I think needs a floppy power connector) Corsair 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333MHz XMS3 Memory Kit CL9 1.5V (underclocked to 1066) (I do have 4gb spare but I found I often get through such a low amount of ram when the rig was on for days & days unless I use a RAM optimiser) Optical drive SSD (already got 2 spare but intend to use the other for another super low power rig) 4 HDD (already got spares) Couple low speed 120mm or 140mm fans (already got spares) Maybe a light strip (already got spares) Reason I want to do this is to reduce my energy usage for my regular 24/7/365 usage & keep the gaming rig purely for system heavy tasks & gaming, I found my rig at idle uses 210w, while browsing the net listening to music & flicking a movie/tv show on/off it uses 220w, while gaming it uses 350w with the GTX 580 so the savings from 1 year should cover the cost of the new rig which is awesome I think, I probably over a whole year need the power rig something like 2/7/365 other than when hot new games release & I get hooked on them so it's quite a lot of wasted juice overall & I don't like wasting things & the recent power usage article here got me thinking about it & bought a energy usage adapter, I actually expected it to be more than it were but still going for a low power rig should trim it down enough to justify going low power . I could integrate this rig into Stealthlow but would require an extensive bit of modding & some main bits re-made (back panel & mobo tray & mod the separator level & of course add another power button) so think I'd sooner make a complete new rig, a dual rig which I'm currently planning out & already thought of a name for the project but might tweak it a bit so I'll keep it to myself again until I start .
For more than 2 hard drives forget about picoPSU, period. Hard drives have huge current draw at start, and they easily go over 8-10A on +12V when there is more than two of them.
