This may be a bad idea. (Great way to start eh?) I have an idea in mind for an upcoming build. With the design, space is at a premium, but I am trying to shoehorn in some very power hungry items, so I will need 600W or better. The question is, how do I make the PSU skinnier? The thought that I have right now (breaking every warranty on the PSU, of course). Is to replace the top mounted 120MM or 140MM fan with a trio of 40MM fans that blow across the PSU circuitry. By doing so, I should be able to reduce the 86 MM height down to 60mm or less. Is this feasible? Has it been done before? This is from a Revolution PSU, so its sort of a bad example with the vertical front mounted modular circuit board. I would choose a PSU that would make my life easier
And over 600w with modular plugs, or even wired for 6-pin or 8pin PCI? Granted, the wiring can be manipulated, but the overall wattage cannot. I expect the graphic card alone in the system to be a high-end variety, and likely an overclocked i7...
That isn't 1U, 1U is 44mm there abouts. and yes you can get some very powerful server psu's think of all those cores and all that ram!
i would venture to guess that making a 1u psu modular would be easier and less work than making an atx more compact. i would do semi modular, leaving the 24pin, 8pin eps connected, then make a small break out board with the applicable female eps / pci-e connectors to mount inside the psu. though on one of those , i might just be more tempted to cut off any extra cables to make it neater than going to all of the trouble.
Well Im doing the same sort of thing with a shuttle psu, where I have swapped the 2x40mm fans for what will be 4x50mm fans, although I did have it running with just 1x50mm alright, although the air it was blowing out was pretty warm :S . If you use something like a seasonic power supply or something where it barely needs the fan anyway, then I would think that this would work fine. Btw, you would be suprised how much space is needed to make a psu modular, I though about it but had to dismiss it due to the sheer amout of space all the connectors require.
Either way will be fine, just noisier than a single 120 fan psu. It would be much easier to remove any unwanted cabling from a 1U psu however, and if you can manage to hide spare cables instead of trimming them, then you get to keep your warranty.
I guess it would be possible. Depending on the performance of the smaller fans and placement of the components on the board, you might wanna make shure there is a good airflow to the heatsink farthest away. If you do decide to shrink it, make shure to check the voltage between the heatsinks and ground. Most PSUs nowaday have live heatsink, meaning that one of them is ground and the other one has 240v or 110v through it. Touching those or making a metall cover that touches them will most likely end in sparks. However, good luck and I would like to se the result of what you come up with.
Frankly put, there are reasons that ATX PSUs are the size they are. I don't mean to sound negative about your idea, but I really don't see you making a high power ATX PSU that compact without damaging something or something going wrong. Manufacturers don't approach the design of ATX PSUs thinking "we should make everything in this thing as small as possible, in case anyone wants to mod it to make it a more compact unit" they use the space they have available. Look at the Corsair HX1000 (and other 1kW+ units) - it actually had to be longer than standard ATX sizes of 150 or 180mm just to get everything in. In my professional opinion you need to start looking into a server PSU for this build, and to answer your previous question, yes you can get them in 600W and above ratings.
Do you need to have the enclosure on the PSU? If you can incorporate the PSU into your case frame it will take less space. Go for it. It's not rocket science!
With just about all power supplies using a slow-running 120/140 mm fans, I don't see why this couldn't be done. The fan is always going to steal 25 mm of space inside the housing, get rid of it and you'll end up with a thinner PSU. The heat output of even the higher wattage units isn't too bad and if you don't mind some extra noise, it shouldn't be too hard to keep the unit cool with smaller fans. As long as you don't go around messing with the PCB, I don't really see how the result would be terribly dangerous.
I've seen plenty of mods for Power supplies. http://web2.murraystate.edu/andy.batts/ps/POWERSUPPLY.HTM http://www.velocityreviews.com/guides/How_to_mod_a_PSU/1/ I was looking at externalising mine by making an old Amiga "brick" type Power Supply in a replica Amiga brick casing.. Need to power 4x125W Peltiers and I've no room in my case without hacking out some more bits.
