Thanks for sharing your successful setup. What you say makes sense about using the same PSU that powers the riser for it as well as the GPU.
I was wondering, what board are you using? I’ve seen conflicting debates about the Asrock H81 btc pro, on whether or not to power both the board the riser, to me it makes sense to power what should be powered, trusting that the riser is properly made.
@ethetc It started smoking? What started to smoke? The PSU, the mobo, the connectors, the GPU? That’s alarming, glad it worked out for you.
I now have a EVGA1600watt G2PSU that should power my 4 GPU’s as a single setup, but still looking into a safe dual PSU setup in the near future.
The connector that bridges the two PSUs started smoking, so I threw it out and decided to not go that route. I don’t think it could have been an issue with the PSU, because I think PSUs are designed to shut off their power supply if something goes wrong (like too much voltage).
BTW, I use the H97 Anniversary. I bought two H81s from Newegg and couldn’t get them to boot up. I returned those and just ordered another H81 to try out (because the H97 Anniversary boards are going for $300-500 right now)
I don’t know why it’s important to power one card with the same GPU. I heard from somebody that it was, so that’s what I did and it works fine. The thing is, the slave PSU is always providing power even when the system is off (unless you switch the PSU off). The cards powered by my salve PSU are always lit (they have LED’s on top). The cards powered by the Master PSU turn off when I shut it down. I think if the card is getting power from the slot but not the PCIe power or vice versa, there may be an issue. Don’t know that for a fact though.
Were you using genuine add2psu device? They claim to be very safe, supposedly can even daisy-chain for “unlimited PSU’s”. I have some knockoffs of the same design I got on eBay and even those have worked fine for me, I would think the genuine article would work even better.
Yes, I got it directly from their website add2psu.com. I didn’t complain
to them because I’m not an expert at building computer systems and I’m sure
there is a decent chance the PSU caused the power surge as opposed to their
product.
My setup is more basic, because my last PSU (CoolerMaster 850W) burning out, I only have 3 GPUs (Gigabyte RX 470 4Gb G1 Gaming), for now, I only have 2 400W PSUs
You can run two just fine without the p2 whatever. If you don’t mind splicing or soldering, combined with a relay, that is the best possible way. A relay uses negligible power from the first power supply 12volt so it will complete the green and black wire connection. Your best bet for speed would be either run directly off of your “1st” power supply green, again the relay takes barely any power) and that can switch the relay to become the connector of the second green black. I ran two supplies like that for a year until I changed to a smaller computer (lost interest in gaming). All of this is at your own risk of course, and know how is up to you. If you don’t understand the PSUs completely, don’t do it. Also, if its done wrong, bye bye VRM.
The only way I believe it to be safe would be to use the second as overhead. Video Cards should run off the same power as the motherboard as the CPU, etc.
The second should only have things like fans, pumps, and “risky”, but hard drives. The VRM WILL fry everything if it sees what youre doing.
Just my two cents.