this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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There was a point around the early 2000s where having a second PSU was a possibility for overclocking. I've still got my modified case with a second PSU in the optical drive bays.
From memory, the Pentium 4 would draw something like 120w, the hard drives would draw a bit more, then the graphics card would, and if you were pushing your limits, you'd have loads of fans and maybe a peltier cooler. Now known to be massively inefficient, we thought they were great at the time.
On top of that, you could only usually get low powered PSUs at the time. 350w and 500w were the norm, and you could get 650w if you were lucky. 800w were seen in magazines, but you'd have to remortgage your parents house to get one.
And those 350W ones might catch fire if you tried to pull more than 200W. There's an old video of a 300W supply being pulled at its max rating, and it was taking 900W from the wall. That's 600W it's turning into heat.
Johnnyguru may have singlehandedly fixed the whole PSU market. There was so much garbage back then, and few other places were giving them the tests they needed.
I have a server with two PSUs… hahaha
Redundancy though, it’s not a standard desktop
Spot on. I used to run a second PSU for my peltier cooling back in those days when overclocking. PSUs were also not nearly as powerful as they are now. 300w was average.