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Anyone remember auxiliary PSU's that fit into 5.25" drive bays?

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I remember coming across these devices some 5 or 6 years ago. Has anyone ever used them or seen them? Are they still for sale? I don't remember the total Watts they were rated for but I seem to remember it was a couple of hundred Watts.

Found it. It was for Crossfire/SLI setups and is no longer available (it got rave reviews too):
https://www.newegg.com/fsp-group-booster-x5-450w/p/N82E16817104054
 
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Or maybe they just want to recall nostalgic techno oddity?

Yeah, I remember that thing. It is of course not very useful nowadays, since fewer and fewer cases even have 5'25 bays to begin with, also IIRC there were screaming fans inside...
 
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It would have been a nice auxiliary PSU for a R9 295x2 or Titan-Z setup -- you wouldn't have to buy a new PSU. It might even have been useful for mining rigs.
 
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I remember coming across these devices some 5 or 6 years ago. Has anyone ever used them or seen them? Are they still for sale? I don't remember the total Watts they were rated for but I seem to remember it was a couple of hundred Watts.

Found it. It was for Crossfire/SLI setups and is no longer available (it got rave reviews too):
https://www.newegg.com/fsp-group-booster-x5-450w/p/N82E16817104054

Or maybe they just want to recall nostalgic techno oddity?

Yeah, I remember that thing. It is of course not very useful nowadays, since fewer and fewer cases even have 5'25 bays to begin with, also IIRC there were screaming fans inside...

I don't recall that particular one but I do remember seeing similar ones around 2007 -2009. They had several issues starting with cost being the same as a normal ATX unit and the efficiency of a DMV department on a holiday weekend with its computer system down. I think they were mostly aimed at people who owned mass produced desktops and were afraid of upgrading the PSU themselves but still wanted to install a dedicated video card.
 
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I would like to see a UPS for 5.25, with a big enough battery to shut down safely and last through flickers
 

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I remember them but never used one. They were supposed to be for SLi, but I’m sure there were others. That was when 12v demands started to rise I think. Shortly after that regular PSUs started getting (a lot) more powerful.. and shortly after that I think 3.3 and 5v capacity started to dwindle.
 

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I had the 650w Thermaltake dual-bay one for a while: https://www.newegg.com/thermaltake-w0158ru-650w/p/N82E16817153070?Item=N82E16817153070

It let me run 3 way SLI with 9800GTXs. But it quickly became more practical to just run one big PSU.

WhatsApp Image 2022-05-28 at 2.18.40 AM.jpeg


I still use it occasionally, even today, mainly for testing old GPU card or helping friends or family troubleshooting their GPU problem. a lot faster than replacing the PSU with bigger unit.
 

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Has anyone ever used them or seen them?

Yeppers, I happen to have one of them. It's a 250 watt unit made to help power a video card. :laugh:

Crazy how times have changed.
 
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How do these auxiliary PSU's work? Do you have to use a separate switch to turn them on?
 
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Yeah I got a good deal on a couple of VisionTek VT-450CD's. I never had a SLI setup but I used them to assist a couple of 500W power supplies when overclocking Xeons. IIRC they were around $25. each! Just found a couple of forum posts about the ePower 450W version of the APU from 2013 over at HardForums. HardOCP also did a review on it back then. The VisionTek "Juicebox" is the model that I used. It ran cool and quiet in my rigs. They were selling for $19. and I used mine until the i7 "Devils Canyon" was released. I upgraded to a pair of 650W XFX units in 2014. Absolutely NO regrets!
 

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stinger608

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How do these auxiliary PSU's work? Do you have to use a separate switch to turn them on?

Nope, they fired up when I turned on the PC
 

newtekie1

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How do these auxiliary PSU's work? Do you have to use a separate switch to turn them on?
Mine just had a splitter that attached to the 24-pin on the motherboard. The main PSU and aux PSU turned on at the same time thanks to the splitter.
 
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Yeah I got a good deal on a couple of VisionTek VT-450CD's. I never had a SLI setup but I used them to assist a couple of 500W power supplies when overclocking Xeons. IIRC they were around $25. each! Just found a couple of forum posts about the ePower 450W version of the APU from 2013 over at HardForums. HardOCP also did a review on it back then. The VisionTek "Juicebox" is the model that I used. It ran cool and quiet in my rigs. They were selling for $19. and I used mine until the i7 "Devils Canyon" was released. I upgraded to a pair of 650W XFX units in 2014. Absolutely NO regrets!
I still have 2 of that VisionTek model...I used them for different things including running TEC's , they worked great for that.

1668377927627.png
 
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