I think 650 will be sufficient. Like I said, it was very stable 99% of the time. I'm not even sure 500 wasn't sufficient. The hard drive I just bought, on average, draws around 13 watts. But if my calculations are correct may hit peaks as high as 35 watts.
Five drives x 35 watts is still only 175 watts. On the other hand, the 3D card and the CPU draw a lot. So maybe the power supply was just faulty, or maybe drives draw more than usual on bootup and pushed it over the limit. Who knows. I didn't really have a choice though in getting the 650 PSU, the computer store where I usually buy components isn't open on saturday or sunday and I wasn't paying $65 more for a 700 watt "rocketfish" brand power supply when the 500 lasted a year without croaking, and I'm pretty sure 150 more watts should do the trick if too little power was in fact the issue.
Anyway, just got the good drive copied over to the new drive, so now I'm off to swap the board and see if I can pull the data off the bad drive.
Five drives x 35 watts is still only 175 watts. On the other hand, the 3D card and the CPU draw a lot. So maybe the power supply was just faulty, or maybe drives draw more than usual on bootup and pushed it over the limit. Who knows. I didn't really have a choice though in getting the 650 PSU, the computer store where I usually buy components isn't open on saturday or sunday and I wasn't paying $65 more for a 700 watt "rocketfish" brand power supply when the 500 lasted a year without croaking, and I'm pretty sure 150 more watts should do the trick if too little power was in fact the issue.
Anyway, just got the good drive copied over to the new drive, so now I'm off to swap the board and see if I can pull the data off the bad drive.