Hum... this isn't going where I wanted it to...
I'm trying to find an alternative to buying a very large PSU, which would be terribly expensive. Not that I need that much power, I'm just trying to cut costs.
I didn't have redundancy in mind. If I did, then I'd be talking about 3 * 300W PSUs, so that if one fails, I could keep going and swap out the dead one.
Ok, the issue with merging 2 300W PSUs is the load distribution: if there is, for example a 400Watt load from my system (don't ask me how), then off-hand we'd believe that the load would be split equally between the two PSUs, right?
Wrong.
Electronic components have this funny thing about them, where they are made within a 5% margin of error (aka tolerance). That means that if one PSU puts out 4.75 volts on the 5V rail, and the other one puts out 5.25 volts, then the 400Watt load would be proportionally distributed, where the first would be handling 190 Watts, and the other, 210.
But that wouldn't be an issue, with a combined power rating of 600 Watts, because even at 210 Watts, it still doesn't tax one of the 300 Watt PSUs beyond what it can handle.
A 300 Watt PSU can be had for less than $20 these days. A 600 Watt PSU however, will always cost more than $100.
Space isn't an issue in my case (meant redundantly), because I'm fixing to get the big Chieftec case, the one that's about 26 inches tall.
I don't expect one of those PSUs to suddenly go dead, anymore than I would expect a single one to do so, so that's a non-issue.
Peak wattage or amperage isn't an issue either: I'm just being a cheap bastard, that's all...
pHaestus *not, it was OnDaEdg* has a great article up, on merging PSUs, so I'm not worried about the wiring. I could even do the half height PSU mod, for space's sake, but I'm not that desperate.