Are Mega-PSUs truly necessary? [From GT200 Thread]
- Thread starter suryad
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Wow tht will definitely require an upgrade from a 750W PSU to a 1000W if I were to SLI that which I definitely will
Well.. I dunno,
Core 2 Duo E8500 @ 3,16 GHz
EVGA nForce 780i SLI
2x 1 Gt Corsair TWIN2X2048-8500C5D
Western Digital Caviar SE 320 Gt SATA II
Silverstone Olympus 1200 W
Asus BC-1205PT (BD-ROM/DVD±R/RW/CD-RW)
with 9800GX2 consumes 329W at peak (measured from the power outlet in the wall)
Clearly you're lying. I mean, why would PSU manufacturers sell us more than we need? It's not like they're out to make as much money as possible or anything - oh, wait..........
I have the following:
C2D E6600 @ 2.4Ghz (stock)
2GB DDR2 533Mhz
Single WD HDD
8800GTS 640MB
Its all running on a 430w PSU (pretty cheap one) and I get the occasional warning telling me there isn't enough power feeding my GPU and clock speeds need to be reduced. It doesn't happen that often though.
I'm thinking of moving to a GT200 when they launch but no way i'm doing it on my current PSU. I'll probably go to at least 600w.
C2D E6600 @ 2.4Ghz (stock)
2GB DDR2 533Mhz
Single WD HDD
8800GTS 640MB
Its all running on a 430w PSU (pretty cheap one) and I get the occasional warning telling me there isn't enough power feeding my GPU and clock speeds need to be reduced. It doesn't happen that often though.
I'm thinking of moving to a GT200 when they launch but no way i'm doing it on my current PSU. I'll probably go to at least 600w.
But this is simply the difference between a quality PSU and a cheap one. Overall wattage ratings are useless. A good 500-700W PSU is enough to power the vast majority of high-end gaming rigs. On the desktop side only things like Skulltrail/QuadFX paired with Tri/Quad SLI/CF need more power than that.
Jawed
Legend
PSUs degrade over their lifetime. The effect can be quite substantial and seems to be accelerated by heavy usage.
Jawed
aaronspink
Veteran
It really doesn't matter too much what the PSU is rated at as long as it is built decently. There are very very few system configurations out there that need a power supply rated at greater than 500 watts. And NONE that need more than about 650 Watts.
The 800+ watt power supplies for PCs are just a joke.
Aaron spink
speaking for myself inc.
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aaronspink
Veteran
That really depends on the PSU. Most modern PSUs using quality components have 10+ year lifetimes at 90+% of rated power. Most high quality modern PSUs will deliver 100% of rated power over a 10 year lifetime.
Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Actually PSU's degrading under heavy use is more common than you think. Hence one of the reasons (among various others) that professional server racks and workstations feature easily swapped PSUs. Even if no component is upgraded or changed over time, there's a good chance the PSU will be. And that considering that server/professional workstation class PSUs are build to a much higher standard (with regards to stable power and reliability) than most consumer based PSUs. And with a resulting lower efficiency to boot.
Most consumers won't see nearly as much degredation however, as they "generally" aren't on 24/7. And even when they are on, they are rarely if ever pushing a very heavy load.
So yes, I can agree that for consumer PSU's in an average consumer desktop, a PSU should last for 5-10 years easily. But not because it doesn't degrade under a heavy load over time.
Also, I'd have to agree that most consumer computers won't be drawning anything requiring more than 500-600 watts for a while. Although if load power for next gen graphics boards draw upwards of 200+ watts per board and someone actually wanted to run 3-4 of those at a time. I can only imagine their air conditioning bill.
Here's to hoping the high power consumption rumors of GT200 are only rumors.
It's not like your average consumer is going to be running multiple (8+) high speed SCSI drives consuming upwares of 15-20+ watts of power each. Nor running multiple CPU cores at load for multiple hours at a time, nor running 16+ gb of power hungry memory and all that jazz.
Regards,
SB
Most consumers won't see nearly as much degredation however, as they "generally" aren't on 24/7. And even when they are on, they are rarely if ever pushing a very heavy load.
So yes, I can agree that for consumer PSU's in an average consumer desktop, a PSU should last for 5-10 years easily.
But not because it doesn't degrade under a heavy load over time.Also, I'd have to agree that most consumer computers won't be drawning anything requiring more than 500-600 watts for a while. Although if load power for next gen graphics boards draw upwards of 200+ watts per board and someone actually wanted to run 3-4 of those at a time.
I can only imagine their air conditioning bill. Here's to hoping the high power consumption rumors of GT200 are only rumors.
It's not like your average consumer is going to be running multiple (8+) high speed SCSI drives consuming upwares of 15-20+ watts of power each. Nor running multiple CPU cores at load for multiple hours at a time, nor running 16+ gb of power hungry memory and all that jazz.
Regards,
SB
Agreed .. the only reason i am changing out my OCZ 850 for a more powerful one, is because of its 'ancient' connectors .. from early '07
. . . however, i am not so sure it "will deliver 100% of rated power over a 10 year lifetime." .. i think it is rated at ~85% efficiency and i wouldn't dare even push it that close continually over 10 years
[i am hoping this isn't too controversial
.. speaking for me too ]
A Tri-SLI setup with 8800GTXs or Ultras would have you eating crow.
Under load they pull 800+ watts. Running a PSU too close to it's max rated wattage will degrade it sooner than having "a joke" with room to breath.
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HOGWASH. Adding a 3rd GTX in to the mix below will absolutely not require another 358 Watts.
The latest top notch PC system (Intel) does not need over 500 watts. The newer CPUs use less power than the system listed below.
From XBIT Labs 1000 Watt PSU Review:
Intel-based system (Power Draw 442 Watts):
- Quad-core Core 2 Extreme QX6700 CPU (Kentsfield) overclocked to 3.5GHz
- Two Foxconn GeForce 8800GTX graphics cards in SLI mode
- ASUS Striker Extreme mainboard (LGA775, NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI)
- 2GB DDR2-800 SDRAM (Mushkin XP2-6400PRO, 4 x 512MB)
- Two Western Digital WD1500AHFD hard disk drives in a RAID0
- Various trifles like a DVD-ROM, fans, etc
We installed Windows XP SP2 on these systems and ran Stress Prime 2004 / Orthos for the CPU and 3DMark 2006 for the graphics card; these two programs were running simultaneously in the third test mode. Here are the PSU power consumption numbers (using a Tagan TurboJet TG1100-U96; we measured its power draw from the wall outlet and multiplied the result by this PSU’s efficiency factor, about 0.83):
And to that I counter with: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3183&p=5
It depends on how you set up your system, me thinks.
It depends on how you set up your system, me thinks.
You guys are dreaming if you think you are running tri sli on any 750w PS stably
If you set up your system right, it won't burn more than 450 watts, as BRiT's link proves. xbit labs is hardly an disreputable site.
Quite a few posts listing 800+ watts recorded in this thread.
Tri SLI FAQ And Scaling Guide
Tri SLI FAQ And Scaling Guide
