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Is my PSU big enough?

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SMOKEU

Member
Joined
Nov 7, 2010
Location
NZ
I'm thinking about buying another 5970 and just having 2 5970s in my rig. Each 5970 will be drawing about 350W when overclocked, so that's 700W + another 150W for the rest of the system.

One of the 5970s is going to be mining 24/7 and the other 5970 is going to be mining during the day only. Is it bad to put my TX-950 under that much load for such long periods of time? I plan on down clocking the memory on the video cards to save power.
 
Looks like it would be fine to me. I'm assuming this a home machine. I would recommend shutting it down every once in a while and letting things cool off and clear out. If I left my computer on 24/7 it'd be full of dust in a bout a month. If it is in a well ventilated, and AC cooled room, such as a typical server room, then maybe not such a big deal.
 
I put some dust filters on all the intake fans, but I might flag the idea of 2 5970s because I just killed my 5970 tonight.
 
I put some dust filters on all the intake fans, but I might flag the idea of 2 5970s because I just killed my 5970 tonight.

That sucks. Sorry to hear that. Your biggest worry (as said above) would be heat. As long as it doesn't over heat there shouldn't be any issues running at 100% load. Corsair's are solid psu's.
 
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/gpu-power-consumption-2010_3.html

I stand corrected. On OCCT full-burn mode, it can pull 350W by itself... I had made note earlier, though, of the gaming tests - which amount to about 240W per card. So erring on the "safe" side and preparing for the worst, you're best to stick with an 850W unit minimum - your 950W unit will still certainly do the trick, though.

Read through the testing methodology, though - it's interesting stuff, and why I hit that site for actual GPU consumption numbers, and not so many other sites. It's also interesting to note that core and memory overclocking by itself don't boost power consumption by huge levels, but the second you touch the voltages, things get nasty in a hurry!
 
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