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Am I pushing the limits of my PSU

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TheGreySpectre

Member
Joined
Sep 6, 2003
I have a 600watt powersupply right now with the following connected to it:
4 gigs ram, ATI 4870, ATI 3650, 5 Hard drives, 2 Dvd drives, 1 bluray drive, 2.8 phenom II stock.

while it is stable I am a little unsure if I need to start looking at a new psu before adding new components.

Thanks
Greyspectre
 
I have a 600watt powersupply right now with the following connected to it:
4 gigs ram, ATI 4870, ATI 3650, 5 Hard drives, 2 Dvd drives, 1 bluray drive, 2.8 phenom II stock.

while it is stable I am a little unsure if I need to start looking at a new psu before adding new components.

Thanks
Greyspectre

GS,

Probably not depending on what brand and model power supply you have and how old it is.
 
yes, what is the brand and the model and how do u have 4870 and 3650 together?
 
Power supply is made by OCZ, specifically it is an OCZGXS600, It is almost exactly 1 year old.

I try to by decent quality power supplies, I just have a lot more plugged into this one than I thought I was going to have plugged in.



It is very simple to run a 3650 and a 4870, the key is the fact that I never said i was running them in crossfire. They are running entirely independently so that I can power more then 2 monitors. All you have to do is plug in both video cards and as long as they use the same driver set they work and you can plug in more monitors. Using cards with different drivers, like an ATI and nvidia at the same time is much much more complicated due to driver conflicts though.

I run multiple video cards, so I can plug in more monitors, not for increased rendering power:
monitors.jpg
 
while it is stable I am a little unsure if I need to start looking at a new psu before adding new components.

I would. You're already at enough power to be in ripple city with that GXS.

I run multiple video cards, so I can plug in more monitors, not for increased rendering power

Doesn't matter - they all need power from somewhere ;)
 
I would. You're already at enough power to be in ripple city with that GXS.



Doesn't matter - they all need power from somewhere ;)

oh I know they all need power, I was just trying to respond to the people who were unsure how I was running two different generations of ati cards :)
 
Power supply is made by OCZ, specifically it is an OCZGXS600, It is almost exactly 1 year old.

Not exactly the cream of the crop. These older OCZ PSUs are known to have out-of-spec ripple issues (ripple suppression) so I would advise you to consider a quality replacement.
 
Go here and fill in all fields for an idea of actual real-world draw in watts.

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

My general rule of thumb: If this tool determines you're in the range of higher than 85% of your rated capacity (>510W) and/or have reasonable cause for concern regarding whether the rated capacity is stable, then I would personally consider an upgrade.

Based on this review I wouldn't consider your PSU a POS though ;):
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/coolers/display/atx-psu6_6.html
 
I'm really surprised people aren't asking what the AMPS on the PSU are. the AMPS always tell you exactly how much wattage you can run at any given time (with a little math). PSU efficiency is another factor. Instead you're asking brand names. Remember if you're components do combine to a little more than your PSU can handle at once it might not be a problem. you might not be using everything all at once.


ask yourself, are you going to be using the dvd drive, the bluray drive, maxing out the cpu/mobo, and maxing out the GPU's and putting load on all 5 hard drives at the same time?

I think the lowest/highest I've heard of a hard drive running under load was 5-10w. so 5 hard drives would equal anywhere from 25-50w. even if it was 15-20w a piece from PSU efficiency it would still only need a max of 100w from the PSU for all 5 hard drives.

the ati 3650 uses around 42w under max load.

now you've got ~450w left to play with...



I don't have the time, but keep adding up the wattage each component uses, look it up if you have to. look how many amps your PSU has (it should say it on the PSU itself). convert the wattage of all the components combined to AMPS (I think they have internet calculators). And voila...you now know how much your system uses and how much your PSU can handle.
 
I'm really surprised people aren't asking what the AMPS on the PSU are. the AMPS always tell you exactly how much wattage you can run at any given time (with a little math). PSU efficiency is another factor. Instead you're asking brand names. Remember if you're components do combine to a little more than your PSU can handle at once it might not be a problem. you might not be using everything all at once.


ask yourself, are you going to be using the dvd drive, the bluray drive, maxing out the cpu/mobo, and maxing out the GPU's and putting load on all 5 hard drives at the same time?

I think the lowest/highest I've heard of a hard drive running under load was 5-10w. so 5 hard drives would equal anywhere from 25-50w. even if it was 15-20w a piece from PSU efficiency it would still only need a max of 100w from the PSU for all 5 hard drives.

the ati 3650 uses around 42w under max load.

now you've got ~450w left to play with...



I don't have the time, but keep adding up the wattage each component uses, look it up if you have to. look how many amps your PSU has (it should say it on the PSU itself). convert the wattage of all the components combined to AMPS (I think they have internet calculators). And voila...you now know how much your system uses and how much your PSU can handle.

Last few times I looked for one of these, I came up empty-handed... but here we are!

This internet calculator works out recceommendations for individual rail ratings, presenting the info you'd need to know to "fluff it" further if you wish:

http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php
 
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