PSU enough for upgrade plus OCing PII X3 7x0?

Ookay. Current rig as listed in sig. Planning on getting a Gigabyte 780G or MSI 790X mobo, Phenom II x3 710 or 720 and GTX260 or Radeon 4870 and maybe a PC P&C 750 W, as I suspect the SXS600 will be quite stressed by these..

Now then. I haven't found any numbers on how much an OCed PII x3 draws, compared to the around 15-17 A on stock. I want the PSU not to smother under gaming or folding load. If anyone has info on this, as well as suggestions on the part choices etc, I'd appreciate it.

PSu is only about half a year old, BTW, as well as the other parts too.

I use a 600w OCZ PSU without a problem on my Phenom II. I don't have any great faith in OCZ products (This is already an RMA'd replacement for a failed 520w Powerstream and it weighs considerably less) and at some point soon I plan to upgrade it.

R7

I assume there's no gaming-level graphics card in your New AMD build?

No, I'm not a gamer. I'm sorry, but I forgot to take your video card into consideration. It might still be all right, but I am not certain. I have a lowly ATI HD 4670. ( I also run a sound card, 2 hard drives, 1 floppy and 2 DVD drives)

R7

The Stealth Stream 600 watt is rated for 580 watts/48A combined on the 12v rails. The Geforce 260 requirement is for a 500 watt PSU with a minimum of 12v rating of 36A.

http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=896-P3-1258-AR&family=GeForce 200 Series Family

Even with an overclocked 95watt Phenom II you should be all right.

I don't want a dead PC just because I should be okay. I would really appreciate any links to articles where the OCed PII's power draw has been tested. On the other hand, how high is the risk of damaging something if I OC it to draw too much, then push all components to the max and it blacks out/whatever?

The PSU should be enough. The Phenom II has a stock wattage consumption of 95W. Oced your looking 100-105W. The GPU will be near 250W if I am not mistaken. Depending on how many HDDs you are going to use, you should be good with the PSU. The only thing I see wrong with your rig is that you may need a better Cooler on the CPU. But I'm not to familiar with the Zalman CNPS9700.

Hope that helps you.

Hmh. I guess I might shell out a new cooler if others agree that OCing will be nearly impossible with the CNPS9700, even with full fan blast, I'm not really concerned about noise... ... Maybe not full. Sounds like a jet engine.

I guess I could already believe that I'm propably okay. That 5-10 W more from OC estimation sounds a bit unbelievable, but I guess you know better.

Really you should be fine as is... You wont be pulling more than 450W and thats with HEAVY overclocks running full tilt on the card and processor.

For example, rig in sig pulls 463W with Furmark running and Prime95 at the same time.

EDIT (in response to Dolk really): As far as the overclocking wattage, you are looking at 125-150W depending on the voltage and clockspeed. Also the GTX260 216 will only break 200W with a heavy overclock.

EDIT2: Here is a link you can look at that shows power consumption. Now note this is with an i7 965 so your power consumption may be about the same with an overclock. Again this is for gaming. With folding, you can expect another, MAX 100W for the CPU to be full tilt x3 cores. You can see your PSU should be just fine.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/16681/11

BG-0 said:

Hmh. I guess I might shell out a new cooler if others agree that OCing will be nearly impossible with the CNPS9700, even with full fan blast, I'm not really concerned about noise... ... Maybe not full. Sounds like a jet engine.

I guess I could already believe that I'm propably okay. That 5-10 W more from OC estimation sounds a bit unbelievable, but I guess you know better.

Click to expand...

BG,

An educated guess from overclocking both your CPU and GPU, and depending how far you take it and cool it, add another 40 -70 watts total to be safe.

That 600w Stealthstream will take it all but keep in mind its reputation is only mediocre.

Thanks again for all responses. I am aware of the mediocre reputation, and will propably upgrade it in half a year at most, before it's valued at 5$. Just wondered if it was safe enough to use it as is, the prices up here are quite a lot more than in US and UK. 1.6- to 2-fold, as an estimate, so getting everything would've been quite a hit in my wallet (granted, even getting the rest of the parts will be quite a hit, and will propably get mobo and GPU first, then CPU, or something like that).

Still struggling with the balance and choices... 4870 or GTX260, 780G or 790X, additional PhysX card for 4870 or not... But that's a whole another story. :s

I don't mean to go off topic, but the Zalman 9700 should be ok for overclocking. I hit a wall so far of 3720mhz on the 720BE. Thats stable for 24 hours. Anything higher and you might need a better cooler(can't recommend anything else personally, i've been using 9700 for last two years). Anyway, good luck.