850watt or 1000watt PSU?

[starbuck]

Finally deciding on my new sys(going for an E6600 on P5B board and 512MB HighTech HD 2900 XT with 2 500gb samsung spinpoints in raid).

Looking at choice of PSU.

Think it's really down to an enermax galaxy PSU due to the graphics card I'm getting(as needs an 8pin adapter to power it).

I have the choice between the 850watt and the 1000watt version.

Now, I am planning to run this PSU for a few years(2+ depending on what happens with technology in next few years).

Is there a benefit of getting 1 over the other? Is 1000watt really overkill?

Price diff is about £50ish but going by how long I plan to have it, if the 1000watt is going to be more future proof, then I'd rather spend the extra getting that than having to replace it in a few years when I next upgrade.

[tigerboyce]

Obviosly the 1000w is more future proof but i think thathte 850 will be fine. Depends on if you want to add a few more things like more hard drives, then you could go up to the 1k, are you adding those 3 drives you have on your my system aswell?

[Clunk]

You will struggle to use the full potential of a 1k PSU, unless you were to go quad SLI + quad quad core etc (when it happens).

You get more cables with the 1k version, and the dxx versions have 8 pin pci-e 2 leads (the others might by now).

You also need to make sure that it will physically fit in your case as it is much longer than your average psu.

It isnt silent either.

[Agrippa]

I'm running 8 drives, a GTX and whatnot with an Enermax Infiniti 720W and I could add more stuff if the case would only hold it. I was considering an 850W PSU myself, but decided it was just silly really. In fact I could do just fine with a good 600W, but then I came across the Infiniti at a bargain price I couldn't resist.

It's your money of course, but you'll be nowhere close to even pushing a good 600W PSU into breaking a sweat with what's listed above. With my setup the Infiniti is obviously working in relaxed mode, since I can't hear the fan at all even during stress testing and gaming.

[directhex]

you'll struggle to use even 500W

[saltynay]

you'll struggle to use even 500W

yeah I would say even with your planned specs that 550W would be safe possibly 650W if you wanted to allow for some serious upgrading. Just because there is a 1kw psu available doesn't mean anyone actually is going to be able to use that much power

[Agrippa]

It's the wonder of marketing - if they can make it, we simply must need it.

Get a 650W or so (or an Enermax Infiniti :-) to allow for (plenty) future upgrades. Just make sure it's a good one.

[saltynay]

of course why else would that make it if we don't need it, so that we give them lots of money for there extreme case psu. when they were actually showcasing the enermax 1kw they plugged it into 3 systems all running of the one psu the systems actually had quite good specs as well something like:

cpu: e6600
Ram: 2gb
gfx: 8800gts
hdd: 320gb
various fans and lights and each had an optical drive

[DratUK]

http://www.anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=3007

1Kw 850 watt nah see the above.

The 720 watt Infiniti is fitted with the 8 pin connector as is the 650 watt.

For those that dont want to bothr with the pics in the link this is the write up.

Enermax was showing off a demo system that had two Intel Xeon 5150 processors, SuperMicro X7DA8 MB, Sapphire X1950Pro Dual, and 18 Seagate 7200.10 250GB drives running off their Infinity 720W power supply.
From Computex 2007