600w + psu

[djglenn]

I currently have a Corsair VX 450W PSU, which is a great PSU.

If I am to upgrade to a bigger GPU (ATI 4870 1GB OC), then I believe I will need to upgrade my power supply.

Firstly, is it me or have power supplies gone up by like 25% since this time last year?

Secondly, with a £80 price range is the Corsair 650W the best buy?

I dont care about Modular.

[stevie lee]

well i'm running a sapphire 1gb 4870 on a 425 watt enermax pro 82 - that's with 4 hard drives, 2 fan controllers and around 7 fans, so unless you want to do crossfire or migrate the PSU into a new PC in a year or two, then just stick with what you've got.

just make sure it has 2 75watt pci express connectors (6 pin) then you should be fine.

[Lee H]

Firstly, is it me or have power supplies gone up by like 25% since this time last year?

This is all down to the exchange rates I'm afraid. Last year we were getting a lovely 1.8-1.9 dollars to the UK Pound but due to the economic downturn we're lucky to get 1.3 at the moment. As you can imagine with items which have a purchasing price in US Dollars the purchasing price has risen and this is the price increase you are seeing.

This also applies to items which are sourced in Euro's as well as the exchange rate on the Euro has also taken a huge big battering now.

Secondly, with a £80 price range is the Corsair 650W the best buy?

Is that the TX series? I've got that PSU myself and it's been excellent. I'm not one for a quiet PC so I cannot say if it's noisy or not as I've got more fans in my PC than I really should have, I've even wedged 120 mm fans in the 5.25" bay areas which are not used. However, it's stable as a rock without hardly any fluxuations in the rails and I put my pretty good overclock down to the PSU and motherboard being excellent.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The VX450W probably is closer to the ability of a 500w unit as it seems to be a bit underrated with regards to its power rating.

Perhaps a 600w or 700w OCZ unit will be a cheaper alternative:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/127861

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/152506

[scaryjim]

+1 to what Stevie Lee said: unless you have some serious extra hardware in there you're not telling us about I don't see any need to upgrade a 450W PSU for one 4870. Hexus test systems (i7 965 EE, 6GB RAM, 500GB HD) rarely exceed 250W with a single GPU: the latest review that features 4870s shows the total system drawing just under 240W *at the wall* with a 4870 under full load: even at 80% efficiency that would be less than 200W internally.

As to prices, I looked up the order for my system (as specified over <----------- there) and I paid &#163;10 less for that PSU in January 2008 than it costs now...

[Hawker1986]

As others have said I think the VX450 is perfectly upto the job of powering that GPU, I would just stick with it and save the cash.

Hawker

[TAKTAK]

the vx450w will easily handle it, IIRC someone tested one and it was outputting 700w stably (their unit), and the 4870 won't take you over 450w anyway, 375w or so.

so basically what stevie said, aslong as it has the connectors (which it doesn't), but you can use molex - pci-e power adaptors

[djglenn]

Excellent, good to know that there is life in the old dog yet.

Thanks for the help.