How much wattage PSU ???

I have alsways been a little confused by conflicting reports on PSU power required. I am currently running the following:

I7 920 @ 4.0GHZ
EVGA CLassified
6GB Ram
GTX 285
80GB SSD
1TB HD
2 x Laing 10W Water Pumps
1 x Aquero Fan controller
8 x 120mm Fans
2 x Cathodes
Usb devices (mouse KB etc)

It's being Run by a Be Quiet 650w PSU

All seems to be fine. If I wanted to change to dual GPU ie a GTX 295 or a ATI5970 would the PSU cope? Or would I need to upgrade it?
If upgrade path is necessary would a 70W suffice - or would I need to look at somthing like the Enermax 1000w?

I would think that a decent 750W to 850W PSU should do the job for a dual HD5970.

In this HD5970 Crossfire review with a 3.8GHZ Core i7 920 the test setup used a 800W BFG PSU:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/H...ossFire/1.html

The wattage stated on some PSUs is the peak load that the PSU can do. What you what to do is check the rails, as these are the more detailed specs. Your going to be interested primarily in the 12V rails as that is what most components run off of.

Ok, On the sticker, on the PSU, it will show the voltage and the max current that each rail can handle. E.G on the website ...

i69.photobucket.com/albums/i45/pob_aka_robg/Spork/psu_sticker.jpg?t=1264332778

As Voltage * Current = power
Therefore, taking the 12v rail, 12* 18 = 216
and doubling it for the second rail, 216*2 = 432 Watts
in total, meaning that this PSU can deliver 432 watts of power to equipment working at 12V.

It didn't really answer your question but hopefully you get the PSU part

Cool - me thinks I shall look at the 850's out there:)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Syd

I am currently running the following:

I7 920 @ 4.0GHZ
EVGA CLassified
6GB Ram
GTX 285
80GB SSD
1TB HD
2 x Laing 10W Water Pumps
1 x Aquero Fan controller
8 x 120mm Fans
2 x Cathodes
Usb devices (mouse KB etc)

---

Holy snapping ducksh1t - nice system. Pics ?

apart from having 2 x 18w DDC's and 6 hard drives along with the asus R2E board we run just about the same power draw, i have a GTX280 and 8800GTX and the UPS says i use about 500-650w depending on the load, so i got the enermax 1250w just to be safe ;)

A 750w from Corsair would do the trick here, definitely :).

Are you bothered about modular or anything like that? Or are you not really looking for recommendations on which PSU to buy?

The BeQuiet! PSU's are very good ones, 650w should be able to cope with a single dual gpu card.
Two dual gpu cards it may start to struggle but it should be ok as you're not loading with a lot of other stuff.

I think your current PSU should be enough too, although the rails are split into 4 rails, the combined 12V wattage is still 624W and your PC shouldn't really be drawing over 500W at load anyway (I'm guessing 200W at idle) so I'd say it's safe.