Best 850W PSU for £90 (ish) or under

[jawilba]

Hi,

First post so please be gentle

I've been looking at 850W PSU's in preparation for new build in the new year. I've been looking at Corsair TX 850W and 850W XFX Core Edition.

Both seem to have good reviews and was just wondering if one has significant advantages over the other or should I choose another PSU in this price range?

Any help would be appreciated.

[nibbler]

What are you planning on powering? 850W is a lot, do you really need it? I would go for a modular PSU of 650W of power which is more than enough for pretty much any build that doesn't have 4 graphics card and a TEC cooler. Enermax are my PSU brand of choice.

[jawilba]

Thanks for reply

I'm not entirely sure on the spec as yet keep changing my mind

Would be something along the lines of i7 950, Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, 6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3, DDR3 PC3-12800.

Going into my existing case with 4HDD and 6 case fans.

The reasons I've been looking at big power supplies is mostly because I might get myself a 470gtx and sli it later in the year.

From what I've read it can be a bit power hungry.

Would a 650W be sufficent for that card in sli?

[kalniel]

A good 650W would be plenty.

I went with the XFX 650W Pro as it was relatively good value for the efficiency. Supplies from Corsair, Antec and Seasonic are also within budget.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Antec TruePower New 650W has dropped in price at quite a few retailers:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/650w-...source=froogle

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/159920...edium=products

[c.ruel]

650w would be fine for that but bear in mind that if you do get a 850w it will have to work less hard to produce the same wattage so will be quieter and more efficient at load if you go for a decent 850w.

TBH why not compromise and go for 750w like the HX 750. It is on scan's today only for £105, the non-modular version is £80.

But tbh the psu that CAT recommended is the best deal and is probably you're best bet considering your intentions.

[nibbler]

Will a higher rated psu be queiter at a certain output? And with an enermax psu, you can't get any quieter than silent

[c.ruel]

Just wrote a very long explanation but unfortunately accidently closed the window so just look at silverstone's explanation for why you should use one of their 1500w psus. If you look at the headings and graphs its pretty self explanatory in a nutshell assuming wattage output and ampage are the only variables between the psus you should get lower noise + longer life time and depending on the average load better efficiency.

But whether this is worth the substantial additional cost of a much higher rated psu is debatable. Like you say a decent 650w psu is more than enough power than you will likely ever need and is certainly quieter than most other things in your case near it's rated output. So then you could argue it based on cost savings for efficiency but it will take years to recoup those if you bought a decent 1000w psu over a 650w one.

[nibbler]

I suppose my 525W psu is overkill really, I doubt that I ever pull more than 230W

[watercooled]

What case are you going to use? You could use the Antec CP-850 if you're using certain Antec cases but it's a proprietary design so will not fit other cases. It's a very good quality PSU for a good price (less than some high-end 650w units!), I think the price gap between this and ATX PSUs was bigger a while ago but it's still very good value.
I do agree with the others though, you probably wouldn't need 850w, 650 would be better.

[nibbler]

How do you find your modu82+ 525W then watercooled? Mine is top notch, although it looks like you draw a bit more power than me, so it might be noisier.

[jawilba]

Thanks for the responses so far.

Would love to get away with a 650W and save a bit to spend elsewhere.

Just to add I'll probably overclock the CPU a little bit which I'd imagine would stress the PSU further.

If I were to get a 650W PSU would there be much headroom for this?

I read ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 - tested in SLI and compared to Radeon HD 5870 XF on hexus website (can't post links yet sorry)and the loaded power consumption numbers look scary at 584.

I'll be using my old aspire cruiser case.

[watercooled]

How do you find your modu82+ 525W then watercooled? Mine is top notch, although it looks like you draw a bit more power than me, so it might be noisier.

I think my modu82+ is excellent, don't think I've ever heard the fan and I don't think my system even loads it to half capacity so plenty of headroom. I would recommend it to anyone but you can get more efficient PSUs now for a similar price.

[c.ruel]

Jawilba you could use 6870s instead then 650w would definately be ok as they draw ALOT less power and performance and price would be similar. Although you may want a certain nvidia feature like 3D.

[kalniel]

(mispost, delete me)

[jawilba]

As AMD and nvidia look like they will be releasing new cards before the end of the year I probably be waiting for those before I decide exactly what graphics card I'll go for. (Maybe pick up older generation card for less. Here's hoping)

I just used 470 GTX SLI as an example as they are likely to be the biggest power draw out of the cards I'll be looking at.

I don't want my choice of graphics card to be decided by the power supply I choose. I suppose I could wait to decide that before I choose the PSU but I've been itching to buy something