help with SLI 460's?

[george1979]

Hi all,

Curious, possibly dumb, question: I have a Coolermaster 700W Silent Pro M PSU and I am toying with getting another gtx 460 but the PSU has two PCI-E sockets, both of which are connected to the gfx card I have now.

My question is: How do I connect the 2nd card to the PSU? I assume I use one PCI-E connector for each card and then use an adapter of some kind to connect the 2nd six pin sockets on the cards?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but if there is anything on my rig that I want to ensure I don't screw up, it's the power.
Thanks in advance.

[shaithis]

Correct, although I never feel truly safe using those connectors. Makes me think the PSU wasn't designed with that much GFX card in mind

Although 700w should be ample. I use a 700w myself and have had a massive CPU overclock, 2 5870s in CFX and a plethora of HDDs and was 100% stable 24/7.

Most PSU requirements are blown out of proportion (I guess to be on the safe side).

[scaryjim]

I'd be a bit concerned that they only saw fit to provide 2 PCIe connectors on a 700W PSU myself, although the specs claim 50A on a single 12V rail which should be fine.

tbh I have the same gut feeling as shaithis about the adapters, despite knowing that pragmatically there's nothing wrong with them! They are literally just a couple of plugs and some wires, so there's no good reason to think they would be problematic as long as the wires are crimped in securely. Just make sure you get the 2x molex to PCIe adapters if you need to source some more (you occasionally see adapters that only connect a single molex to the PCIe 6pin), as a single molex isn't rated to provide the full 75W a PCIe connector can.