Is this PSU enough?

[PowerPie5000]

I was thinking about upgrading my brothers CPU and GPU from a Phenom II 955 & Radeon 6850 to a nice FX-8350 & Radeon 7870 (or possibly GTX 660/Ti) and was wondering if his 'XFX 550W Core Edition Pro' PSU will be good enough?

Cheers!

[deejayburnout]

The 7870 requires a minimum of a 500w PSU and the FX 8350 iirc draws around 125w.

Might be ok, depending on the quality of the PSU and the age of it.

[PowerPie5000]

The 7870 requires a minimum of a 500w PSU and the FX 8350 iirc draws around 125w.

Might be ok, depending on the quality of the PSU and the age of it.

The XFX PSU is around 10 months old and is apparently a Seasonic unit. I'm certain the minimum PSU requirements stated by AMD and nVidia are for complete systems and not just the card... I'm thinking it will be ok but wanted other opinions just for reassurance . The FX-8350 has a TDP of 125W, but will it actually draw that amount of power under load (i know they're a bit power hungry)?

[Oswald]

I was thinking about upgrading my brothers CPU and GPU from a Phenom II 955 & Radeon 6850 to a nice FX-8350 & Radeon 7870 (or possibly GTX 660/Ti) and was wondering if his 'XFX 550W Core Edition Pro' PSU will be good enough?

Cheers!

I have a Phenom II 955 (overclocked to 3.7Ghz) and a 7870 and my 500W Antec Earthwatts is doing just fine. The FX-8350 had the same tdp, so you should be fine with a 550W psu.

[Phenom_965]

I'm running a Phenom2 965 stock clock togheter with a 7850 1GB....on my 7 years old Enermax 485W! It should work!

[Caveman]

I really dont see why GFX manufc' recommend having such a large PSU.. It just seems like another sales gimmick to me. I can't see how the 7870 would ever need 500w. Unless you're going SLI/XF and/or seriously OC everything, you shouldn't be pulling more then 500Ws. I can't see you pulling more then 400Ws tbh. Obviously a 400w PSU isn't gonna provide you with 400w constantly but with that being said 550w will be more than enough.

[watercooled]

Yeah it should be fine. I think they recommend high wattage PSUs to cover questionable brands too.

Actually a decent 400W PSU will happily provide 400W constantly, just it's not ideal to run it that way so as to allow for peaks etc.

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The wattage that the manufacturer recommends is an estimate for a full system. There are some GPU's that'll draw over 500w under full load but I think it's pretty much exclusive to dual chip GPU's. According to Anandtech, an AMD Radeon HD 7970 Ghz Edition will draw up to 429w under maximum load whilst running Metro 2033*. The 7870 however, only drew 310w in the same scenario. Personally, I'd go with a high quality 600w PSU (manufactured by Seasonic) so I'd have headroom for a decent O.C. and to account for capacitor ageing.


*I'm looking forward to seeing what the 7990 will draw.