Edge Edition 3XS + question about the power supply

[Talion_UK]

My current pc is getting long in the tooth and the recent power downs I experienced during the heat waves, plus some upcoming games releases over the next six months means I need a new one. Also, this time round I’m going to skip the hassle I had of building/oc’ing and go pre built, hence why I’m here!

My question is as follows: How much scope does the 550W power supply give me to upgrade in the future? I’m guessing in about a year I’ll switch the graphics card once the replacements have settled in. If I decided for a potentially (?) cheaper option of just adding another 5870 in the future, is the 750w enough and is the Antec three hundred big enough? I’ve always lent towards single cards in the past, just trying to make my mind up how to proceed.

For approximately the same system the custom version works out at about £100 extra due to the extra years warranty and a different cooler. However it gives me the option of adding:

750W Corsair CMPSU-750TX - (Dual Graphic Cards 470/5850) (£84.98) add £26.44
1000W Corsair CMPSU-1000 HX - (Dual Graphic Cards 480/5970) (£156.10) add £97.56

Thanks in advance for any advice/input/suggestions you may have.

Kind regards

Ross


The Edge Edition 3xs system I’m looking at is as follows:

Antec Three Hundred Black Midi Tower Case
Intel Core i7 920 D0, 2.66Ghz, 4.8GT/s QPI, 8Mb Cache OEM
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R - SLI *Supports USB3 and SATA6*
Intel i7 920 professionally Over clocked by our 3XS engineers to 3.8Ghz
6GB (3x2GB) Corsair XMS3 DDR3, PC3-12800 (1600MHz), CAS 9
1Gb XFX HD 5870, 850Mhz GPU, 1600 SPs, 4800MHz GDDR5
1TB Samsung Spinpoint F3, 7200rpm, 32MB Cache
Pioneer DVR-S18LBK – DVDRW
Creative X-Fi Xtreme Audio - PCI-E (x1)
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit – OEM
Standard 3XS System Warranty - 1 Year RTB
3XS System Delivery
550W Corsair VX Series PSU
Akasa AK-CC017 Freedom Tower CPU Cooler


£1,191.64

Differences on the custom version

Akasa Venom Cooler - Ultra Performance
CyberLink PowerDVD 9 - Movie/Audio Player & Decoder Software (£2.95)
Standard 3XS System Warranty - 2 Years (1st Year Onsite / 2nd Year Return to Base)


£1,295.32

[kalniel]

My question is as follows: How much scope does the 550W power supply give me to upgrade in the future?

Plenty. Power requirements should not be going up - instead future upgrades should deliver more performance for less power.

[Talion_UK]

Thank you for the info Kalniel.