The Myth of the 1KW PSU..

Arthalen

Arthalen

Arthalen

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Leeds, UK
Just thought I'd post this ...

My current System:

Q6600 - Currently priming at 12hrs+ at 3.6Ghz
Intel i975x based motherboard
4GB (2x2Gb) OCZ DDR2-800 Gold Series
GeCube 3870 X2 PCI-Ex Video Card
4x 80GB Maxtor Hard drives
2x DVD-ReWriter Optical Drives
Floppy
USB Network Adaptor
USB Pen drive
4x 120mm Fans

All powered by my 18 month old Silverstone ST60F Power Supply. Who needs 1KW? eh? And if I'm really honest this could probably be more than adequately powered by a Corsair 520watt PSU.
 
People who want to run SLI, WC, and lots of drives off a single PSU without having to even consider their PSU when buying new things?
 
My post was meant a little tongue-in-cheek to be honest; just amazed at some of the rigs out there with high end PSU's and dont have half the hardware to actually need that amount of power.

In all honesty, if I wanted to have a second X2 card in my system, I'd have to upgrade (and would probably look at the Corsair 750watt).
 
Yes some people do go way over the top when it comes to power supplies. My system is a Q6600 at 3.5GHz, 4GB RAM, 8 hard drives, 8800 GTX and a few other bits that there's no need to list - it runs perfectly on my 620 watt Enermax and the PSU only gets warm when the system's under load, suggesting it's not being pushed the limit.

When you start messing around with tri-SLI and so on, then the high wattage PSUs are needed, but some people seem to think you need a 600 watt PSU for even a low/mid range system these days. It's just unnecessary most of the time and I'd rather just buy a new PSU every couple of years anyway due to them losing efficiency after that.
 
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I got a 1KW psu, but only because I snagged it for the price of a good 650. I was actually gonna go for the corsair VX550.

A couple of reviews I've seen on high-end psu's reckon you'll extend the life of a psu if it's understressed. If it lasts 3 years I think it'll be well worth it.

Generally your right, though. The average gaming pc (mine included) wont use more than 300Watts.
 
I think it's future proofing. And also I think it goes along that if a product is sold/developed to consistently churn out 1000W, then churning out the 500W a machine might need is going to be easy. And it's going to do it efficiently.
 
Ive got:

AMD A'64 x2 3800+
4x1GB DDR1 Geil
2x36GB WD Raptors + 300GB WD + 250GB Maxtor (all SATA)
DVDRW Pioneer
Leadtek 7800GT PCIe
Floppy
2x120mm fan, 1x80mm fan
iPod powered by Firewire
TV card (one of the dual ones)
PCI NIC

All powered by a Zalman 460W PSU
 
I have an 3600x2, a 3870xt and all the usual malarky powered by a 380w antec. It seems to be fine at the moment but to be honest I'm still a bit nervous about it, but a bit too poor to buy a chunkier psu.
 
Is this bad?

6 HDD (3 IDE, 3 SATA)
3500+ A64
SCSI Controller
SATA Controller
IDE RAID Controller
A8V
Tape Drive (DDS4)
DVD-RW DL
4 Fans (2 80mm, 2 120mm)
2 Gig DDR
TI4200

All runs on an Enermax Noisetaker 385W, which is now about 2 years old

PSU gets reasonably warm, but not warm enough to cause concern.
 
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