Do I need a new PSU?

JoeH

JoeH

JoeH

Associate
Joined
31 May 2009
Posts
45
Location
Surrey, England
Hey all, long time reader, first time poster.

I've been thinking about upgrading my PCs graphics card to one of the 260 216sp's and overclocking that get the most juice of it. But I won't bore you, so far I've upgraded my RAM to DDR2 2x 2GB Corsair PC26400C5 from some 2x 1GB DDR2 667mhz Kingston ones. My current spec is this:

AMD Athlon X2 @ 2.66ghz (stock)
ASUS Crosshair
2x 2GB DDR2 (as stated above)
2x GeForce 7950 GT 512MB SLi

Now I'm stuck for what I should upgrade next. I did wanna upgrade my GPU first but I was convinced my first bottleneck was my RAM so I got that out the way so now I'm thinking either my CPU or GPU. That was until I was asked about my PSU...

It is literally a cheapo from some website from Sept 08 due to my previous PSU going faulty and blowing up 2 Crosshair mobos s that was a 500W psu and now this one is an Arctic Power 700W one (as Crosshair requires minimum of 650W). It cost me £45 as I was kinda budgeted due to the surprise cost of the mobo.

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These are the power ratings found on the back of my PSU box. You wanna be looking at the ARTIC 700 as this company uses one box for all their PSUs but slaps a big sticker on the front telling you the Watts of it :P Do you think this is sufficient should I upgrade to quad core later this year? Or even if I make any upgrade in the future?

Many thanks
 
If you plan on overclocking your rig, I would advise that you upgrade that PSU, you will want to have a good clean power source for overclocking....

Cheap PSU's are a bad idea!!

I am having trouble ATM with my rig, and a lot of the people have told me that it is probably due to my crappy PSU....
 
Hmmm, I'm just not sure what PSU to go for =/ I do want a modular one (100% or not I don't mind) long as it is SLi ready and doesn't make a lot of noise :)

I wouldn't really know if yours is the problem, power supplies have always been a quiet area for me as I always thought you plug them in and they work, but obviously not haha. All these rails and everything :S
 
Well, almost everyone I have talked to about my rig have pointed towards my PSU...

I am getting a new one anyway... and I would suggest that you do the same!!!

If you aren't in a hurry to get one, then you should wait for the new Corsair HX750 or HX850 to come into stock, they are supposed to be amazing PSU's, and the 750w is only £119, and £140 for the 850w...
 
Yeah I did have a look at those. I think I am going to wait a bit to see which cables come pre-attached so that I can plan my cable management (got me an Antec 1200 you see) and I think 850W is an overkill atm as I don't plan to SLi with another card for some time, although it will make my rig more future proof.. I was also looking into Silverstone PSUs as they seemed quite good. Anyone able to back this up?

I don't think I could go for beQuiet as (me being a perfectionist) my PSU has to be black, to go with the colour scheme of my case.
 
I think the brushed metal look of the Be Quiet PSU's would look great with a black case...

I am going for the Be Quiet 850w tommorow, and it will be getting fitted into my Silverstone TJ10 nVidia Edition case, which is black!

I am also very picky about how my PC looks, I like hardware that not only performs well, but also looks good to...

I can't wait to get my new PSU so that I can see if it is going to resolve the issues that I am having with my i7 rig...

Oh, and 850w isn't "overkill" if you plan on going SLi in the future... I personally dont like SLi systems, but if I were to go down that route, I would want to get a 1kW PSU...

I am fairly positive that 850w PSU's would be the minimum requirement for a modern dual card setup like 2 x GTX285's, or 2 x HD4970's, and a high end CPU/RAM... I could very well be wrong here, but I am sure I read this on another website.. and for triple card setups you would need 1kW PSU....
 
Yeah I'm not too keen on SLi either. Even though I got an SLi build atm (which is why I'm going off it because I do not notice any difference) so in the future I think I'll stick to one card.

Also as I tend to be quite budgeted on GPUs I doubt I'd go for something as power hungry (and expensive) at the 285, either 260 216 or 275 will do for me. Not really into ATI cards as they tend to be noisy, hot and power hungry.
 
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