Do I need to Upgrade my PSU

Matthewleehood · 29 Jun 2016 at 16:15

in the excitement of the launch of the AMD Radeon RX480 I bought 2 with the intention of using them in Crossfire. I'm now wondering if my PSU will be man enough.... my system specs are:

Intel Core i5-4690K 3.50GHz (Devil's Canyon) Socket LGA1150 Processor
Gigabyte Z97X-SLI Intel Z97 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard
Crucial BX100 250GB SSD SATA 6Gbps 7mm Solid State Drive
Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" SATA 6Gbps Solid State Drive TeamGroup Vulcan RED 8GB (4x4GB) DDR3 PC3-19200C11 2400MHz
Raijintek Aidos Direct Contact CPU Cooler - Black
Aerocool Strike-X Coupe Midi Tower - Black
Asus PCE-AC68 802.11ac Dual-band Wireless AC1900 PCI-E Adaptor
2 x Radeon RX 480 8192MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card
Antec TruePower Classic 550w '80 Plus Gold' Power Supply

As you can see, i only have a 550w PSU I am upgrading from :

1 x Powercolor Radeon R9 280 TurboDUO 3072MB GDDR5

what PSU should I be running? or is 550w enough?

Borealis · 29 Jun 2016 at 16:19

I'd probably want a 750W PSU for crossfire. I don't know what the combined power consumption of 2 480s is though, but I would think 550W won't be enough.

Matthewleehood · 29 Jun 2016 at 16:46

Borealis said:
I'd probably want a 750W PSU for crossfire. I don't know what the combined power consumption of 2 480s is though, but I would think 550W won't be enough.

The card Pulls 150W so i'm guessing 300W?

pastymuncher · 30 Jun 2016 at 10:36

The card pulls a lot more than 150w in the reviews that I have seen and there are widespread reports of the card drawing way too much power from the pci-e slot which could potentially kill the board. People have also said that if that did happen then by using these cards the motherboard warranty could be invalidated. Whether that will be the case or not nobody knows yet. In it's current form I wouldn't go near one of these cards let alone a pair in crossfire.

You will need a better psu and to be safe should look at getting a good 750w.