Enough wattage?

thewanted · 29 Sep 2013 at 19:13

Hi all,

I have a PC/server at the moment that runs the following hardware:

Supermicro X8SIL-F motherboard
Intel Xeon X3450 CPU (i5-750 equivalent?)
16GB RAM
ATI HD6450 gfx
2 x SATA cards
Crucial M4 256GB SSD
14 x 2 TB drives

The PC currently has a Corsair HX520 PSU, which has worked flawlessly for 3 years. I'm thinking about moving the PC from the lounge to my desk so that I can start using it for gaming. I've had a very, very long break from gaming in general, and I want to have a bash at the old classics like Half-Life 2 and Warcraft 3 and some newer less-demanding games like Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, new SimCity etc.

Do you think the PSU will cope with an ATI HD7850? It seems like the appropriate gfx card for me given the age of the games I want to play. Would a HD7950 be a step too far?

I have a Dell U2713HM so I'd like to play at 2560x1440 if I can.

Thanks

ExRayTed · 29 Sep 2013 at 19:16

Should be fine

Glanza · 29 Sep 2013 at 19:19

You should be ok.

thewanted · 29 Sep 2013 at 19:22

Thanks

Were you guys referring to the 7850 or the 7950?

The hard drives are set to spin down after ~20 min, so almost all of them are powered off most of the time.

ExRayTed · 29 Sep 2013 at 19:28

Looks like you should be ok with the 7950 too, although it may be better to go with at least 600w just to be sure

thewanted · 29 Sep 2013 at 21:24

This is my motherboard. The specs for the 7950 say that the card needs a 16x slot. Will it still work in my board? Or is this pointless because my PCI-E slot is only 8x and it will slow the card down a lot?

ExRayTed · 29 Sep 2013 at 21:33

As long as it physically fits you shouldn't have any problems.

thewanted · 29 Sep 2013 at 21:36

Thanks

I googled around a bit and they say that the difference between 8x and 16x is minimal at best.

Now I just have to decide whether to go for the 7850 or 7950. The 7850 is probably the more sensible option since a lot of the games I want to play are quite old.

ExRayTed · 29 Sep 2013 at 21:42

You could save even more by going for a 7790

YOUR BASKET
1 x MSI HD 7790 OC 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
Total : £109.85 (includes shipping : £8.25).

It isn't a bad card at all and will have no problems playing those games

thewanted · 29 Sep 2013 at 21:49

Thanks

I got worried that the card wouldn't fit after you mentioned it, but I just checked the PC and I my 16x HD6450 fits in the 8x slot, but half of the card hangs outside of the slot.

I think I'd rather have a second hand 7850 than go for a 77xx card. Thanks though!

thewanted · 5 Oct 2013 at 13:24

Well I bought a second hand HD 7850 which is overclocked to 1170Mhz. From the screenshot below, does it look like my CPU is bottlenecking the graphics card? The card seems to only peak at 78% usage in Battlefield 4:

smilertoo · 5 Oct 2013 at 14:04

14x2tb HDD..inside the pc? I switched to putting my storage on external 2tb drives cos the pc was getting stupidly heavy and warm.

thewanted · 5 Oct 2013 at 14:09

smilertoo said:
14x2tb HDD..inside the pc? I switched to putting my storage on external 2tb drives cos the pc was getting stupidly heavy and warm.

They were spun down most of the time

I can't disagree with you about the weight though. My Fractal Design XL case is stupidly heavy.

But, all 14 drives will be sold soon. I'm downsizing to 2 x 4TB HDDs.