PCI-E power to my new 7970 Matrix?

[UTmaniac]

My new toy was waiting for me when I got home from work, but I'm trying to stay calm because I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to replace my 8800GTS 512 for the time being...

I have a Cooler Master M620 PSU in the geriatric system in my sig, it has two 6-pin PCI-E sockets, it came with 2x 6-pin to 6-pin cables and more importantly one 6-pin to 8-pin cable.

The Matrix has come with one cable that looks like two 6-pins linked up to one 8-pin.

The Matrix has two 8-pin power inputs.

Can I safely use install my Matrix, using the PSU supplied cable and only part (one of the two 6-pin plugs) of the supplied Matrix cable?

And thanks for the Haribo!

 

[snips86x]

Yes, that should be fine!

 

[UTmaniac]

Yes, that should be fine!

Thanks for your input, but I'm a little hesitant to do this without more conformations.

It's the supplied cable that came with the Matrix that is preventing me from confidently doing the switchover, literally two 6-pin plugs "merge" into one 8-pin. I'm worried that if I only plug in one of those "merged" 6-pins into one of the two PCI-E outputs of my Cooler Master, because the other 6-pin output of the Cooler Master would be needed to connect the other cable, it might not work properly... or worse!

 

[Agnostic]

I agree with Snips, it should be fine. I'm getting my 7970 tomorrow and will be doing the exact same thing with my 550w psu. If the card is underpowered I doubt it would do anything worse than simply not power up.

 

[Sh4rkie]

I agree with Snips, it should be fine. I'm getting my 7970 tomorrow and will be doing the exact same thing with my 550w psu. If the card is underpowered I doubt it would do anything worse than simply not power up.

It might power up fine but under heavy load when the gpu is drawing more power the system may crash.

 

[UTmaniac]

I took the plunge and went for the switchover...
Uninstalled Nvidia drivers
Uninstalled PhysX
Turned off PC
Removed 8800GTS 512
Installed 7970 Matrix (only one of the "merged" 6-pins to 8-pin gave green light on gfx card)
Booted up ok

But I'm having a mare trying to install ATI drivers! I tried the latest 13.11beta1, the official (12.9s?), but nothing was installing properly and allowing CCC to run.

I did not run anything like Driver Sweeper.

I did notice a warning in Device Manager against the Standard VGA Adapter.

Out of desperation, I've just installed the drivers this morning that came on the CD (8.9s!!!) and at the end of the install it has literally just prompted me to reboot, something that did not happen with recent drivers last night...

Right now I'll settle for ancient drivers, but I'll never settle for staying permanently in standard VGA mode!