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PSU for 4-way SLI Titan?

goochinbuda

goochinbuda

goochinbuda

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12 Jul 2013
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44
Location
Dublin
Hi folks,
I currently have a 1200watt PSU for an overclocked 3930K and Tri-SLI Titans (non-black). I'm considering adding a 4th Titan (if I can source an original) but not sure if 1200watt is cutting it too fine or just plainly not enough??
I game on 7680x1600 but recent games are proving to be tough even on 3 Titans hence the crazy idea of adding a 4th. I was going to hold off until 20nm GPU's but they dont seem to coming anytime soon.
Either this or I ditch the idea and just go for a single 4K screen.

Insanely crazy I know but I've stopped caring about that long ago! :)

Cheers
 
Poor scaling here is the one concern I have alright so as you say, might not be worth the money at all. In fact it might even be a backwards step performance wise. However I thought I read somewhere in the Samsung 4K monitor thread that support for Quad SLI has improved a lot. Wondering what people think here.

CPU is clocked to around 4.8GHz. Both CPU and GPU's are all under water.
 
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Do you have them all under water? 4 Titans on air could get quite toasty and that might negate any performance improvements due to thermal throttling.

But, anyway, I'd say a 1200W would probably be pushing it (by a lot) and a 1500W would be my choice in that scenario. Bloody nice set-up though :)

Edit - Nevermind, didn't notice that you just posted that they're all under water.
 
No problem with CPU then, but still will eventually bottleneck (dependant on which games) those powerful GPU's
 
Benches in past, that is all and would assume most here read the same

If its came on then good but assume tri SLI is still where it peaks.
 
MjFrosty said:
Quad SLI scaling has come quite a way. What makes you think it's poor?

3930k CPU at least to reap the benefits. Still a big cpu bottleneck
Click to expand...

ah ok, I thought I read a while back that Quad SLI scaling was poor but obviously things must have improved a lot since.
I was kinda hoping that at that resolution,the 4 GPU's would still be kept busy enough so as not to bottleneck a 3930K. But I'm not so well versed in how CPUs/GPUs interact so perhaps I'm wrong.
 
CPU will bottleneck the GPU's not other way around.

Although CPU is more at lower RES and GPU at higher RES its still about a balance dependent on which games.

A modern high end GPU if far more powerful than any current CPU and that is why review sites OC the CPU a good bit to try removed bottlenecks as much as possible.
 
goochinbuda said:
ah ok, I thought I read a while back that Quad SLI scaling was poor but obviously things must have improved a lot since.
I was kinda hoping that at that resolution,the 4 GPU's would still be kept busy enough so as not to bottleneck a 3930K. But I'm not so well versed in how CPUs/GPUs interact so perhaps I'm wrong.
Click to expand...

You need a 1500watt PSU and even that will be cutting it close when you are overclocking the Titan's.

At the resolution you are using you should have no problem with the CPU bottlenecking 4 Titan's and I would go as far as to say that you only really need to run a 3930k @4.2 or even lower. It is the fps that cause the bottleneck not the power of the GPUs and at the resolution you use (7680x1600) you don't need to OC the CPU that much.

Drivers are getting better for quad sli and 337.5 is very good. One problem that some people get (review sites) is they will bench 3 or 4 cards at low settings and then say the drivers don't work when they are getting over 200fps, if they were to raise the settings to max and increase the resolution so that the fps don't go over silly numbers like 200+ then the drivers/cards do start scaling very well.
 
Thanks Kaapstad.
There doesnt seem to be many 1500watt+ PSU's out there so I may have have to run a second one. Dont have the room though for another PSU, even in my 900D case, not without sacrificing some rad space which is the last thing I'd want to do when adding another card.
The tricky part is trying to find an original Titan card if I decide to go ahead with it all.
 
goochinbuda said:
Thanks Kaapstad.
There doesnt seem to be many 1500watt+ PSU's out there so I may have have to run a second one. Dont have the room though for another PSU, even in my 900D case, not without sacrificing some rad space which is the last thing I'd want to do when adding another card.
The tricky part is trying to find an original Titan card if I decide to go ahead with it all.
Click to expand...

If I was in your shoes I would definitely get another Titan, it may not work in all games but when it does it is well worth it.

4 way sli support is good in some of the most popular games like

Crysis 3
BF4
Sleeping Dogs
BF3
Tomb Raider
Sniper Elite V2

The worst case scenario is you get a game that runs badly with 4 cards, then all you have to do is switch to using 3 cards which takes seconds.
 
whyscotty said:
I'd stick with TriSli till you get your monitor then decide if you need the 4th

That's what I'm doing :D
Click to expand...

:D For weeks now, I've been changing my mind several times on whether to go with an extra Titan or wait for a decent 32" 4K screen at 'sensible' prices.
But damn it, 3 30inch 1600p screens is pretty awesome. I'd marginally lean more towards having larger screen real estate over higher res on a smaller screen.
What a pity that Titan Blacks cant be sli'ed with the original Titans. :(
 
It will be difficult to get another original Titan.

Looking around the prices for 2nd hand ones are creeping up :(

But that's good news for anyone selling theirs now
 
I've managed to track down another Titan card but before I commit to buying it I'm just wondering about my PSU options. I don't plan on overclocking the Titans as my original ones are not great overclockers to be honest and any OCs didnt seem to improve FPS that I could see so I'm wondering if 1500w will suffice?

1. Has anyone here used a 1500w+ PSU that has 8 PCI-E connectors?
Corsair's AX1500i 80 Plus Titanium PSU is due in Q2 of this year. Havent come across it for sale yet though.

2. Using a 2nd PSU: Again, if anyone has done this please advise on any issues here. i.e how to ensure that both PSUs start together etc.

Thanks
 
goochinbuda said:
2. Using a 2nd PSU: Again, if anyone has done this please advise on any issues here. i.e how to ensure that both PSUs start together etc.

Thanks
Click to expand...

You can buy a cable for a few quid that trips the second PSU when you power up the main one. Ran this on a mining rig for a couple of months with no issues.

But for a gaming PC just get a single PSU solution as it'll be messy with two (depending on how important aesthetics are to you).
 
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