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PSU matter for overclocking?

tintin82

tintin82

tintin82

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Joined
27 Aug 2009
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712
So I have just upgraded to 780 6GB SLI and am finding that my system is pulling near 800W from the wall. I have an 850W CoolerMaster Silent Pro.

I have been slightly underwhelmed with my overclock on my new cards, adding only 60 to the core and 600 to the memory. Could this be down to my PSU being at the limit? Or is it a case of it either works or doesn't?
 
The PSU won't affect your overclocking headroom directly and good PSUs can safely pull more more the wall than they are rated to anyway whilst still being safe to do so. You'll always be limited by the overclock on the worst card though if you clock them in sync, so might be worth overclocking them independently first to see their true max values, then figuring out a stable SLI limit after.
 
I have no experience of this but apparently if a PSU pops it can take other components out with it...

I would have thought over current protection would prevent this on any decent PSU though and just shut the computer down.
 
850W is not enough for serious OCing those cards. I speak from experience with my own similar setup.

A solid 1000W plat or 1200W job would be preferable.
 
At full load some power supplies can suffer from issues on the 12v line, a quick look at your psu suggests it suffers from this problem.

So yea I wouldn't be surprised if your PSU was effecting things if its pulling that much under stress, I'd go for a more powerful one and check the reviews on it first to see how it performs =)
 
And he's using power hungry 290's too... I ran sli 780's on a 660w PSU for a while with no issues...

Not that I'd recommend it but my Seasonic x series have been hammered at 800w in reviews with no issues.
 
My 850 (which is/was a very highly rated unit) tripped when running certain benchmarks with the OC in my sig, I replaced it with a 1000W unit but didn't update my sig. :)

Good point about the 290s, they are a lot hungrier than 780s. I think the 6GB models might sip more juice though.
 
Who knows, good to hear the PSU 'protected' everything though by cutting out.
Oddly. My 660w X Series Seasonic handled SLI 780's whilst benching/OCing. Online reviews reckon it'll support 800W without issue (But advise against it)
 
Orangey said:
My 850 (which is/was a very highly rated unit) tripped when running certain benchmarks with the OC in my sig, I replaced it with a 1000W unit but didn't update my sig. :)

Good point about the 290s, they are a lot hungrier than 780s. I think the 6GB models might sip more juice though.
Click to expand...

Fair enough, and yeah they do sip a bit more juice as most are factory overclocked quite highly..
 
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