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Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2009
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Wales
Will be looking to upgrade to a 5850 in the future however will my corsair 400w psu limit me / need upgrading? Thanks for any responses
 
I'd upgrade your PSU even if the Corsair doesn't limit you, as PSU's are future-proof, but if running a HDD or two, fully loading your CPU (physics in a game for ex.) and gaming at the same time, maybe even having your DVD drive activate at the time (say you just installed a new game), then it's very likely that the PSU might just say no.
 
That corsair can provide 450w all day long.

With the specs in your sig, and a 5850 instead, I would imagine your power draw is around 200watts.
 
Well, if you don't have the money you can use the 400W. I'd just say upgrade it because you'll eventually need to either way, especially if you plan on maybe overclocking or upgrading your CPU, or using more powerful cooling. Your power usage should be something in the 300's right now though.
 
Nope don't really have the money , only upgrading what I need to. Not planning on overclocking and wont be upgrading the cpu for a while.
 
300watts? What you been smoking.

Bit-tech/custom pc review of HIS 5850, with a i7 965, 6gb of ram, asus p6t, shows a peak usage of 238watts.
 
stulid said:
300watts? What you been smoking.

Bit-tech/custom pc review of HIS 5850, with a i7 965, 6gb of ram, asus p6t, shows a peak usage of 238watts.
Click to expand...

Eh?

I thought PC usage was way higher than that. I used to have an old AMD single core @ 1200 Mhz with a 7600 GT card, and I had to buy a 500W PSU because the 300W PSU didn't deliver enough power when gaming. (The card driver complained about insufficient power and eventually shut itself off)

Why do 1200W psu's even exist then?
 
Was your 300watt psu rubbish? Cheap ones never provide what they claim,

1kw psu exist for the crazy people with quad sli, crazy cooling(tecs and phase change) running silly speed overclocks with all the bells and whistles.

In the same review I mentioned, a nvidia gtx285 took 301watts, these newer ati are a lot less power hungry due to being made in a smaller manufacturing process.
 
Strawberry said:
I'd just say upgrade it because you'll eventually need to
Click to expand...

I don't agree with that. The thing with graphics cards has always been that the bigger/faster cards at the time, need more power than the smaller cards. The power usage dosen't continue to increase as newer generations of cards get faster. When I removed my huge Ti4600 and replaced it with a tiny 6600gt, it was much faster for a fraction of the power usage. It doesn't seem that long ago that I had a large x1950pro that took two PSU connectors. That card scored about 4800 on 3dmark06. Only the other week, i fitted a tiny GT240 into an Athlon AM2 2.6ghz. That card uses no external power connectors and the PC runs fine with its original non-brand 280w PSU. I ran 3dmark06 just to check everything was working and out of curiousity and it scored 7765.
 
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Yeah, shouldnt be a problem at all.
If you plan on crossfiring them at some stage THEN you will need a new psu :p
 
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