What Wattage PSU?

[Pumpkinstew]

I'm ordering up a new machine and wondering what size PSU to drop in.

Probably a Quad 6600 or DuoE6750 and then ATI4850/Nvidia8800GT/9800GTX.
I'll probably go for a Crossfire/SLI mobo to leave an obvious upgrade path.
2HDDs at the most. Vista64.

Will a good 500W PSU be OK or should I be looking at 650W or more?

 

[Ben M]

why would you buy an E6750? Look at 45nm chips (E8***) if you want a dual core

500W should be fine, I would probably upgrade it when I went crossfire (get a 4850, it's the card from the list I'd have there, and nvidia boards are horrible) or cut out the middle man by buying a corsair 650W psu.

 

[Amonlym]

500w is more than enough, and assuming the rails are distributed well (eg good balance of amps) you should to be able to do crosfire on 500w also.

im presently running overclocked athlon x2 6400+ (125w stock cpu) and 2 3870's 4 hdds and a big stack of fans and a waterpump from a 600w tagen. running wow right now im using: 318W from the wall, so DC watts (what a psu is rated for) is more like 80% of that. the most ive ever seen drawn is just shy of 400w ac = 320w dc. just over half the psu's rated output.

 

[Jiffy]

AFAIK 500w should be fine but I'd go for the Corsair TX 650w as it's a solid PSU and OcUK don't do a cheaper Corsair 500w PSU.

 

[Stelly]

500w will definately do mate, there is no need for anything higher, well unless you are thinking about future proofing...

Stelly