A power supply question

[cHodAX]

I am planning an upgrade in the near future and a bit worried my OCZ Powerstream won't be up to the job. I am planning on a Core 2 Quad (Kentsfield) with 4gb of DDR2 and an Nvidia 8800 GTS 320mb of some variety. After looking up the specs on all the above I am worried that my PSU will lack the oomph required, Kentsfield is pretty power hungry and the 8800 GTS is a thirsty beast as well. I asked elsewhere about this problem and it seems the 30-33amps on the 12v rail will be more than enough for the 8800 but it still leaves me worrying about overall power consumption and if my OCZ is going to be able to deliver enough power reliably.

Any input on this is most welcome.

My PSU specs can be found here...

YouTube - The 40 Year Old Virgin - WAXING sene

 

[Saggy]

Trolling?

Anyway, Quad doesn't overclock well without extreme cooling so it will be hard to reach the limit of that PSU (520w/33A @ 12v) and 8800GTS aint all that power hungry.

 

[cHodAX]

Gah, was posting in two threads at once and posted the wrong link

OCZ Technology | Products | Power Management | OCZ PowerStream Power Supply

Correct link there, not planning on overclocking to be honest but I will probably grab one of the new top end Thermaltake heatsinks anyway and stick a nice quiet 12cm fan on for good measure.

 

[Ballard]

That is more than good enough, only time to worry with that PSU is if it old or faulty.

Just my opinion but its a waste of money to buy a kentsfield and not oc it. Much better performance to $$ ratio is to buy a E4300 or E6600 and oc it. only my 2c so dont take it as rudeness.

 

[SkarIronfist]

https://forums.freddyshouse.com/technical-help68/217430-computer-power-usage-calculator.html

Go here and try this power calculator.

 

[cHodAX]

That is more than good enough, only time to worry with that PSU is if it old or faulty.

Just my opinion but its a waste of money to buy a kentsfield and not oc it. Much better performance to $$ ratio is to buy a E4300 or E6600 and oc it. only my 2c so dont take it as rudeness.

I am waiting till July 22nd bud, the price is more than halving to a tad less than £150. As for overclocking, I may well push it a few hundred mhz but that is about it, my current PC is a noisy bastard and I don't want to be going down that road again if I can help it.

 

[cHodAX]

https://forums.freddyshouse.com/technical-help68/217430-computer-power-usage-calculator.html

Go here and try this power calculator.

Aye tried that and got 437w but the score seems out of whack with what I am being told elsewhere, alot of people are suggesting I need 600w upwards which just seems silly to me. My OCZ 520w is a quality PSU that cost me roughly £100 a couple of years ago, the rails are rock solid to the point of legendary and the single 12v rail delivers between 30 and 33 amps which theoretically should be enough for both CPU and graphics card.

Anyway thanks for the input guys, I am going to stick with my OCZ for now and just monitor the situation after I have done the upgrade. If the PSU isn't up to the job then I am getting on the phone to OCZ and complaining until they swap my PSU out because if it can't deliver 437w under full load then it isn't fit for purpose.

 

[Ballard]

Aye tried that and got 437w but the score seems out of whack with what I am being told elsewhere, alot of people are suggesting I need 600w upwards which just seems silly to me.

You are dead right, they have no idea. Many people are obsessed with the numbers taped to the side of their PSU rather than the quality PSU's at the moment are a little bit like intel 3 years ago in the heat of the mhz race, chasing an arbitary number with little thought to the actually meaning...

Thats not to say I wouldnt like the 1000W silverstone olympia

 

[Gamah]

Get two 8800's in SLI you cheap bastard

 

[cHodAX]

Get two 8800's in SLI you cheap bastard

I was going to SLI 6800GT's a couple of years back but when I look at what I was getting for that extra £300 it just wasn't worth it bud and I still don't think it is worth it. My LCD only goes to 1680x1050 anyway so the 8800 GTS 320mb is more than enough for what I need, lightyears ahead of my current 6800GT which runs 90% of new games just fine anyway.

 

[Gamah]

Yeah my 7600GT runs everything smooth..

But tbh mate you can buy a E6600 and clock it to 3ghz @ stock.

 

[cHodAX]

Yeah my 7600GT runs everything smooth..

But tbh mate you can buy a E6600 and clock it to 3ghz @ stock.

I am a greedy bastard and I wants Quadage for £150!! Seriously though I do alot of video encoding and I used to do a fair bit of messing around with 3D rendering programs so that extra power will come in damn useful. Will also be nice to be able to have a web browser open whilst playing a game and running a Divx to DVD conversion at the same time. For the price you really can't go wrong.

 

[Gamah]

But from what benchmarks I have seen they are not "THAT" much better than the duel cores..+ w/ a lack of support atm for the quad cores you will mostly be only using 2 anyway. I know the support will come shortly and I would probably buy a quad core for 150 (spent 150 on my duel core a week ago)

So yeah, least you can be like..yeah I got the quads What socket those bad boys run on?

 

[cHodAX]

But from what benchmarks I have seen they are not "THAT" much better than the duel cores..+ w/ a lack of support atm for the quad cores you will mostly be only using 2 anyway. I know the support will come shortly and I would probably buy a quad core for 150 (spent 150 on my duel core a week ago)

So yeah, least you can be like..yeah I got the quads What socket those bad boys run on?

775 bud, quite a few motherboards with full support for them as well.

 

[Gamah]

775 bud, quite a few motherboards with full support for them as well.

Might sell my duo then get one then

 

[Saggy]

775 bud, quite a few motherboards with full support for them as well.

Gamah probably meant that only few games and stuff supports quad cores at the moment but 3D renderers usually do and you can manually set programs to use specified core so more the cores the better

Where are you getting it that cheap btw?

 

[cHodAX]

Gamah probably meant that only few games and stuff supports quad cores at the moment but 3D renderers usually do and you can manually set programs to use specified core so more the cores the better

Where are you getting it that cheap btw?

The Intel pricelist has a 22nd July date reduction to $266 trade on units of 1000, a mate in the business said that pretty much translates £150 street price at the current exchange rate after markup and taxes. I wouldn't be suprised to see alot of places trying to get £170+ for it though, still worth it to me though but that would be my max I think. Alot of the big hardware sites like Anandtech and Hardocp all covered the price drop news a few weeks back btw so it is going to be happening.

 

[Saggy]

The Intel pricelist has a 22nd July date reduction to $266 trade on units of 1000, a mate in the business said that pretty much translates £150 street price at the current exchange rate after markup and taxes. I wouldn't be suprised to see alot of places trying to get £170+ for it though, still worth it to me though but that would be my max I think. Alot of the big hardware sites like Anandtech and Hardocp all covered the price drop news a few weeks back btw so it is going to be happening.

Yeah, Intel announced that ages ago and been waiting it to happen - would have liked to upgrade my PC now though

 

[SkarIronfist]

Aye tried that and got 437w but the score seems out of whack with what I am being told elsewhere, alot of people are suggesting I need 600w upwards which just seems silly to me. My OCZ 520w is a quality PSU that cost me roughly £100 a couple of years ago, the rails are rock solid to the point of legendary and the single 12v rail delivers between 30 and 33 amps which theoretically should be enough for both CPU and graphics card.

Anyway thanks for the input guys, I am going to stick with my OCZ for now and just monitor the situation after I have done the upgrade. If the PSU isn't up to the job then I am getting on the phone to OCZ and complaining until they swap my PSU out because if it can't deliver 437w under full load then it isn't fit for purpose.

Yes but don't forgot that efficieny of the unit and the age of the unit degrade over time. So my 620W actually provides 620w * 80% efficiency = 500W. Then as each year goes by the capacities loose abit of effectiveness as well.