I had a 500W PSU running the system I have currently (was a ThermalTake one, it wasn't too bad, can't remember the model). It was pushing it really badly, got pretty damn hot. I see your point though, a Corsair 500W (or thereabouts) PSU I imagine will do the job perfectly but I reckon it's better to err on the side of caution.
In truth, the PSU is designed to get noiser and hotter as the load increases. My PSU is hot after a gaming session, and I have a 1000W PSU with a system that only uses 600 max (for upgrades and suchlike). Personally, with a quality PSU that's designed to supply up to 500w, I'd have no trouble putting 450w in until the cows came home.
Really? My current PSU stays pretty cool and my rig will draw a maximum of about 450W. To deal with this, a complete spec of the machine and the proposed spec would be damn useful and end this particular debate.
What is the exact make/model number of your existing PSU? I tried looking through the posts but couldn't find it. It may help us all in determining the quality of it.
Future proofing has nothing to do with it. High end single GPU PCs have been pulling about 650w for as long as I can remember, at least since 2007. Chances are, a 650w PSU made in 2007 will still be alright in 2012. What is important is whether the OP wants to go multi-gpu in the future. It's both power and speed inefficient, but it will still use the extra juice. Covering upgrades is one thing, but really, a large PSU upgrade would not necessarily be future-proofing.
Um, anything above a 5670 and you're going to have problems. It's not that bad a card though tbh. Would the cost of a PSU eat into the GPU budget?
You can get a 512mb XFX 4870 for £94 http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...R5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=39070 or 1GB version for £106 http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...R5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=38747 And a Corsair TX/HX 650W which will allow you to crossfire
If you read the start of this thread you'd see that a 400W is the intended PSU upgrade... With a 400W you could stick in a 4850 or GTS250 quite happily. 450W Corsair would open up a 4870.
Bakes is talking crap. Look my rig in my sig, dual 260 GTX in a 620 watt PSU. I could also run 2x 5870 on it if i wanted to.
400w - this poster has discovered that 400w is pushing it for even a midrange graphics card nowadays. In 2007 (systems have one hard drive, one dvd drive, and two 120mm case fans): Q6600 overclocked to 3.6GHz + 8800GTX overclocked (ie high-end single gpu from 2007): 489w minimum, 539w recommended. Personally, I wouldn't want to be running so close to the max of a power supply, if only because if you didn't have a really good one it would really be getting noisy. In 2010: i7-920 overclocked to 4.2GHz + 5870 with no overclock: 572w minimum, 622w recommended. With neither of those rigs would I want to be entrusting my hardware to a power supply that would be for in 2007 maxing out and in 2010 massively overworked. Furthermore, my original post was specifically about buying a PSU in 2007 and keeping it until 2013. Factoring in a conservative 10% capacitor deterioration, you'd want to have bought at least a 600w PSU and 650w recommended. Finally, it's never a bad idea to over-rate your PSUs, if only for reducing noise. I'd recommend you plug your numbers into the powersupply calculator here: http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine I just plugged them in for you and got, at full load with 10% capacitor deterioration: 623w minimum, 673w recommended. You say you could run 5870s crossfire, but the same calculator reckons that you want a 714w PSU minimum and 764 recommended. So, you could run 5870s in crossfire, but you'd be pulling 15% more from the PSU than it was designed for, and in my honest opinion, that's playing with fire. Of course, I'm not saying that the power supply calculator I quoted is the be all and end all. It's just a calculator, after all, and it can't calculate for specific quirks, such as different distribution of rails and suchlike. I would however say that it's seen by most to be fairly accurate in terms of making your choices regarding personal power supplies. If you want to go mathematical, a 5870 has a TDP (IIRC, AMD's TDP means 'total design power') of 188w, and it pulls that through the 12V rail almost exclusively. So, two of them at full load and you're at 376w. Your CPU will be pulling ~230w at full load also, also on the 12v rail, which takes you up to about 610w. Add a hard drive or two (20w-ish in total), so that's 630w, and your fans (10w in total), 640w. Other gubbins, graphics cards overclocking etc, you'd definitely be overloading your PSU with two 5870s at maximum load, and that's not even counting any kind of capacitor ageing. Again, my point was simply that if you wanted a PSU that could keep a computer going properly for a long period of time (I think I said 6 years) you'd have wanted then and would want now a 650w PSU. It's not crap, it's just a smart plan if you want to be keeping some headroom for future upgrades. As this particular poster has discovered.
I'm with Bakes here; the only reason Ph4zed's PC hasn't died yet is that it hasn't been put under full load, and that safety margin is only going to get smaller as the capacitors slowly but surely deteriorate. Getting a PSU that gives you extra safety and some kind of futureproofing is generally a good idea. My PSU, while pretty overpowered for my spec, is whisper quiet, always cool and gives faultless performance. Out of interest, as I don't know the answer, would capacitor ageing accelerate with increased load, more specifically nearing the limit of the PSU? I know capacitors are used to maintain a DC current out of an AC one so deteriorate over time, but would any other factors come into play?
