Actually 650W is a good go for SLI/Xfire systems while single-gpu practically always stay below 450W. A 5850/dualcore setup will probably run perfectly well with a 300W unit.
Recommendations of suppliers on the other hand have been over the top at all times. Nvidias 7800GS for example got a 400W (or even 450W?) recommendation with at least 20A on the 12V rails. I ran mine perfectly well with a 250W/13A unit. Then I overclocked and overvolted it to a consumption rougly in the league of a 7900GTX - and continued to run it perfectly well. I even made a testrun with the much more powerful HD3850AGP an this power supply - 100% stable. (though it was dying for weaks before anyway and this test actually was its last boot up
)
Some say, this is to accomandate for potential power hungry CPUs, but my rig had an overclocked Pentium 4 Extreme Edition at this time, so I attribute the high recommendations only to the low quality of some PSUs on the market. As long as suppliers put 600W-signs on units, that could hardly deliver 400W continously, the manufacturers are forced to recommend 650+W units in case a freakish Quadfather/Skulltrail owner comes along and wants to sue them for blowing up his PSU.
Switch to original size
Comment this story! (26 Comments)
Read all comments