PSU enough for 8800 gts?

[tbone8ty]

I have a Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC ATX 430W PSU

will this be sufficient enough if i upgrade to a 8800 GTS?

it says the 12V rail is 18Amps...

is this enough?

want to setup:
mobo: asus p5w dh deluxe
cpu: c2d e4300 w/ stock cooler
2 WD sata2 250g hardrives
1 NEC dvd burner
ati hdtv tuner card

[Movieman]

I have a Thermaltake TR2 W0070RUC ATX 430W PSU

will this be sufficient enough if i upgrade to a 8800 GTS?

it says the 12V rail is 18Amps...

is this enough?

want to setup:
mobo: asus p5w dh deluxe
cpu: c2d e4300 w/ stock cooler
2 WD sata2 250g hardrives
1 NEC dvd burner
ati hdtv tuner card
No..Not even close..Don't take this the wrong way but get yourself a good quality 700+watt PSU..
Having a $450.00 vid card running on a cheap PSU will cost you more in the long run than your saving..

[Bastieeeh]

Your PS should be okay. I would assemble the rig, fire it up and after a while check the temperatures at the PS just to make sure it's not overheating. Do that from time to time again during the first days and you should be in the safe corner. Nvidia though recommends a 450W PS for the 640MB GTS (400W / 320MB GTS) but your system is not that complex...

[GrimReaper]

Your PS should be okay. I would assemble the rig, fire it up and after a while check the temperatures at the PS just to make sure it's not overheating. Do that from time to time again during the first days and you should be in the safe corner. Nvidia though recommends a 450W PS for the 640MB GTS (400W / 320MB GTS) but your system is not that complex...

??? what have you been smoking? :p: That Psu of his is overrated. there is no way it can support a 8800.. you would rather risk killing everything than buying a good psu? :rolleyes:

[Bastieeeh]

I don't smoke at all... And I was just saying before he's wasting any money on a more powerful powersupply he should try his current one. It's very unlikely that he will break anything with it...

[big poppa pump]

@tbone8ty - Please ignore the posts by Bastieeeh, unless you really wanna f$$k up your system and end up with some dead components. I have seen members giving some pretty bad advice, but this one just takes the cake!

Read this to reconfirm my above statement.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/thermaltake-psu-roundup_18.html

Get yourself a better PSU. Even an Antec NeoHE 550W should be perfect for your needs. Otherwise get a good brand name PSU like OCZ, Forton, PC P&C, or Corsair.

[Martijn]

I am perfectly fine with an X1950pro and an overclocked D820 on a Modstram 450 (Pulls 350-400W from the socket). Has 4 drives and 2 opticals, still running fine. I don't know how much quality parts that PSU has, but I would say, try with the least amount of hardware possible first and see if it works. I think you'll be fine.

[tbone8ty]

well, actually putting more thought into it, the mobo im getting is an SLI and my psu only has 1 pcie connector, so i really should look at a new one in case i wanna do SLI in the future.

unless i should look a non sli mobo like the GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 or the ASUS P5B-E, then i should be fine and save the money.

i guess the key to this question is..... what is the best mobo I should get for the 8800 gts(640mb) and the c2d e4300, then from there choose an appropriate psu.

but i digress:

what do u think of this PSU?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817128001

[Movieman]

2 more cents:
yesterday I received a 8800GTS that I won in a contest.
The dual clover here has a 610W PCP+C PSU and the 8800 card isn't in it because I beleive a bigger PSU is needed.
I'll say this again nicely, spend the money on a top PSU capable of delivering over 700 watts and a single rail design.
PCP+C 750 is a good one and will handle SLI

[SkylinGTR26]

If you really wanna fuel that G80 GPU plus your OCed E4300. Then go for something thats not modular, because through every molex the power has to go through you get some vdroop, you wanna stay away from that as much as possible man. Get something like this...

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103941

[Bastieeeh]

yesterday I received a 8800GTS that I won in a contest.
The dual clover here has a 610W PCP+C PSU and the 8800 card isn't in it because I beleive a bigger PSU is needed.

Some people seem to have lost contact to the reality nowadays. Just grab a simple metering device (you can probably borrow one at your local energy supplier ) and measure the connected wattage directly at the power outlet. You will be surprised what the display will read...

My own machine consists of two Xeons each running at 3.15GHz and consuming around 110W under heavy load. together with my old X800XT, 10 harddisks (2 of them are WD Raptors spinning at 10k RPM), 3 waterpumps (one of them is a Laing) and some more power consuming cards and stuff like that my machine consumes around 380W at most. The 450W Tagan is doing a great job and it will even do just like that when I replace the old gfx-card with a new X1950XT AGP card sometime in the near future.

What I am trying to say is that even with a heavily overclocked setup consisting of the 8800GTS and your C2D e4300 you should be on the safe side. I don't know why people like Movieman think they need a stronger PS for their simple setups. Sure there are good and bad power supplies but a PC Power & Cooling is very decent and capable. But I guess I am wasting my time here...

[tbone8ty]

@Bastieeeh

i have a regular mulitmeter, can i use this to measure?

[KingThot]

I don't smoke at all... And I was just saying before he's wasting any money on a more powerful powersupply he should try his current one. It's very unlikely that he will break anything with it...

IMO this is an incredibly dangerous attitude toward system building. Just because the PSU isn't a sexy peice of hardware doesn't mean you should skimp on it and it IS possible he will break something with it. Using an overrated (wattage wise) and unstable power supply can cause major damage/death to your components. Personally I'd feel pretty stupid plunking down $300+ on a video card and then ruining it because I refused to upgrade from some POS 450W PSU.

Check this list for decent PSUs:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1045259

[NGPlease]

The thermaltake power supply you are using is no good. Get an OCZ GamexStream 600 or 700 watt power supply. These are good power supplies (rebadged Fortron) and they are very well priced.

As for Bastieeh...he is not wrong. Alot of people nowadays have programmed their minds into thinking that they NEED a 500w or a 600w powersupply for something like that. No you don't. Not at all. Coincedently I've done some testing... an X1900 in a socket 939 system would only take around 200-300 at load (this is from the socket).

IMO this is an incredibly dangerous attitude toward system building. Just because the PSU isn't a sexy peice of hardware doesn't mean you should skimp on it and it IS possible he will break something with it. Using an overrated (wattage wise) and unstable power supply can cause major damage/death to your components. Personally I'd feel pretty stupid plunking down $300+ on a video card and then ruining it because I refused to upgrade from some POS 450W PSU.
I don't think he's saying you should skimp on the psu. Obviously this guy knows something about powersupplies if he can advise something like that.

[Bastieeeh]

Don't use your regular Multimeter! It can not calculate the wattages and furthermore will be destroyed very likely if you connect it to your power outlet.
Try to get your hands on something like this:

http://www.eurotronik.de/images/P_9024.jpg

As I said, here in Germany one can borrow such things from the local power suppliers headquarter. Maybe that's not the case where you come from, but these devices are not that expensive (around 20 Euros) and are very handy for all the different devices you got at home.

To sum things up: I do not recommend anyone to skimp on the PSU! The Thermaltake one is rated at 430W. Even under the worst circumstances his system will draw less power than let's say 300W (measured at the power outlet). Even with the bad reputation from you guys in mind Thermaltake can't have done such a bad job that it could not stand it. And the review at X-Bit labs sort of proves my point. The tested units over there couldn't withstand the ripple load at over 380W but you won't come close to that figure anyway.

But as I mentioned earlier I guess I am just wrong here. The problem is that the Thermaltake is not THAT 'XTREME' as the OCZ or PCP&C units might be.

Note to myself: Especially when you are posting at the 'Xtreme mods' category try not shed too good light on the mediocre brands! ;)


Have a nice day all!

[Duh]

well, actually putting more thought into it, the mobo im getting is an SLI and my psu only has 1 pcie connector, so i really should look at a new one in case i wanna do SLI in the future.

unless i should look a non sli mobo like the GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 or the ASUS P5B-E, then i should be fine and save the money.

i guess the key to this question is..... what is the best mobo I should get for the 8800 gts(640mb) and the c2d e4300, then from there choose an appropriate psu.

but i digress:

what do u think of this PSU?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817128001


Antec has been said to start building not as good psu´s as they used to.

[theelectic]

I actually ran an 8800GTS for months in a Dell with a 350W PSU. With a Prescott P4, four sticks of DDR2, PhysX card, XFi, two HDs, two burners, etc. it never drew more than 360W from the wall under load (Prime95 and looped 3DMark06), and that's including the roughly 20W from my LCD and 10W from my UPS.

However that particular PSU was severely UNDERrated, 28A max total on the dual 12V rail (18A each) so I was not worried in the least. A PSU with only 18A on the 12V rail I'd be concerned about running all the time.

[Movieman]

Some people seem to have lost contact to the reality nowadays. Just grab a simple metering device (you can probably borrow one at your local energy supplier ) and measure the connected wattage directly at the power outlet. You will be surprised what the display will read...

My own machine consists of two Xeons each running at 3.15GHz and consuming around 110W under heavy load. together with my old X800XT, 10 harddisks (2 of them are WD Raptors spinning at 10k RPM), 3 waterpumps (one of them is a Laing) and some more power consuming cards and stuff like that my machine consumes around 380W at most. The 450W Tagan is doing a great job and it will even do just like that when I replace the old gfx-card with a new X1950XT AGP card sometime in the near future.

What I am trying to say is that even with a heavily overclocked setup consisting of the 8800GTS and your C2D e4300 you should be on the safe side. I don't know why people like Movieman think they need a stronger PS for their simple setups. Sure there are good and bad power supplies but a PC Power & Cooling is very decent and capable. But I guess I am wasting my time here...
8 cores at 3200+mhz,1-92mm Zalman on the ram,4-92mm sunons,2-80mm vantec tornadoes,1-120x38 sunon,1-80gig IDE drive,plain jane ATI X550 vid and a dvdrw..
$3000.00 in cpu's, $450.00 in motherboard,$650.00 in ram..
Yes my friend, your basic everyday "simple setup"..:rolleyes:

Do you remember how many guys last year lost boards,vid,etc when they tried to go SLI on 510w PSU's that were supposedly "SLI Certified"?
I do. That's why I told this guy what I truly feel, go to a 700w GOOD PSU.
I learned many years ago to overbuild a system and then you don't have problems. Yes, it costs more up front but the extra you spend is well worth the peace of mind and the longevity you get from that build.

[gr8golf]

Antec has been said to start building not as good psu´s as they used to.

The NeoHE being recommended here is built by Seasonic and is an excellent PSU for the money. Look around for specials on it - I've bought a few from Frys.com and CompUSA that were around $70 at the time. If you are going to spend in that $100 to $120 range you should look for the PSU in my signature. The Corsair HX620 can be found for around $120 and will be a great investment for the future.

[Bastieeeh]

@tbone8ty: If you plan to get another GTS in the future then it would indeed be a safer way to buy a better PSU. But 750W is way more than you will need...

@Movieman: Don't you realize that tbone8ty's setup is quite different from your's? If you would spend money on the 750W PSU it would be quite reasonable. But even considered your 5350's running at 3GHz together with the GTS the 610 PCP&C would be okay. Let's say the CPUs will need 200W each, the GTS and the rest of your system would have another 200W. Sure that would be with borderline values but the PCP&C are well known for their reliability, aren't they...

[Movieman]

@tbone8ty: If you plan to get another GTS in the future then it would indeed be a safer way to buy a better PSU. But 750W is way more than you will need...

@Movieman: Don't you realize that tbone8ty's setup is quite different from your's? If you would spend money on the 750W PSU it would be quite reasonable. But even considered your 5350's running at 3GHz together with the GTS the 610 PCP&C would be okay. Let's say the CPUs will need 200W each, the GTS and the rest of your system would have another 200W. Sure that would be with borderline values but the PCP&C are well known for their reliability, aren't they...
2 points: I replied to you when you mentioned "simple setup" as I disagreed with your appraisal of my system. Not a lot of drives but the cpu draw from the 2-5350's more than make up for many drives..
We're talking close to 150w per cpu on this system at this speed.
We're I to build this again, I'd go up to the 750 or bigger myself.
Mine is a dedicated cruncher so there won't be other drives,etc added and the 610 is adequate but just barely.
Now as to the guy who opened this thread, I still feel that what he has is inadequate for his usage and even more so when over time he adds to that system.
If he buys a 700+ now, then no matter(within reason) what he adds he will be covered. My logic is better to spend $150+ now and not have to buy one twice.

[Messiah]

??? what have you been smoking? :p: That Psu of his is overrated. there is no way it can support a 8800.. you would rather risk killing everything than buying a good psu? :rolleyes:

My 8800GTX works on 30€ LC Power 480W(tested at my friend).

[Kasparz]

My 8800GTX works on 30€ LC Power 480W(tested at my friend).
You are xtreme! Running 500$ videocard on 50$ PSU is just ridiculous. I had many dead PC's with OEM crap PSU's for repair and guess what? Yes, PSU blown up, and fried all system.

[adamsleath]

i think if you only have a single 12v rail with 18A it wont be enough...some 400/420ishwatt psus have high amp rails....but it seems yours does not...i would get a new psu and look into what 12v rails and how many amps they are rated for b4 you buy.
i'd say there are also some pretty crappy 700w supplies around...not all psus with a given xxx watt rating are equal as far as amp ratings are concerned.

my psu has 2 x 12v rails; some have 5x;

the old ocz powerstream 420watt has a single 12v rail rated at 30amps. - which wood probably be enuf for what i have now...

anyways; i believe you wont have the amps...just google the vid card you have with amps required or something like that...i was worried about the same thing when i first looked into these 8800 monsters....

i have 38Amps combined...which may just be enuf to power 8800gtS sli...but no way would i try 8800 GtX sli with my current supply :)

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/670345.html - suggests 28A from 12v rail/s for c2d and 8800gts with sundry hdds/components - ive seen that 28A rating on an nvidia webpage somewhere - i think it was "slizone" website (which also has listings of recommended psu's for nvidia gcards and sli setups)
there is also a psu calculator website around where you can put in all the components you have and it calculates the psu you need....but it doesnt take amps into consideration.

check out slizone and find their list of psu's...or just get the biggest mofo you can afford:rofl:
http://www.slizone.com/object/slizone_build_psu.html#certified_powersupplies

id be going for a high amp quality brand 800/850w if it was me; then you set for sli if you wanted later.

and at the very LEAST a quality 700w high amp beastie if you are contemplating sli or future gcards or upgrades that may be even more power hungry...

Seasonic m12-700 [700w]
Silverstone Zeus [750w] - slizone recommended MINIMUM for 8800gtX sli
ocz gamextreme [700w]

[Sam666]

2 more cents:
yesterday I received a 8800GTS that I won in a contest.
The dual clover here has a 610W PCP+C PSU and the 8800 card isn't in it because I beleive a bigger PSU is needed.
I'll say this again nicely, spend the money on a top PSU capable of delivering over 700 watts and a single rail design.
PCP+C 750 is a good one and will handle SLIThat's over the top, my Enermax Liberty 500W would handle a 4400 oced and a 8800gts easy.

You are xtreme! Running 500$ videocard on 50$ PSU is just ridiculous. I had many dead PC's with OEM crap PSU's for repair and guess what? Yes, PSU blown up, and fried all system.
Second that.

[denmason]

Do yourself a favour..... http://www.pcpower.com/products/viewproduct.php?show=S75Q
One 12v rail @ 60 amps. Here's another pretty good article about PSU's: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/other/display/atx-psu5.html
Sounds like multi rails are hype.

[adamsleath]

yeah ive heard 1 big rail is betta; y is that? mmm read your link; now im looking for a big single rail psu :lol:
the main thing is that you have plenty of amps and dont just look at watts- by which i meant get a psu with good amps...his existing psu doesnt have enuf amps.

[dinos22]

there is a good reason why Movieman is recommending a better PSU here. PSU is one of the most important parts in a PC and people are still getting YamCha PSUs and showing off how it "works" but what about when it blows up and takes a few components with it.................imagine how sad that situation would be if you couldn't RMA all those expensive components because you were a tightass and didn't get a half decent PSU at least................for the OPs system a decent 550W/600W PSU will do just fine and they are not expensive........why play with fire i don't get it

[adamsleath]

he could get a 420w psu if it had good amps; why dont you just get a 1000w psu and blow even more money.

550/600 wont be enuf for sli....but if you are only going for a single 8800gts you wont even need 500w...you need a psu with 30 or more amps on the 12v rail for single gts

get the most powerful one you can afford.

[CandymanCan]

I have no complaints about my Antec Tripower 650w. PC has been running smooth no problems since i built it 2 months ago

[adamsleath]

how much power will the next gen nvidia g cards need ffs?? :lol: :confused: dagnabbit