TR Forums

If it's relatively recent and of a name brand, then you'll get stable 400W. If it's a whitebox, then when you load it up above 50% (ballpark), it's going do either or both of:

- Not give you 400W and crash and burn.
- Not give you a stable 12V and you'll get lots of system instabilities.

Nevertheless, if it's working, it's working.

I wanted to post a more recent psu calc link....one that has at least most of the pc parts that you buy today. (June, 2008)

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psuc ... orlite.jsp

Another one, is quite stringent on their requirements. It's from the Asus Site:

http://support.asus.com.tw/PowerSupplyC ... uage=en-us

Gary

I'm just a newbie and tends to focus more on the +12V rail(s) where I understand somewhat that most of the power draw is on +12V. I believe it is +12V1 for graphics card, fans and motor drives and +12V2 for processor VRM. I also think the power draw of the rest of the circuits/devices on the lower voltage rails of most typical set ups would never add up to 100 watts (unlike in the olden days where they were more stressed). I also like referring to TR's power consumption test figures because they are obtained on the wall socket w/ hi-tech professional equipment.

Am I doing things right or I would be better off relying on PSU calculators?

This is the psu calculator that I use.
I'm only using 334 watts (though I have a coolmax CUG-950).

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

spiritwalker2222 wrote:

Check out this calculator too, you can include your OC info.

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I try the link above you posted, but is it correct to say that the result is right to say the lease?

I'll have to give this a look... Bare in mind that if these scores are accurate and you score say... 410, you wouldn't' want to use a 420W PSU. The closer and closer you get a system to its PSU's max load the better chance you have of frying something. Also when ran that close to its maximum its going to put off a lot of heat raising your systems temperature. I always shoot for at least 20% headroom, and if you plan to expand the system (More hdds or maybe even a new video card 30-40%!! , I also shoot for supplies that have 80%+ efficiency, cool little guesstimating site though

karz - I would rely on the TR stuff first off, they provide real-world testing on devices in person. The draw from the wall is not what your system is actually using either, this depends on the efficiency of the PSU your using, im sure TR includes this in their reviews and guides when talking about PS units.. they are quite thorough. As for the 12v Rails....... On many top end modular supplies they will have each plug port listed for which 12v rail it runs off of. In addition a few of them will be listed as having 3 or 4 12v rails and 1 of them will be reserved for the CPU plugs, and the others for whatever you plug it into. Hope this helps!

Here's another one:

http://apc.canardpc.com/index.php

I'm at 557w with a 650 Antec Triopower unit.
Should I start worrying?
I mean, the cooler of the powersupply does kick in rather loud when I play something like Crysis.
(Apart from the 480GTX, but that fan whines at a higher pitch...)

You know what, I replaced that PSU with a Corsair HX-850 and the noise in considerably lower. Should have done this months ago.

Finally somewhat believable calculator. I knew that 350Wish is more than most people need, and those 600W recommendations were insane.

I calculated mine as roughly 430watt under full load. Core i5 2500K + Radeon HD 6950, P67 mobo, 1TB HD, 2*RAM and optical drive.

150watt for d CPU
225watt for d GPU
15watt for d mobo
plus 30watt for some other small things

but yeah, I was just estimating for OC sake.

My PSU is a Xigmatek NRP-PC502 500watt 85% efficiency under 94% load.

Wow, I'm glad I saw this. I'm putting together a shopping list for my first computer and wasn't sure how to work out if the power supply I have is big enough; I got a free GS600 from the TR North meetup (Go to TR meetups; they rock and you meet really cool people). Anyway, so I wanted to make sure everything fit in the 600W power budget, and according to this, even with some guesses as to parts it looks like I'm under 465W, which a 600W power supply should be able to handle without trouble. I was a bit worried since I saw a lot of R9 280X cards listing minimum 750W or higher power supplies as needed. I guess the stock ones draw a lot less power?

OK...not following you
GS600 is nothing like a AMD 280X...
So, yes different cards have different power requirements.

PSU calculators are horribly inaccurate.

You can do much better yourself by simply looking at reviews for your key components.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/ ... ng/22.html

The 280x is a 250 watt max card.
You can easily run two with a 750 watt!!

The listings from the card people are insanely high ...CYA...for people who have complete and utter crap units...who then might complain.

mdk77777 wrote:

OK...not following you
GS600 is nothing like a AMD 280X...
So, yes different cards have different power requirements.

PSU calculators are horribly inaccurate.

You can do much better yourself by simply looking at reviews for your key components.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/ ... ng/22.html

The 280x is a 250 watt max card.
You can easily run two with a 750 watt!!

The listings from the card people are insanely high ...CYA...for people who have complete and utter crap units...who then might complain.

The GS600 is a 600W power supply that I got for free, not a graphics card, and yes, that was one approach I was looking at, but I was worried that if I got one that was clocked higher then base (ie most of them) then it would use a lot more power, as I wasn't sure how power and clockspeed scale.