8800GTX and my 450w...

F

Farore

Geek Trainee
Hey everyone, this is my first post :D

I'm putting togeather a great new computer for myself for Christmas. This will include the new Nvidia 8800GTX. Nvidia recommends at least 450w PSU to run this card on a high end duel-core processor. My barebone came with an E6600 and a 450w power supply, so I was wondering if the 450w would make the cut even though it's the rock bottom recommendation?

~Thanks
 
If might do if you have a good quality unit, although I would still go for a good brand 500W just in case. Check the power supply sticky.
 
That's the minimum, and that assumes you have around 30A on the 12V, or via combined 12V rails. If you don't, then buy a new power supply. The 8800GTX requires a lot of juice to run, and that's why nVidia is stating the 450W minimum. However, wattage is a very poor indicator these days, as some companies are still attempting to pass off older ATX revisions as good enough.

The OCZ GameXtreme or FSP/Fortron Epsilon units come to mind as reasonably priced power supplies that would do the job for that kind of lifting. They run between $120-150 US, so they're not cheap, but if you're going after an 8800GTX, it's downright silly to skimp on the PSU.
 
actually - apparently the optimum (or was it minimum lol) PSU for the 8800 series is 600W... thats what i've heard and seen - especially seeing as tho my friend is gettin one he inquired about the PSU and was told he needed 600W min....
 
Most new rigs with high end 8800GTX's should really have 1000W high end power supplys from good companys such as PC P&C and seasonic, this confuses be because there not even going to get used to the full are they, unless, but then its obvious, you should get a 1000W cpu for future upgrades and the headroom, afterall i wouldent be wanting to be running a computer with a psu with hardly any headroom so am running at nearly its max.
 
Well, yeah, the optimum would be 600-700W, mostly because those units will have 30A on the 12V rail--and any good unit will exceed that by a good margin. There are very, very few 450W units that can put out 30A on the 12V or combined 12V. Remember it's not about wattage, since that can be rigged fairly easily.

If you're running SLI 8800's, then you better have a 1k PSU. But then again, if you can drop $1200 on a couple of video cards, then I'd hope you could drop $350-500 on a PSU to power them.
 
Yea i know its not all about wattage, i keep reminding myself that, and all this talk about 1kw psu's making it seems like forgetting about the main factors like the 12v rails.

But if i were upgrading, i think i would go with a 1KW psu because in the long run its gonna save you money when you upgrade again.
 
Willz said:
Yea i know its not all about wattage, i keep reminding myself that, and all this talk about 1kw psu's making it seems like forgetting about the main factors like the 12v rails.

But if i were upgrading, i think i would go with a 1KW psu because in the long run its gonna save you money when you upgrade again.
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yep, u might aswell get it now even though they will drop prices in the future it adds up. becoz for now u cud get a good £100 psu and then in 2 yrs time when u upgrade the 1kw psu might be £50 cheaper but ur speding £50 more on it coz u already bought a £100 psu.

in the future i doubt anything would really use more than 1kw (sli im talking about) becoz then future systems are proving to be more efficient. Example an athlon 3800+ am2 processor consumes 63watt whilst the old athlon xp took around 75watts.
 
Whilst some components like CPU's are becoming more efficient, it seems like GPU's power consumption could still keep going up, infact i seen somewere there were talks about one day GPU's could be having there own PSU's!.
 
Willz said:
Whilst some components like CPU's are becoming more efficient, it seems like GPU's power consumption could still keep going up, infact i seen somewere there were talks about one day GPU's could be having there own PSU's!.
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yeh i know gpu's power is getting more demanding but 1kw even with 8800sli is more than enough. 8800sli power comsumtion is around 464watts (hwupgrade). ur system will take approx. 200watt max. which is around 664 round up to 700watts.

the 8800gts and 7900gtx sli take 408watts each so i guess thats the same. i doubt there will be a massive jump in power consumption for nvidia with their dx10 GFX cards. probably a 100watt more than the 8800gtx max.
 
Still, i would get 1KW, there out there for a reason.
700W, so you get a 1KW PSU, you have 300w headroom which is quite a nice gap, will ensure the PSU lasts through upgrades too.

And as time goes by, other GPU's coming out, they will get even more power hungry, but i rekon they will be a point and the consumption may come down as they start to get even more efficiant.
 
Willz said:
Yea i know its not all about wattage, i keep reminding myself that, and all this talk about 1kw psu's making it seems like forgetting about the main factors like the 12v rails.

But if i were upgrading, i think i would go with a 1KW psu because in the long run its gonna save you money when you upgrade again.
Click to expand...

Save money? i think not... if anything you will lose money. 1000watts of power, all that electricity.... i have my pc on for about 8 hours a day perhaps more and when i got this 580watt psu my electricity bill went up a lot. Your going to lose a lot of money in the long term.
 
It won't use all that 1000W unless it's needed. If the system only needs 500W, it will only provide that much. It's capable of providing 1000W continuous (actually, I think it's 1.1kW), but it won't put the pedal to the metal if not needed. It's better to have the extra headroom and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Now, yes, if you were building a Celeron box for websurfing, a 1kW PSU would be silly. However, the peak draw of a 8800GTX is around 170-180W per card. A CPU may use between 65-100W, so if you have 8800GTX SLI on a high end system, you're looking at roughly 500W right there. That doesn't include fans, drives, additional cards, etc that may be in use. In other words at the very least, you're talking close to 600W. Also PSU's are not 100% efficient. Good ones are 80% efficient. Plug that number in and see why a 600W PSU is probably not going to fly. Also, companies like PC Power & Cooling are much more conservative with their ratings, while crappier units may not only be less efficient, but have a wattage rating at the maximum output of the PSU.
 
Journeyman said:
Save money? i think not... if anything you will lose money. 1000watts of power, all that electricity.... i have my pc on for about 8 hours a day perhaps more and when i got this 580watt psu my electricity bill went up a lot. Your going to lose a lot of money in the long term.
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BigB preety much said it about the PSU's :P

Anyway, if your Hiper Type-R is making your electric bill go up alot more, there must be something wrong with it as my electric bill hasent changed at all with it, the only time i noticed quite abit of increase is when i got my Z5500's and thrashed them.
 
Willz said:
BigB preety much said it about the PSU's :P

Anyway, if your Hiper Type-R is making your electric bill go up alot more, there must be something wrong with it as my electric bill hasent changed at all with it, the only time i noticed quite abit of increase is when i got my Z5500's and thrashed them.
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well you have to put it into perspective... what psu did you have before... i had one half the power of this.
 
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