Is my 500 watt power supply enough?

R

Runner7775

Geek
Im thinking about buying another xfx 8600 gt card to add to my current one for sli(theyre so cheap i couldnt pass it up). The main thing i was wondering about is whether or not my antec 500 watt power supply would be able to handle the extra stress. my intuition says that because the 8600gt draws power exclusively from the pci express slot that it will be fine but im still quite wary. My current system components are:
Core 2 duo e6850
xfx 8600 gt
evga 680i sli mb
200 gb hard drive
dvd drive

thanks for any help
 
If you don't have at least 30A on the +12V rail (or via the combined +12V), I'd look for a new unit to be on the safe side. It will probably work, but it looks to be right at that edge where it wouldn't hurt.
 
I don't really think you would need another PSU the 500watt is just the rated wattage you need to find out what the peak wattage is if it's high then don't bother getting a new PSU. check with your manufacturer or on the PSU should say peak wattage or output something like that.
 
I have 2 8600GTs, and to be honest the difference between one and two cards is next to nothing. Crysis won't run on any higher settings (it's on Medium at the moment). On my 500W PSU it runs fine, and on the side of the PSU it says +12v - 14A and +12v2 - 15A. I guess this means there are 29A and it runs fine.
 
actually i just got the other 8600 gt in the mail and am beginning to think that maybe the power supply may not be suited for the two cards. This is the link:
Antec.com - Basiq
From what i can gleam from it it should handle it, but if it cant i have a higher end NeoPower 500W i can use when i get it back from warranty repair. Im pretty knowledgable about most of the other computer parts but power supplies i dont know quite as much. Will this be good enough for the two cards?
 
well i took the risk and installed the card. I got about a 2x boost in fps but i got graphical anomalies in both Stalker:Shadow of Chernobyl and Team Fortress 2 So i disabled sli and removed the card. My system also seemed to slow down and games loaded slower. I was afraid that some parts would not get enough power and i had heard about hard drive corruption because of this. That is the main reason why i removed the extra card. My questions are :
1. This was just my computer not getting enough stable power right?
2. Can you damage parts by not having enough power to the system?
3. These graphical anomalies wouldnt be caused by a motherboard problem?
 
and one more question:
would the graphical anomalies be caused by a driver issue instead of a problem with my computer?
 
If there's not enough power available then bad mojo happens. Slowdowns, crashing, yes those can be a result of insufficient power. It doesn't hurt to have new drivers, but they won't mean jack if your system is being stifled by the lack of enough power. Damage may not necessarily happen, but your system will not act right without solid power.

Graphic anomalies can be produced by an issue with the video card itself or an issue with a driver. However, driver issues may only crop up in certain games, whereas a video card issue will be a universal problem.

Of course, since you started having issues after installing the second card, the natural deduction would point to the system simply not having enough power on hand for that second card.

As far as power supplies go, those Basiq units seem to be junk, much like the SmartPower series. An EarthWatts is pretty good, however.

A Corsair VX450 or HX520 would be a good option, or any current 500-600 OCZ unit.
 
Over the last couple of weeks I have been messing with drivers and talking to xfx about my problem of graphical glitches using SLI on my motherboard. The one funny thing is that if I take the SLI bridge off I get lowered performance but no issues with graphical performance (SLI on without the bridge). The XFX rep and I finally decided after testing the cards both out that it was most likely a motherboard problem so I have a replacement in the mail. Anyway I was listening to a maximumpc podcast and i heard them mention about 680i boards having problems when all 4 rams slots were occupied which my board does (4x1gb). Sometimes this board wont give enough voltage to the ram. I was wondering if that could be the problem. What do you guys think? Im going to try it out and see what happens anyway. And now I dont recommend any evga 680i board because of reports of the board killing ram (i also experienced this earlier this year),and because of my current problems.
 
fixed!!! Nvidia sees it as a driver issue and i rolled the drivers back to the 158.27 drivers and the games are all really smooth. (Except for Half life 2 episode 1 Which has a crashing problem under sli during the opening sequences)
 
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