Should I upgrade my PSU??
 

I currently have the Antec truepower 650W. However, I'm a bit worried that my power usage might be pushing it. My i5 2500k has been OCed to 4.8ghz, two slightly OCed 460GTX SLI, CPU only watercooling loop, and 6 120mm fans. With the PSU calculator it comes out to about 645W. Just wanted to know if I should be running the rig some headroom or if it was ok to run it at the maximum PSU capability.

List a full Speck out

But you should be fine with what you have but uf you want to SLI or Crosfire in the futer then look to upgrade.

zzlee, he has SLI'd GTX460s already.

I would say to upgrade just for the sake of getting more hardware regardless if you do or do not need to currently. :P

Here is my full spec:


CPU
i5 2500k

Motherboard
ASUS P8P67 PRO

Memory
G.Skill Ripjaws X 1600MHZ 2X2GB

Graphics Card
MSI GeForce GTX 460 Fermi Hawk OC 1GB SLI

Hard Drive
OCZ Vertex 2 50GB (OS), WD Caviar Black 500GB, WD Caviar Green 2TB

Antec Truepower 650W modular

Case
Corsair 650D

CPU cooling
XSPC RX240 kit

which truepower is that?

look on the side. it also lists how much it can give on the 12v rail(s) which is of importance when doing
the calculations.

AMD Radeon HD 6790 1 GB Review - Page 20/26 | techPowerUp

both videocards will eat around 250 watts at stock, in regular gaming sessions.they can go up to
300 or a bit more on some stress apps,if overclocked etc.

dont think youre pulling more than 200 watts even with the overclock with the rest of the system, so
450 watts on the 12v rail tops,in normal gaming sessions,once again....:)

Not sure what you mean by which truepower it is but it says switching power supply. As for rails, I looked at the side and it says the max output is 54A for the 12V rails, and for 3.3V or 5V rails the max output is 170W.

So you are saying 300W at most for the SLI GTX460s even if it is slightly OCed? On the PSU calculator site it told me 160W for my overclocked 2500k so including the fans, hard drives, and watercooling pump, I'm also guessing it should be around 200-250 watts. So roughly, it should be around 550-600 watts.

Now I read somewhere else that it is not good to have the PSU running close to maximum capacity and always better to leave some headroom. Is this the case?

then, this is for you...get a kill a watt or a blue planet energy meter

plug just the pc.....boot to winders. look at the wattage.

load prime95,look again. shut down prime, load up 3dmark.,check the numbers...

then try furmark(multigpu mode),look again.


if the multigpu mode numbers arent obscene, then you can try both prime95+ furmark

and that will be like an uber max number that you will probably never pull when playing a game.

Power Supplies
 

If your system is running under load for long periods of time then I would suggest bumping your psu to at least 750, though I would likely install a Corsair AX850, just to allow the leeway as well as room for upgrades.

If it runs quietly and cool, perhaps you don't need to upgrade. Think about what the most important components in your PC are. I would think the psu is near the top of the list for a good stable steady system which in your case looks like a gamer's setup.

I'm interested to hear what the real experts say about this!
:biggrin::whistle:

I had a TP III 650W, it crapped out at only 524W from the wall.

You're definitely riding a fine line, and running a PSU at max isn't a very good idea, usually.

But I don't think there's any immediate danger. upgrade when you have a few spare bucks.