BFG ES-800 VS Corsair TX850 VS Corsair TX750

[zip1385]

I am having a really hard time deciding on a new power supply since my old OCZ gave out. Based on my needs and price I have narrowed it down to 3.

BFG ES-800 = $109.99 after $30 rebate - lifetime warranty
Corsair TX850 = $119.99 after $20 rebate - 5 year warranty 2nd Review Here
Corsair TX750 = $109.99 after $20 rebate - 5 year warranty 2nd Review Here

For each power supply I listed the price on NewEgg along with warranty info and a link to where the power supply was actually tested. Each has its ups and downs, but the hard part is what to choose?

Any and all suggestions are welcome as to which to choose. Just make sure to include why you chose the one you did.

Also, if you can find a lower price on any one of those please post a link! 🙂

I will be ordering on Monday so I need to make up my mind.

Thanks,
Alex

 

[theAnimal]

PC Power & Cooling 750 for $80AR.

 

[OCNewbie]

Yeah, the PCP&C 750w is the best bang/buck as of today. Unfortunately the BFG ES-800 was $70 shipped after rebate recently at Newegg and like $81 at buy.com, but the rebates have ended.

ZipZoomFly has the PCP&C 750w for $68.99 currently I believe. Excellent as far as a PSU is concerned though supposedly can get a tad loud only at the highest loads and the cables are supposedly not super long.

Edit: For the record I have the BFG ES-800 and am very satisfied with it. Extremely quiet and well put together. I know I'm not stressing it with my setup so can't really comment on it's ability to power a ridiculously powerful system.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
Edit: For the record I have the BFG ES-800 and am very satisfied with it. Extremely quiet and well put together. I know I'm not stressing it with my setup so can't really comment on it's ability to power a ridiculously powerful system.

I've stressed it with three GTX 280 cards in Tri-SLI... and get occasional shutdowns. 😱 Also had to use a bunch of adaptors so it was a huge cabling mess, but still it was semi-successful in running three of those beasts.

Running two GTX 280 in SLI or two GTX 295 in Quad-SLI is not a problem.

 

[zip1385]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
Edit: For the record I have the BFG ES-800 and am very satisfied with it. Extremely quiet and well put together. I know I'm not stressing it with my setup so can't really comment on it's ability to power a ridiculously powerful system.

I've stressed it with three GTX 280 cards in Tri-SLI... and get occasional shutdowns. 😱 Also had to use a bunch of adaptors so it was a huge cabling mess, but still it was semi-successful in running three of those beasts.

Running two GTX 280 in SLI or two GTX 295 in Quad-SLI is not a problem.

Are you sure the shutdowns are due to the power supply and not another part of your computer?

 

[NoShangriLa]

Originally posted by: Zap

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
Edit: For the record I have the BFG ES-800 and am very satisfied with it. Extremely quiet and well put together. I know I'm not stressing it with my setup so can't really comment on it's ability to power a ridiculously powerful system.

I've stressed it with three GTX 280 cards in Tri-SLI... and get occasional shutdowns. 😱 Also had to use a bunch of adaptors so it was a huge cabling mess, but still it was semi-successful in running three of those beasts.

Running two GTX 280 in SLI or two GTX 295 in Quad-SLI is not a problem.

Did you put a meter on it and calculate the total power consumption by your system?

GTX 280 card only power requirement is 30-190W.

According to the link below a GTX 280 system drawn 147-292.2W, two GTX 280 cards 190.1-508W.

190W-147W = 43W (43.3% more power than the 30W rated idle, or 13W more for the mobo per card)

508W-292W = 216W (13.7% more power, or 26W more for the mobo)

190W * 3 = 570W + (26W *3 extrapolate from the above) = 648W

The above suggests that 3-SLI will require 648W + mobo +. other peripherals.

Most mobo power requirement is somewhere between 140-200W therefore it is safe to say that you will need lat least 848W + >50W (for memory sticks, sound card, network card, HDDs, CD/DVD drive, fans, bling bling lights).

IMHO, in order to run 3 cards you will required to have at the very least 950W PSU.

GeForce GTX 280 power consumption tested

 

[OCNewbie]

This chart says 3x GTX 280 SLI's use 520w (just the vid cards, not the system).

 

[NoShangriLa]

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
This chart says 3x GTX 280 SLI's use 520w (just the vid cards, not the system).

According to Nvidia, GTX 280 need 236W. It is higher than the ratings that I have seen from third parties.

236W * 3 = 708W ++ the rest of the peripherals would bring the system up to at the very least somewhere around 1036W, but to be on the safe side you need 1100W or more PSU.

If the 520W is correct, then:

As indicated by your post 598W + mobo and peripherals would bring the requirement to somewhere around 848W but to be on the safe side you might want to look at 900W or more.

 

[OCNewbie]

I've read that the 2nd card in an SLI setup never or rarely uses the same amount of power as the first, and the 3rd in a tri-sli setup uses even less. So it's not as simple as finding out what the power needs of a single card at full load is and multiplying it times 3, as tri-sli setups don't take full advantage of all 3 cards. All 3 cards aren't at 100% load anyway. This is why you see less total wattage needs, or part of the reason.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: zip1385

Originally posted by: Zap
I've stressed it with three GTX 280 cards in Tri-SLI... and get occasional shutdowns. 😱 Also had to use a bunch of adaptors so it was a huge cabling mess, but still it was semi-successful in running three of those beasts.

Running two GTX 280 in SLI or two GTX 295 in Quad-SLI is not a problem.

Are you sure the shutdowns are due to the power supply and not another part of your computer?

Yup, pretty sure. I've discussed it with my co-worker, who is jonnyGURU.

 

[NoShangriLa]

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
I've read that the 2nd card in an SLI setup never or rarely uses the same amount of power as the first, and the 3rd in a tri-sli setup uses even less. So it's not as simple as finding out what the power needs of a single card at full load is and multiplying it times 3, as tri-sli setups don't take full advantage of all 3 cards. All 3 cards aren't at 100% load anyway. This is why you see less total wattage needs, or part of the reason.

It could be very well be that total consumption of 3 cards in a system is less than each individual card in each separate system.

However, manufactures have to follows electrical codes and/or the maker of the cards spec to build their system, that why the "manufactures power requirement" guideline can sometime grossly over power than the actual required power.

There is nothing wrong with having greater PSU than what your system need, but under power could lead to erratic operation & early hardware failure.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: NoShangriLa

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
This chart says 3x GTX 280 SLI's use 520w (just the vid cards, not the system).

According to Nvidia, GTX 280 need 236W. It is higher than the ratings that I have seen from third parties.

236W * 3 = 708W ++ the rest of the peripherals would bring the system up to at the very least somewhere around 1036W, but to be on the safe side you need 1100W or more PSU.

If the 520W is correct, then:

As indicated by your post 598W + mobo and peripherals would bring the requirement to somewhere around 848W but to be on the safe side you might want to look at 900W or more.

That is not how it works. The TDPs are not added together. The primary card has the most stress, the others do not reach near TDP.

Personally I find it disturbing how much people over-buy on PSUs. All it is doing is lining the pockets of the PSU companies.


I have 2 280s in SLI and cannot get my kill-a-watt to read over 518W. So if I have a 80%+ PSU, Im nowhere near 70% load.

 

[NoShangriLa]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

Originally posted by: NoShangriLa

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
This chart says 3x GTX 280 SLI's use 520w (just the vid cards, not the system).

According to Nvidia, GTX 280 need 236W. It is higher than the ratings that I have seen from third parties.

236W * 3 = 708W ++ the rest of the peripherals would bring the system up to at the very least somewhere around 1036W, but to be on the safe side you need 1100W or more PSU.

If the 520W is correct, then:

As indicated by your post 598W + mobo and peripherals would bring the requirement to somewhere around 848W but to be on the safe side you might want to look at 900W or more.

That is not how it works. The TDPs are not added together. The primary card has the most stress, the others do not reach near TDP.

Personally I find it disturbing how much people over-buy on PSUs. All it is doing is lining the pockets of the PSU companies.


I have 2 280s in SLI and cannot get my kill-a-watt to read over 518W. So if I have a 80%+ PSU, Im nowhere near 70% load.

I'm not familiar with Nvidia & mobo maker internal configurations, but as my post above indicated that they must comply to the electrical codes and/or manufacture spec to qualify as part/s manufactures.

It could be that the graphic cards never truly reach 100% usage as most electronic part seldom does, and as the usage go up...power requirement goes up exponentially, therefore your system never reach beyond 518W, which is smack in the middle of expectancy of power equipment requirement. Most electronic equipment that I have seen, max operation run around 30% @ +/-5% less than peak (start up load) manufactured specification power requirement.

If I remember correctly electrical codes specify that the power supply must be at or greater than the total sum of the power drawn upon it at peak.

There are several reasons for manufactures to have such high requirement, such as satisfy the MTFB requirement and electrical codes/manufactures spec, and to accommodates unforeseen attached hardware/upgrades.

If the built is a close box such as Mac/notebook/embeded device then the PSU specification is quite tight.

<-- worked in the past with embeded device and the PSU rarely are above 100W, I have seen many PSU @ 40~60W.

 

[dangman4ever]

Yup, pretty sure. I've discussed it with my co-worker, who is jonnyGURU.

pffffft, what does that guy know about power supplies?

:laugh:

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: NoShangriLa
There is nothing wrong with having greater PSU than what your system need, but under power could lead to erratic operation & early hardware failure.

Huh?

Actually, having a PSU that is grossly beyond needs will usually make the PSU last longer because it isn't stressed as much, and thus doesn't get as hot. The only thing bad is that in such a configuration you aren't hitting the sweet spot in efficiency, which in most PSUs is somewhere between 40-70% output.

 

[GLeeM]

Originally posted by: OCNewbie
I've read that the 2nd card in an SLI setup never or rarely uses the same amount of power as the first, and the 3rd in a tri-sli setup uses even less. So it's not as simple as finding out what the power needs of a single card at full load is and multiplying it times 3, as tri-sli setups don't take full advantage of all 3 cards. All 3 cards aren't at 100% load anyway. This is why you see less total wattage needs, or part of the reason.

I'm guessing this is for gaming.

Would the same be true if using two or three cards for running DC apps? Wouldn't they all draw max?

Would I need more than the TX750 for an i7 920 w/OC, 2x GTX280, 3 or 6 GB ram, 1x hdd, 1x dvd? DC would run 24/7 on GPU and CPU with the occasional break to game.