Earthwatt 650

[JeremiahFrog]

Looking at building a new system for mid-level gaming. The budget is tight but here is what I am looking at.

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Crucial 4GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)
Intel Core i5-750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor Model
NZXT M59 - 001BK Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
GIGABYTE GA-P55A-UD3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
2 SAMSUNG CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S223C
Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST31000528AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Question I have is, will the Earthwatt 650 support this setup, could I instead run a pair of 5770 in Crossfire? I already own the 650W PSU, figure it saves me a bit of money if I can reuse it.

XFX HD-585A-ZNDC Radeon HD 5850 (Cypress Pro) XXX Edition 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card

 

[CurseTheSky]

The Earthwatts 650 should be plenty for that setup. The only time you should be concerned is if you decide to crossfire a couple of more demanding cards, like 2x 5850s or 5870s. The 5770s should make it break a sweat.

 

[MagickMan]

Yes, it's fine.

 

[PM650]

Should have plenty to spare for 2x 5770 in that system. That EA650 can only provide 540W for the cpu+video cards (12V rails), so anything up to two 5850s is doable, although there's won't be a large margin for overclocking (stock 5850 = 150W max).

 

[WinGeek]

Yeah ANtec Trio 650 will be good.thought it is the minimum requirement of your system but hope it will work fine with that..

 

[NumericalMethods]

That board is not a good choice for crossfire. Despite being certified for Crossfire the second physical PCI Express X16 slot is only 4x electrical. You will experience very poor Crossfire scaling as a result. Gotta go to the UD4 for full 8x 8x Crossfire support I'm afriad.

Here is the spec from the Gigabyte website:

1. *1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16) (The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
2. *1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
3. 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
4. 3 x PCI slots

* When SATA3 / USB 3.0 (Marvell 9128 /NEC USB 3.0 Controllers) work at turbo mode, 1st PCIE x16 will work at x8 speed.

 

[JeremiahFrog]

Yeah I didn't really plan on using this board for Crossfire, I wasn't really looking at Crossfire as an option until I read the March Round-up on Tom's Hardware for video cards. I had already pretty much settled on running a single 5850. But the writeup indicates that for a similar cost you get better performance running CF 5770.

Until I found out if my PSU could even support doing that, I didn't see the point in researching boards further. The board I had selected was largely a compromise between what I wanted and what I could live with given my budget at the time.

I wanted to ask people's opinion on the CF5770 vs Single 5850 but since this was a PSU thread I thought I would hold off and toss that up in a different thread.

Thanks for the replies all.