Graphics Card Upgrade, will Corsair TX650W take the load?

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spencerlievens

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2011
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Here is my system build so far:

HAF 912+ Midi Tower Case (High Air Flow)
2 x 200mm Coolermaster Megaflow Fans (Front & Top)
1 x 120mm Case Fan (Rear)
1 x 140mm Case Fan (Side)
Intel iSeries i7 930 Processor (Plan to OC to 4.2GHz)
Coolermaster V6GT CPU Cooler
Gigabyte GA-X58-UD3R Motherboard
Corsair TX650W PSU

So my plan at the end of the month is to get 2 x Western Digital 'Caviar Black' 1TB hard drives and put them in RAID 0. I am also looking at getting either the Dominator GT 2000MHz Ram or some ram of equal speed and quality and either a LG DVD/RW or Sony DVD/RW. Now my problem lies in what graphics card to get, I've had a look at a lot of benchmarks, videos and forums and from what I can gather the best bang for buck is the GTX 460 768MB version in SLi, BUT, I am worried that my PSU may not be able to handle the SLi, SO, I have also been looking at the Sapphire AMD ATi Radeon HD5870 'Vapor-X' Card. I am fully open to suggestions and my budget for the graphics card(s) is between £250 and £350 any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
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spencerlievens

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2011
12
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0
The thing is I enter it on the PSU calc online and it comes out with a recommended psu min of 627W and thats with crossfired 5870's, surely the nvidias draw more power which will tip it over the 650w threshold
 
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TemjinGold

Diamond Member
Dec 16, 2006
3,050
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spencerlievens said:
The thing is I enter it on the PSU calc online and it comes out with a recommended psu min of 627W and thats with crossfired 5870's, surely the nvidias draw more power which will tip it over the 650w threshold
Click to expand...

The thing is those online calcs horribly overestimate.
 
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spencerlievens

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2011
12
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Maybe my best bet is to add all the wattage of all the devices myself and then see what it works out to. Just out of interest what setup would you go for if you had a budget between £250 and £350?
 
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spencerlievens

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2011
12
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2 x Western Digital 'Caviar Blacks' = 16.8W
Sony DVD/RW= 30W (Bit confused how that is so high compared to Hard Drive)
Gigabyte GA-X58-UD3R = 15W
2 x 200mm Case Fan = 7W
2 x 140mm Case Fan = 4W
V6GT CPU Cooler= 8.5W
i7 930 Processor = 130W

Total of 211.3 Watts

This leaves 438.7 Watts to play with for the Memory and the Graphics Cards.

So with this info what do you guys reckon by best bet is for £350 or $560 if your american :)
 
toyota

toyota

Lifer
Apr 15, 2001
12,957
1
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your system with a 930 at 4.2 and gtx460 sli could easily pull 500 watts. if you were to get crazy with overclcoking the 460 cards you could easily pull over 600 watts which would put your psu at the limit.

what res are you playing at? 460 768mb is not really a great setup because most games that could use that much gpu power would also need more than 768mb. in other words you will not be able to increase the settings which defeats one of the reasons for adding more gpu power.
 
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LiuKangBakinPie

LiuKangBakinPie

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
3,903
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Um WD disks aint good performers in Raid unless its their RE versions

And to try and work out the wattage is pointless. Thats why we use the current the A on the 12v. the wattage on the box is just theoritical number. you take what you get on the 12 total for the Corsair psu its 624W/12=52A

Now we look at what 2x460 muches roughly in a power hungry system that will be 42A ^the 10 A plus the rest is headroom so we come to the conclusion that PSU will do it with ease simple
 
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LiuKangBakinPie

LiuKangBakinPie

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
3,903
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The raptors are spunky but if you really want tee them shine PCI-E raid add in controller. Onboard ones aint the best
 
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spencerlievens

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2011
12
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Okay because there are 2 in town for £80 each and they have sufficient life and warranty so im not worried about buying them second hand :)
 
LiuKangBakinPie

LiuKangBakinPie

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
3,903
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Youve got x58 chipset with amples of bandwith use it too its potential. you can stuck 2gpus in there plus a pci-e raid controller. you get huge gains with them
 
LiuKangBakinPie

LiuKangBakinPie

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2011
3,903
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just to show you how good the x58 chipset is look at these
http://ppbm5.com/Benchmark5.html

That is peoples PCs that they run 24 hrs and that benchmark really show you what makes a fast setup. Now most of them use pci-e raid controllers. Check wheres the 920 OC to 3.7.
 
Eddie313

Eddie313

Senior member
Oct 15, 2006
634
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I'm running GTX 460 In sli and have no problem with my power supply I have a corsair 650w hx.
 
wuliheron

wuliheron

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2011
3,536
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toyota said:
your system with a 930 at 4.2 and gtx460 sli could easily pull 500 watts. if you were to get crazy with overclcoking the 460 cards you could easily pull over 600 watts which would put your psu at the limit.

what res are you playing at? 460 768mb is not really a great setup because most games that could use that much gpu power would also need more than 768mb. in other words you will not be able to increase the settings which defeats one of the reasons for adding more gpu power.
Click to expand...


I agree. It's also unbalanced to run cheap video cards with a seriously overclocked and expensive cpu. The general rule of thumb is to buy the single best video card you can afford now, and add another one later when the prices drop. Considering how fast the prices drop its not like it will be a long wait either.
 
MrK6

MrK6

Diamond Member
Aug 9, 2004
4,458
4
81
I wouldn't recommend getting the 1TB Blacks. I had two, and while they're fast, they aren't nearly as fast as an SSD (even in RAID) and they are VERY loud. I would grab a decent SSD and a large storage drive, I think it's a better mix of capacity and performance. Also, I agree with grabbing the best single GPU you can buy.
 
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spencerlievens

Junior Member
Feb 7, 2011
12
0
0
Basically this machine is for primarily for Music Production using Ableton 8 and I do enjoy my games especially first person shooters and driving games. The reason I would like the GTX460 768MB version is because I have a Samsung T220 SyncMaster which is only capable of 1600x1050 which is still a very nice resolution to play at and also the reason I don't need 1GB versions of the card.
In concerns to the Hard Drives yes they're not that quick but I am on a limited budget and so far I have spent £580 on the case, processor, cooler, motherboard and psu. So with the GTX's, Hard Drives, Memory and DVDRW I am pushing another £500 when originally I budgeted for £800 and this is now costing more like £1100. I do want to RAID the 'Caviar Blacks' but in the long-run I will purchase either a Corsair or Kingston SSD but I have got a girlfriend and she won't like me spending £1400-1500 in two months on a computer, £1100 is bad enough :) Basically I've had people who have the Corsair TX650 and SLi'd GTX460's and have it working fine, so I guess it's really down to the other hardware running within the system and not overclocking the graphics cards. Maybe 'Caviar Green' drives could be a good option? Or would you recommend 2 x 'Other Card with Good Power Consumption and Performance'. All your help is much appreciated.
 
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