Is an Antec 500Watt Earthwatts enough for 9800GTX?

[daveybrat]

Building a system for someone with an Antec Earthwatts 500Watt power supply, a Q6600 cpu, and an Nvidia 9800GTX video card. Is the Earthwatts sufficient?

thanx

 

[tallman45]

for sure

if you plan on adding 3 or more Hard drivers you may want additional headroom,

 

[taltamir]

bah, an average HDD takes 5watts, 10watts for a 10k RPM one.
Some take less that those figures. And they take about half from 3.3v and half from 5v.

HDD are the LAST thing you have to worry about when it comes to power consumption, it is practically irrelevant.

 

[daveybrat]

Thanx, i figured it was, just making sure. And there will only be 1 hard drive and 1 dvdrw.

 

[ther00kie16]

the 500w model will do just fine.
Here link is a test of an oc'ed e6600 and a 8800gtx on the 380w model and the 8800gtx pulls more power than a 9800gtx according to one of Anand's articles.

 

[natty1]

You could probably run two 9800GTX's in SLI on that PSU.

 

[Zap]

Welcome to the forums, natty1.

Originally posted by: natty1
You could probably run two 9800GTX's in SLI on that PSU. I find that people on enthusiast forums always tend to exaggerate power requirements for a system.

Heh, noticed you edited your post, but I already had the page loaded. Thought it odd that when quoting you the second sentence didn't come up.

You are right with that statement, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There's no black/white with how much power anyone needs. There are people who will tell you that you're crazy if you don't get at least a quality 800W power supply, and there are people who will tell you that you're crazy if you spend more than $30 on a power supply. The REAL answer is not so simple.

Can a system with a Q6600, one 9800GTX and one HDD run on 500W? Sure. However, the real question is "can this 500W power supply put out 500W today, 500W tomorrow and 500W next year under all possible computing conditions?" For some power supplies, the answer is yes. For some, it is no. For some, it is maybe.

daveybrat made a good choice in trying to find out if his particular selection is a yes, no or maybe. In his case the answer is "probably yes." Why I say "probably" is that the EarthWatts EA500 seems to be good for today and tomorrow, but some are concerned about the "next year" part. Antec has a history of making power supplies that are really good... for a while, and then after 1-2-3 or so years will fail. They no longer use those particular components that are known to have caused their previous failures, but we're still looking at their first generation without those components. We'll probably have a better answer in a couple years, but of course by then the PSU will no longer be sold. Actually, it is already being replaced by the EA500D model.

In any case, go ahead and use the EA500 for that build. IMO it'll be fine.

 

[natty1]

Originally posted by: Zap
Welcome to the forums, natty1.

Originally posted by: natty1
You could probably run two 9800GTX's in SLI on that PSU. I find that people on enthusiast forums always tend to exaggerate power requirements for a system.

Heh, noticed you edited your post, but I already had the page loaded. Thought it odd that when quoting you the second sentence didn't come up.

You are right with that statement, but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There's no black/white with how much power anyone needs. There are people who will tell you that you're crazy if you don't get at least a quality 800W power supply, and there are people who will tell you that you're crazy if you spend more than $30 on a power supply. The REAL answer is not so simple.

Can a system with a Q6600, one 9800GTX and one HDD run on 500W? Sure. However, the real question is "can this 500W power supply put out 500W today, 500W tomorrow and 500W next year under all possible computing conditions?" For some power supplies, the answer is yes. For some, it is no. For some, it is maybe.

daveybrat made a good choice in trying to find out if his particular selection is a yes, no or maybe. In his case the answer is "probably yes." Why I say "probably" is that the EarthWatts EA500 seems to be good for today and tomorrow, but some are concerned about the "next year" part. Antec has a history of making power supplies that are really good... for a while, and then after 1-2-3 or so years will fail. They no longer use those particular components that are known to have caused their previous failures, but we're still looking at their first generation without those components. We'll probably have a better answer in a couple years, but of course by then the PSU will no longer be sold. Actually, it is already being replaced by the EA500D model.

In any case, go ahead and use the EA500 for that build. IMO it'll be fine.

I edited it out so as not to start a huge war on PSU's. But I do think these forums tend to be more populated with the 'you are crazy if you don't get a quality 800W power supply' crowd. The graphics card reviews on Anandtech and other sites seem to suggest that an EA500 is capable of running 9800GTX's in SLI.