q6600 O'C to 3.6 ghz power supply requirements, is 520watts enough?

[Capt Caveman]

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: Brunnis
my machine twiddles along at 237W currently, and for gaming around 400W

And, aigomorla, why don't you take it down a notch? It's like you're constantly on the verge of caffeine poisoning or something.

im done arguing about PSU's because i know what combo works, and what works the best. Thats all i need to know. I most likely have the highest overclocked quad on this forum, which is my ES, and i also have 2 other quads which overclock 3.7ghz. My combo in parts work to achieve that overclock.

Had the op ask what psu he needs to run it stable @ stock settings, then so be it. I would of said keep the psu he has right now. But were talking about overclocking, and GETTING IT TO WORK.

Hence why i'll say this one more time. If you dont have a 3.6GHz quad, you shouldnt be posting at all PERIOD.

Very ignorant thing to say.

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: Capt Caveman

Originally posted by: aigomorla

Originally posted by: Brunnis
my machine twiddles along at 237W currently, and for gaming around 400W

And, aigomorla, why don't you take it down a notch? It's like you're constantly on the verge of caffeine poisoning or something.

im done arguing about PSU's because i know what combo works, and what works the best. Thats all i need to know. I most likely have the highest overclocked quad on this forum, which is my ES, and i also have 2 other quads which overclock 3.7ghz. My combo in parts work to achieve that overclock.

Had the op ask what psu he needs to run it stable @ stock settings, then so be it. I would of said keep the psu he has right now. But were talking about overclocking, and GETTING IT TO WORK.

Hence why i'll say this one more time. If you dont have a 3.6GHz quad, you shouldnt be posting at all PERIOD.

Very ignorant thing to say.

How so? The title subject specially asks for 3.6ghz.

Its like asking a person who drives a civic, and only driven civics on how accords are?

 

[dclive]

aigormoria - what does a kill-a-watt device say is your power draw?

 

[bryanW1995]

sgrinavi uses a 520 hx on his system at 3.6, unless he has forgotten to update his profile.

 

[m1ldslide1]

No EE training here, but I'm running:

opteron 175 @ 2.6ghz
8800GTS 640 superclock
raptor 150
2x1GB RAM
zalman 9500
3 high-cfm (rpm) case fans
x-fi xtrememusic
1 optical drive

on a 450W PSU rated at around 80-82%.

I can't speak obviously to an OC'd quad-core so don't think I'm saying so. I just find it helpful when making decisions like this to know what works for other folks.

 

[bryanW1995]

yeah, that's pretty good. I'm in a similar boat on my opteron 180 rig in my file server. it's using a 29.99 apevia 500w psu that's rated at 70%. sadly, that psu is a pos (louder by far than x1950xt at 50%) and is about to find itself installed in my backup BACKUP system in mom's internet surfer.

other system specs on it are asus a8v-xe, 3x512mb ddr 3200, 1x500gb seagate, 3 optical, zalman 9700led.

 

[jeffw2767602]

Jeez...did I start all of this? lol

 

[jeffw2767602]

Anyway, all I was saying to begin with was....you should have some headroom in your PSU. Just because your system will pull a max of 400w that doesnt mean you should buy a 400w PSU. Right now I have a PC Power & Cooling 750w PSU for a system with a q6600 at 3.6ghz, 8800gts 640 oc'ed to 620/2000, 4 gb ram, and 2x500gb hard drives. I am probably under full load using half of my power. But when the 1TB drives fall to about 25 cents/gb i am going to grab two of those and put them in raid 0. As for my upgrade path, I plan to switch to watercooling, and I plan on buying an X-fi card when the drivers for vista 64 get fixed. I will also probably purchase a nvidia sli board when the new chipsets come out and get an additional 8800gts when g90 comes out and the prices drop. Oh yea i have 2 Cold cathodes, and 8 LED fans. So how happy will i be that i went with the 750w PSU when i finish my upgrades?

 

[A554SS1N]

My mate intends to get a Q6600 with 2GB 800Mhz RAM and an 8800GTS - he doesn't intend to overclock, although at least not yet, but if he did maybe allow for around 3.0Ghz in the future - i initially thought around the 520watt Corsair if he stayed at stock, but would it be ok for around 3Ghz at that spec too? He'd probably never put a more powerful card in it (in terms of wattage), and never have any more than a couple of hard drives and a dvd writer drive. He likes to keep PC's around 4-5 years, so should I even consider the 620watt version?

 

[jeffw2767602]

For that setup with no upgrades 520 is plenty

 

[Dribble]

As a general rule you want your psu to be at about 1/2 max load for max efficiency (i.e those 80% psu's actually perform best at 1/2 load, much more or less and you don't get 80%). That said it's about 1/2 load the psu's fans start to ramp up to keep it cool so less load == less noise. It is also true that capacitor life span is directly related to the heat they run at (and psu's running at near max tend to run hot). Hence I'd aim for an idle load of something like 2/5's of the psu's max power for the best balance of efficiency, noise and psu life expectancy.

 

[KHarvey16]

I get the feeling some people think there's some kind of weird voodoo magic governing what PSU will work best. There really isn't. If someone knows the power draw of a particular CPU at it's intended frequency they don't have to own it to know what kind of power supply will be sufficient. And on top of that, those who have similar systems and have given us their power draw data seem to support the idea that the OP's PSU will be just fine. I think the doubters need to present some data.

 

[A554SS1N]

Originally posted by: jeffw2767602
For that setup with no upgrades 520 is plenty

Thanks

 

[5t3v0]

Hang on a minute, we're talking here about overclocking a processor by 50% beyond its rated speed, probably halving its MTTF, yet when it comes to PSUs, we should buy double the capacity we need for peace of mind and greater life expectancy? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought the point of overclocking was about getting more out of less.

 

[ChronoReverse]

Even if you're not overclock AT ALL, you should still get a good quality (not necessarily high wattage) PSU. If you're overclocking, you NEED a good quality PSU (and sometimes higher wattage) to make sure the rig is stable.

Either way, you still need a good PSU.

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
Hang on a minute, we're talking here about overclocking a processor by 50% beyond its rated speed, probably halving its MTTF, yet when it comes to PSUs, we should buy double the capacity we need for peace of mind and greater life expectancy? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought the point of overclocking was about getting more out of less.

Bingo! I've had a similar post or two here, and it goes right over most people's heads...

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: Dribble
As a general rule you want your psu to be at about 1/2 max load for max efficiency (i.e those 80% psu's actually perform best at 1/2 load, much more or less and you don't get 80%). That said it's about 1/2 load the psu's fans start to ramp up to keep it cool so less load == less noise. It is also true that capacitor life span is directly related to the heat they run at (and psu's running at near max tend to run hot). Hence I'd aim for an idle load of something like 2/5's of the psu's max power for the best balance of efficiency, noise and psu life expectancy.

Why should I care if my PSU is at 80% efficient or 77% efficient? Is this 3% drop (I'm guessing here, but where's data showing otherwise?) really something anyone in his right mind should care about? Seriously....

 

[aigomorla]

Originally posted by: 5t3v0
Hang on a minute, we're talking here about overclocking a processor by 50% beyond its rated speed, probably halving its MTTF, yet when it comes to PSUs, we should buy double the capacity we need for peace of mind and greater life expectancy? Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I thought the point of overclocking was about getting more out of less.

only matters on why your overclocking.

ME personally i have 2 chips which would take Xtreme editions to the toliet seat.

I overclock for numbers/raw power. Its like ricing up a civic to do 500hp to take down porshes when i could of bought a porshe for the same price.

True be it, my Q6600 /w all its cooling and board requirements, would of allowed me to buy a Dell XPS /w a QX processor, but wheres the fun in that?

Having 13 sec super PI times, and overclock speeds of greater then 3.6ghz on quads.. This is where i get my fun in this hobby.

The thread is also asking for a 3.6ghz quad overclocker to shine in. Yet most of the people on this thread that are posting DONT have a 3.6ghz quad.

This is why i keep telling people, to please be quiet unless you have or are at where the ops main question is asking. But people think they know more then the people who do have what the op wants. Which i find incredibily funny, and also very stupid.

 

[bryanW1995]

we get it, blah blah blah, you don't want anyone else to comment on this thread. well, guess what? the odds are strongly stacked against the OP getting to 3.6 on his quad. He MIGHT get there, and if he gets there, he MIGHT have problems with a 520 hx. However, for the cost of a better psu (say 150-175), he could almost get a Q6700 and give himself a much greater chance of getting to 3.6 +. As you put it, where's the fun in that? Some of us OC because we can't afford the best of the best, but many of us OC for the sense of accomplishment. Just because you have run a quad at 3.6 and I haven't doesn't mean that I am unqualified to comment on this thread. This is not a complete quad overclocking system breakdown item by item. You'd be overqualified for that one. This is one question about one piece of an overclocking puzzle. Most, if not all, of the people who have commented in this thread have overclocking experience. If we choose to share that experience with the OP and it doesn't agree with your experience then let the OP make up his own mind. He knows that you have much more quad core overclocking experience than the rest of us, and I'm sure that he'll take that into account when making his decision.

 

[RussianSensation]

I have the same power supply and my Q6600 can do 3.6ghz with 8800GTS 320mb graphics card, 2GB of ram and 2 hard drive and 3 case fans. The problem though is that at 3.6ghz, the processor gets very hot (partially blaming summer heat right now), even with a Tuniq Tower. Most likely getting to 3.6 will be tough before you even run into a PSU limitation.

 

[KHarvey16]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
The thread is also asking for a 3.6ghz quad overclocker to shine in. Yet most of the people on this thread that are posting DONT have a 3.6ghz quad.

This is why i keep telling people, to please be quiet unless you have or are at where the ops main question is asking. But people think they know more then the people who do have what the op wants. Which i find incredibily funny, and also very stupid.

Whether or not someone owns this particular processor doesn't change the underlying engineering principles here. Power doesn't magically disappear and until it does anyone with enough information and enough knowledge can make a determination about PSU requirements just as well or better than someone who owns the processor in question.

Are you willing to provide numbers concerning the power draw of your system? Others have and their numbers support the OP's PSU being ok as far as providing enough juice. If you disagree can you substantiate it?

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: KHarvey16
Are you willing to provide numbers concerning the power draw of your system? Others have and their numbers support the OP's PSU being ok as far as providing enough juice. If you disagree can you substantiate it?

If he were to do that, he'd be the first person in this thread to do so. I'm guessing that he's waiting on the people who swear you don't even need a psu to power a quad to show their pics of these ~200 watt under max load quad-based systems @ 3.6 Ghz, that have 15 SCSI drives, plus SLI'd 8800 GTX's.

 

[Amaroque]

I have an Antec 550w (i know, not the best of the best) Powering my OC'd C2Q with 2 74g raptors, and 2 300g Maxtor 16 drives.

 

[jeffw2767602]

Who even really needs a power supply? The way I power my quad is I hook a car battery up to my nipples and shove my toes in the 8 and 24 pin connectors.

 

[Brunnis]

Originally posted by: aigomorla
*sigh* again...

Im done arguing about PSU's because i know what combo works, and what works the best.

Hang on a minute! Have you even measured the power of all those mad cool machines you keep talking about? Because if you haven't, you really aren't more qualified to answer in this thread than anybody else.