Is 520 W enough for a Q6600 + 2x Radeon 6870?

Got about 320-330w of video cards there and about 100w of proc. You're gonna be tight once mobo and drives and such are added in, but I'd expect you to be fine.
 
You'll be fine, I doubt you tax every component in your computer all at once anyway so max draw shouldn't be a huge concern. That being said, I've got a 550 watt Antec running a Q6600 oc'd to 3.6ghz, 4gb RAM, 6 hard drives, a Radeon 6790, and a X-Fi sound card and I never have any issues.
 
maybe not if you run Lynx/P95 and Furmark at once, but otherwise probably yes.. it'll be close though
 
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If you're doing any overclocking at all I'd upgrade the PSU. It's still pretty tight depending on what else you have in your computer.
 
The HX520 makes 480W on the 12v rails, the 6870 has a TDP of 151W each. So, assuming you have 2 harddrives and 2 optical drives, you will be fine (Q6600 has a TDP of 105) for several years before capacitor aging requires you to replace the psu.

The HX520 is also a beast of a psu, check out some reviews. Here is how it performs at 516w-
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2007/12/04/corsair_vx550w_vs_hx520w/7#.UVNqsRyG2M4
 
id recommend getting a kill-a-watt meter to see how much the actual draw is.

I actually have one somewhere but can't find it. At any rate, that would only tell me total system power usage. I ended up getting a 7970 Tahiti LE. Hopefully I can still use the GTX 260 for PhysX. I think the PSU will just make the cut.
 
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id recommend getting a kill-a-watt meter to see how much the actual draw is.

Why do you guys keep recommending that? Kill-a-watt sucks for reactive loads, and besides, you need to know the exact figure for the efficiency of your PSU at your specific power level for you to even get a figure for the actual component power draw. KAW is essentially useless, regardless of how many people on this forum keep recommending it. It's a waste of money. Hell, even cheap VOLT meters are inaccurate junk, and power metering is much more difficult than voltage metering.
 
you know, i actually was wondering if the Q6600 would bottleneck the 7970? IRC, the Phenom II are roughly equal to the Core 2 uarch in terms of IPC.

Interesting read:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-fx-pentium-apu-benchmark,3120.html

I am waiting as long as possible to upgrade the CPU. It is currently OC to 3 GHz and I know it will do at least 3.2. Will hopefully be able to skip this generation and the next. For the time being, Eyefinity should keep the CPU from bottle necking :p. Also have a lot of slightly older games to work through.

It still might become a problem at some point, but I would never use THG as a primary source of information. They lost my trust years ago when I kept seeing disagreement between what they were writing and what their charts show. They also tend to sensationalize non issues and just make a lot of editorial errors.

Besides all that, I would want to see the same benches with a 7870 looked like. The higher graphics setting for the 7970 might also impact CPU load.
 
Tested the 7870 with Civ V at 1080p and max settings. With V-sync off, I can get it to be CPU limited at times, but it stays constantly above 80 FPS. When not CPU limited, it runs between 120 and 140.
 
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