1000 watts enough for Crossfire 290x?

1

1erCru

Limp Gawd
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Sep 9, 2006
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217
Gold rated 1000 watts. Running with an i7, watercooler and a SSD.

Enough power?
 
I was going to submit an extended diatribe... you'll either take this advice you won't. More. Power. 1200w at least. I know what's supposed to be the requirement. 1000w is supposed to be more than enough. Nope. Go for more. Pick-up a 1250w seasonic.. 1300w etc. Overkill? no. Spend 800-900 on video cards?... spend 250 or more on a power supply. Take it from a guy who's been running dual cards for years.
 
what else will be in the build? plan on over clocking?
 
There's no build. Just swapping in the 290's. Built this rig over a year ago.
Watercooled i7 @ 4.9 , SSD, 8gB ram, a few case fans.

My math is telling me I should peak at around 800 watt. But what the hell do I know.
 
1erCru said:
There's no build. Just swapping in the 290's. Built this rig over a year ago.
Watercooled i7 @ 4.9 , SSD, 8gB ram, a few case fans.

My math is telling me I should peak at around 800 watt. But what the hell do I know.
Click to expand...

Model CPU and chipset? What pumps? How many pumps? What model of fans? How many?
 
With your CPU overclocked/overvolted to the extent it achieves a 200W TDP (about the maximum level attainable on regular air cooling), two 290X cards (assuming you haven't also tried messing with those) and a couple of hard disks with a pump you'll be looking at about 700W out of the PSU, so a 1KW unit would be at 70% load, which is fine. If your CPU is sufficiently overclocked it is physically impossible to air cool it (Remember, this does actually take quite some doing with modern CPUs), then add the appropriate extra. I wasted a lot of time and money diagnosing crossfire problems that turned out to be a faulty PCIe controller on the motherboard, by being told an 850W PSU wasn't sufficient for my setup (It was).
[H] themselves recorded a peak in-game usage across the test suite of 780W AC, so about 720W DC assuming best case 92% efficient PSU. That's with a 3770K overclocked to 4.8Ghz.
 
Easily enough.
I saw a peak at 560W at the wall while benchmarking (so around 500W from the PSU) with my single 290x and a highly over volted 2500K.
Most of the time I'm in the 300 to 400W range when gaming.
 
Just an fyi I have 3 290s litecoin mining at 1000/1500 100% gpu with a6 6400 on a coolermaster gold 1200w. The thing is pulling about 1100w at the wall with a killowatt meter so I would think you would be fine with 1000 for 2. It looks like cards can eat up to 330-350 w a piece.
 
Litecoin mining will of course raise the power requirement higher than in typical gaming usage, even in titles with perfect crossfire scaling and no relevant CPU cap. From what I can gather in uber mode the practical power usage of a 290X when not downclocking is about 270W in game, which obviously is 290-310W at the mains side.
 
with 4770K @ 4.5 and 2 290X I am pulling almost exactly 800 watts on my Kill-A-Watt. You probably want to get a 1000 watt Gold Rated PSU ( dont buy cheap stuff like raidmax). I recommend either Corsair, Silverstone, or NZXT Hale V2 ( running a 1200 Watt NZXT Hale V2 right now in one rig and 1000 Watt Silverstone strider in my other rig).
 
I'm running 2 sapphire 290x and a 3930k on a 1000w Seasonic platinum. If you go with a solid PSU like Seasonic you will be fine (Seasonic actually underrates their PSUs and the 1000w Platinum can pull closer to 1200).

I'm running everything pretty close to stock (slight overclock on my 3930k) and the system pulls around 800w while fully stressed. I always try to get around 25% more PSU than I anticipate needing.

MAKE SURE you go with a quality brand though. If there is one component you don't want to skimp out on it's the PSU.
 
My 2 290s mining pulls 690w. When I crank it up all the way my whole system only ever tops 810w at the wall.
 
2 290x at 100% with ssd and z87 mobo and Haswell pentium 3.2ghz run 640watts with corsair tx 850 psu at the wall.

1000 watts is plenty
 
I have an i7 4770k at 4.2ghz and two 290s overclocked in crossfire on a 1000watt gold rated psu. I also have 8 fans in/on my case.
 
1000 watts is overkill.....wayyy too much...more than what you need.Id get like like a nice brand 750 watts. You wana be able to utilize atleast 70% of powersupply.
 
wondering if my older zelman 850 it was amazingly rated by will do 2x 290x with a 2600k oc to 4.8ghz 2x ssd and 4x spinny disks.
 
More than enough. You get 1000W+ if you plan to add 3 or more gpu cards in. 750W to 850W-ish is enough for 2 cards. I doubt my 650W would struggle with 2 cards.
 
spacin9 said:
I was going to submit an extended diatribe... you'll either take this advice you won't. More. Power. 1200w at least. I know what's supposed to be the requirement. 1000w is supposed to be more than enough. Nope. Go for more. Pick-up a 1250w seasonic.. 1300w etc. Overkill? no. Spend 800-900 on video cards?... spend 250 or more on a power supply. Take it from a guy who's been running dual cards for years.
Click to expand...

way WAY WAYYY overkill..
if you are not OCing.. then a quality 850W PSU is enough.
if you are slightly OCing (+10%) video cards then up to 950W is should be ample..
if you are OCing your CPU AND GPUS then YES you want 1100+W.. ideally for 4.8Ghz+ CPU and OCed GPUs. I ran quite comfortably for close to a month and a half 2 R290s (well a 290 + 290X AND a 9370) on a 750W Corsair and never once experienced a reset/failure. IF I was intending to OC at ALL yes I would have invested in a 1200W PSU. At it is now Im running a 290 and a 9370 @ 5.1Ghz on the same 750W PSU. Should I opt for a 2nd 290(x) I will most likely invest in a quality 1050W PSU.. having 8 drives and a H100.
 
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