520w enough for 970?

L

Lyric Suite

Limp Gawd
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Mar 19, 2010
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Consider that i have a FX-8350. The PSU is an Antec HCG Bronze. I have a GTX 660 and i did some tests with that Kill A Watt thingy and under stress i capped at 144w, which is a lot lower than i expected to be frank. I can't imagine a 970 being that horrible.
 
Standard GTX 660 is rated for 140Watts
GTX 970 requires 145watts

You should be fine. Nvidia says 500W PSU minimum, but they are guessing based on having no idea what else you might have in there.

People drastically overestimate the amount of power they need all the time.
 
Depends on the brand of 970 you buy. The 145w on the spec sheet is the *minimum* it needs to function, not its max draw. The stock 2x6 pin 970 will top out at around 200w under heavy load. The MSI 970 (reviewed right here on this site), uses a 6+8 and will pull almost 270w under load at max OC. The places the MSI 970 pretty close to a stock 390 on power consumption.

I also run an 8350 with a mild OC, and I can tell you from experience that a 600w PS was not sufficient for my CPU + 390 + 4 case fans + 4 SSDs. A 520w PS will not power some variants of 970, under load at max overclock, if you have it paired with an 8350.

Edit for punctuation. Tired today. :(
 
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I run a 2500K and an EVGA 970 ACX 2.0+ on an old 460W Zippy PSU I had laying around. 2500K is at 4.6ghz as well and the 970 oc's nicely. Seems to do fine.
 
Fully load the CPU and GPU both since you have a kill-a-watt.

I've got an overclocked 3570k and a 970 and it never uses more than around 250-300W from the wall according to the power meter built-in to the UPS. Note that's with a monitor and another computer (little spiffed up atom chip) running on it as well.
 
jbc029 said:
Depends on the brand of 970 you buy. The 145w on the spec sheet is the *minimum* it needs to function, not its max draw.
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This doesn't make a ton of sense. I don't know why a manufacturer would label a card in such a fashion. That would imply that when provided 145 watts, the card would be able to render a 2d desktop environment, and nothing else. I would expect the power requirement spec'ed by Nvidia to be much closer to the maximum requirement than the minimum. I can guarantee you a 970 isn't pulling 145 watts close to idle in a desktop environment.

The stock 2x6 pin 970 will top out at around 200w under heavy load. The MSI 970 (reviewed right here on this site), uses a 6+8 and will pull almost 270w under load at max OC. The places the MSI 970 pretty close to a stock 390 on power consumption.
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To be clear, the MSI GTX 970 GAMING Overclocked, as reviewed by HardOCP, had a power draw at full load of 369 watts for the entire system. It drew more power than the 980 system. Granted, the 3770K they used has a TDP about 50 watts lower than the 8350, but that still leaves you with some room.

500 watts will be plenty.
 
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a3venom said:
This.^
500w Quality PSU is even plenty for a 390x man, 970 sips half its power roughly.
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One caveat: I wouldn't run a 390x and an *overclocked* 8350 (around 4.5 GHz or higher) on less than 600w. 500w would be cutting things too close.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8864/amd-fx-8320e-cpu-review-the-other-95w-vishera/2

That's power at the wall, so multiply by ~0.85 to get the DC power provided.

But GTX 970 and FX 8350 should be able to play together all day even overclocked :D
 
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