AX860i ... Is it enough?

Is it enough?

  • Yes

    Votes: 15 83.3%
  • No

    Votes: 1 5.6%
  • Depends

    Votes: 2 11.1%

  • Total voters
    18
Joined
Jul 22, 2013
Messages
6
In the a previous post there was a link that estimated your watt usage by entering in hardware. Well needless to say I used it and it recommends 880 watts with my setup. Now what has me questioning this is everyone's recommendations. I see most peoples max recommendation for similar systems is 700w and that takes into consideration of overclocking. Maybe my case is different, below I will include my shopping cart from newegg and maybe you can offer some insight.

CORSAIR AXi AX860i 860W

17-139-041-TS


CPU - Intel Core i7-4770K Haswell 3.5GHz

19-116-901-TS


Motherboard - ASUS SABERTOOTH Z87 LGA 1150 Intel Z87

13-131-976-TS


Video card QTY : 2 - ASUS GTX780-DC2OC-3GD5 GeForce GTX 780

14-121-779-TS


RAM - CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1866

20-233-287-TS


Case & Rad Fans - Corsair Air Series SP120 (CO-9050014-WW) 120mm PWM High Performance Edition High Static Pressure Fan

35-181-040-TS


SSD QTY : 2 - Kingston HyperX 3K SH103S3/120G 2.5" 120GB SATA III

20-239-045-TS


HDD - Western Digital WD Black WD1002FAEX 1TB 7200 RPM

22-136-533-TS


HDD/SSD Cache - OCZ Vertex 4 VTX4-25SAT3-128G 2.5" 128GB SATA III

20-227-791-TS


Water Pump - Swiftech MCP655-B 1/2in. Water Pump

yhst-39083765508394_2271_828528306



Let me know if that PSU will be enough or if you have any other suggestions I am all ears.
Thanks in advance
 
Last edited:
That AX860i will be more then enough. I run an HX850 on my sig rig and have no issues at all. My case is packed 3x200mm 1x230mm 1x140mm LED fans also.
 
I would probably go a bit higher if you intend to go for a good overclock.
If you go for a pretty straight forward overclock without much over volting, it will be fine.

You need extra headroom for peak voltages and so the PSU will last a long time.
If you make a PSU work very hard it will wear out quicker and its efficiency can drop which will cause even more power to be used heating the PSU up. This will wear it faster too.
 
I would probably go a bit higher if you intend to go for a good overclock.
If you go for a pretty straight forward overclock without much over volting, it will be fine.

You need extra headroom for peak voltages and so the PSU will last a long time.
If you make a PSU work very hard it will wear out quicker and its efficiency can drop which will cause even more power to be used heating the PSU up. This will wear it faster too.

Do you consider a 4200 MHz overclock straight forward on that haswell chip?
 
Yeah thats safe :)

My main concern is with the GPUs.
Power used rises with the square of the voltage and as they already use up to 250W each, they can use a lot when raising the voltage.
Power used rises more linearly with frequency, this matters less.

If you arent raising the voltage much, no issue.
 
Dont worry about the CPU, that will be fine even if pushed quite hard.
The gfx cards use orders of magnitude more power.
 
Ok got ya. I am not sure I will even need to push these card anytime soon. the benchmarks are pretty promising. Even @ 1440p
 
What you should consider is how long you will keep the hardware before upgrading and how long you want the PSU to last.

If you intend keeping the PC running with no change for say 4 or 5 years, you may feel the need to start clocking heavily to keep up with the latest games.
This is when the PSU is going to be at least half worn if you make decent use of your PC.

As a PSU wears out, its maximum power output drops, so the same power use actually pushes it harder.
If you start applying heavy overclocks as well to an old PSU (that should be in spec when new), it can get overloaded.
 
Cap aging doesn't begin to show itself in a high end PSU until 5+ years. The rated power should still be available long after his system is obsolete.

Even OCing, you'll max out at around 625-650w for the GPUs, 150w for the CPU/Ram/Mobo/Etc. You're going to be within 860w easily. Seeing that the 760i can put out out nearly 900w when overloaded, I'd say you have a mess of overhead. It wouldn't surprise me if the 860i could output 950w. Granted you wouldn't want to do that everyday, but it still should give you a lot of piece of mind about the capabilities of that unit.

So, unless you're going to be doing LN2/Sub-Zero OCing to break records, that unit should handle your system just dandy.
 
Cap aging happens as you use the PSU, it speeds up with higher temp and power used.
It doesnt suddenly start at 5 years.
 
Cap aging happens as you use the PSU, it speeds up with higher temp and power used.
It doesnt suddenly start at 5 years.

Cap aging doesn't begin to show itself in a high end PSU until 5+ years. The rated power should still be available long after his system is obsolete.

Begin. If you buy a crap PSU with Fufufufufu caps, yes, cap aging is going to be a real concern. One almost completely filled with either solid or Nippon Chemicon caps isn't going to have that issue for quite some time, and even when it does start happening, it's going to be a very slow decline.
 
By the time 4 or 5 years has passed, you should consider capacitor aging if you intend on pushing a good PSU hard.
That was the point of the post I made which you replied to.
I'm not making it up, its a valid point.

If it is a cheap PSU with crappy caps, I'd be worried about using it near full load period and wouldnt expect it to last 5 years unless used with a low load, assuming it doesnt fail from some other method of cheaping out first.
 
To make the point, here is an example:

Coolermasters PSU calculator - advanced page
http://www.coolermaster.outervision.com/advance.jsp

Note the capacitor aging option at the bottom.
The lowest value you can select per year is 10%.
Lets assume that is extremely optimistic on their part and it only ages 4% per year.

860W after x years will give y Watts max output:
1 year, 825.6W
2 years, 792.5W
3 years, 760W
4 years, 730W
5 years, 701W
...

Quite a significant change.
Maybe the wear will be a bit less, maybe a bit more.
But it should be considered when making a long term PSU selection.
 
I would say I do a build about every 3 years. My last build was when the gtx 580 came out and before that was the gtx 275. I should probably be ok with this. I am glad to hear it cause my other option was the ax1200i and I was a little worried about that fitting in the Carbide 540 AIR case with a water pump.
 
more than enough, those are 2 250w gpus and you have a ~90w cpu ad fans and other stuff that's another 50w. you are totally fine.
 
To make the point, here is an example:

Coolermasters PSU calculator - advanced page
http://www.coolermaster.outervision.com/advance.jsp

Note the capacitor aging option at the bottom.
The lowest value you can select per year is 10%.
Lets assume that is extremely optimistic on their part and it only ages 4% per year.

860W after x years will give y Watts max output:
1 year, 825.6W
2 years, 792.5W
3 years, 760W
4 years, 730W
5 years, 701W
...

Quite a significant change.
Maybe the wear will be a bit less, maybe a bit more.
But it should be considered when making a long term PSU selection.

That outervision calculator isn't accurate on wattage, so I doubt it's accurate on cap aging aswell.

I wouldn't expect cap aging to be more then 1% in the first five year, then begin increasing exponentially after that.
 
I didnt consider the calculators wattage, only a 4% per year aging from the original specced power output.
The calculator page was used to demonstrate the issue.

Other calculators I have used in the past default to 5% derating per year, I tried to find one and failed, its been a while since I needed to :)
 
I didnt consider the calculators wattage, only a 4% per year aging from the original specced power output.
The calculator page was used to demonstrate the issue.

Other calculators I have used in the past default to 5% derating per year, I tried to find one and failed, its been a while since I needed to :)

Look, regardless, I think we can both agree that as long as he isn't going to be going for OC records, he'll be fine on that PSU for atleast the next 3 years, which is all he said he wants it to last for.

Fair enough?
 
Its already implied that he will be satisfied.
I showed how much deterioration of power supply could occur over the years and he stated he wont be overclocking excessively and will be replacing the gear after 3 years so it is of little relevance to him.
 
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