High Eff. PSUs for Dual GPUs

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Sunin

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - August 2008
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Dec 27, 2005
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So will a EA430 Antec Earthwatts be enough to do dual GPU's and an SMP?

Will the 500 watt version be enough? I'm pulling about 225-250w with 1gpu and 1 cpu... so adding another 100w puts it at 350w draw in total...

430 is starting to get stressed... a 380 would be toast at this level, so is 500 or higher my only option?

another option would be to rig up a psu 430 or 380 for that matter and just run 2 GPUs off it...

What is everyone's thoughts?



 
Still under warranty? :D

The problem with PSUs is when they go, they can take a bunch of other stuff with them. The vid cards are not much of a problem because of the lifetime war that most of us get. The mobo/cpu is something else.

Add up your amps. I'd leave 15-20% headroom because we are running this 24/7

 
I won't risk dual gpu with a EA430 at all. It only have a single PCI-E wire so this mean a lot.

 
There really isn't much of a price difference (maybe $20) between the EA500 and the EA650. The 650 would give you plenty of headroom and peace of mind. Personally, I would go for the EA650

 




Total +12v:
EA380 - 324W
EA430 - 360W
EA500 - 408W

I'm sitting here looking @ my Kill A Watt now. Q6600@3.15 | 9600GT@667/936/1884 | 8800GS@601/800/1866 with 2 WD hard drives. Pulling 354W. Plugged in to an EA500 and I'm not sweating it

No way in hell would I attempt it on an EA430. I wouldn't even run the EA500 if I had dual 9800 series or better cards. The I'd probably be thinking 750W. But using an existing EA380 just to run dual cards would probably work. In that case a seperate EA380 for the system and one for the GPUs would probably work out ok unless your looking @ dual GT280s. I'm not sure what they pull as they're not in my meager budget for now.

Gets pretty expensive when looking to run dual GPU for a farm me thinks....

 
capreppy said:
There really isn't much of a price difference (maybe $20) between the EA500 and the EA650. The 650 would give you plenty of headroom and peace of mind. Personally, I would go for the EA650

Click to expand...

Good choice. 540W on the 3 12v rails and $10 more @ the Egg.

 
capreppy said:
There really isn't much of a price difference (maybe $20) between the EA500 and the EA650. The 650 would give you plenty of headroom and peace of mind. Personally, I would go for the EA650

Click to expand...

nomad8u said:
Good choice. 540W on the 3 12v rails and $10 more @ the Egg.

Click to expand...
The 650 is alright, but I'd put the Seasonic-built units over Delta. My personal preference would be a NeoHE 550W or Neopower 650W.
 
I am going to try my EA500 tonight with highly OC'd 8800GTx2 and CPU @ 3.6Ghz.

Abit IP35-E

1 - PCIE 16x
1 - PCIE 4x

Results coming to a thread near you soon :)

 
Sunin said:
I am going to try my EA500 tonight with highly OC'd 8800GTx2 and CPU @ 3.6Ghz.

Abit IP35-E

1 - PCIE 16x
1 - PCIE 4x

Results coming to a thread near you soon :)

Click to expand...

You going to monitor that for wattage while running? I'm curious what 2 88xx cards pull.

 
nomad8u said:
You going to monitor that for wattage while running? I'm curious what 2 88xx cards pull.

Click to expand...

I run these on UPS's that monitor Wattage, so I can give you a before and after #'s.

My Twin 8800GTX with water cooling setup doesn't break 500W.. It shows 666 as the wattage draw and that is with another quad on the ups. So 666-175w is about 490w... and that is with G80's the G92's are going to be far more efficient. I'd be surprised I crack 400w...

 
I have a 550W from Seasonic that's officially SLI certified so I see no reason why most decent 500 or 550 wouldn't work ok with a pair of 8800gt's. I wouldn't try a pair of gtx280s though ;)



 
Sunin said:
I am going to try my EA500 tonight with highly OC'd 8800GTx2 and CPU @ 3.6Ghz.

Abit IP35-E

1 - PCIE 16x
1 - PCIE 4x

Results coming to a thread near you soon :)

Click to expand...

Where are you putting the 2nd card on that board?! :confused: It has one slot for a gfx card :confused:

 
Kendrak said:
Where are you putting the 2nd card on that board?! :confused: It has one slot for a gfx card :confused:

Click to expand...

It has 2 pcie slots... I missed it the first time I looked at it... OK wait its the IP35-Pro... that has 2 slots I forgot I bought 2 open box with rebats that put it at 59.99 each... :)



 
Kendrak said:
Where are you putting the 2nd card on that board?! :confused: It has one slot for a gfx card :confused:

Click to expand...

If it's anything like my IP35 Pro, it has two physical PCI-E 16 slots but the black one runs at 4x electrical. I haven't tried sticking a graphics card in mine since it's occupied by my RAID card currently but I imagine it would work fine.

Edit: Looking at a review of the board I only see one slot like Kendrak, hopefully Sunin can enlighten us. :confused:

 
Yep they are IP35 Pro's... I have 2 of them.. I forgot I had gotten them because they were open boxes... I have it up and running now I just need to install the additional gpu client!



 
And the results are in...

Been up for 10 minutes or so these are prelim

GPU1 = 4879.06
GPU2 = 4996.63
SMP = 2297.62

TOTAL = 12,173.31 from a single boxen!

5 minutes later:

GPU1 = 5120.00
GPU2 = 4937.14
SMP = 2297.62

TOTAL = 12,354.76 PPD :)

 
Nice numbers for a 4x slot... maybe I should ditch my RAID card and get an 8800 GT. Choices choices.

 
Sunin said:
And the results are in...

Been up for 10 minutes or so these are prelim

GPU1 = 4879.06
GPU2 = 4996.63
SMP = 2297.62

TOTAL = 12,173.31 from a single boxen!

Click to expand...

sunin,

what is the kill-a-watt reads on your system ^^^
 
Oh I did forget that little bit eh!

Its not killawatt... its Cyber Power UPS Wattage reading which I trust way more than Killawatt...

It fluxes between 774 and 783w, but sat stable at 387 prior to be adding this box.

WATTAGE = 387 to 396Watts for over 12,150 PPD = 30.68 PpDpW

Now that is not half bad!

 
Sunin said:
Oh I did forget that little bit eh!

Its not killawatt... its Cyber Power UPS Wattage reading which I trust way more than Killawatt...

It fluxes between 774 and 783w, but sat stable at 387 prior to be adding this box.

WATTAGE = 387 to 396Watts for over 12,150 PPD = 30.68 PpDpW

Now that is not half bad!

Click to expand...

very nice job,

*bow
 
I skimmed a bit, maybe I missed something. Power from the wall is not what the GPU/CPU is If you are pulling 350W from the wall on a 500W supply, that means you are really only consuming about 350*80% or 280W. That is just about 50%.
 
Trepidati0n said:
I skimmed a bit, maybe I missed something. Power from the wall is not what the GPU/CPU is If you are pulling 350W from the wall on a 500W supply, that means you are really only consuming about 350*80% or 280W. That is just about 50%.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but I always look at it from the stand point of what is the system using in total wattage wise and what PPD am I getting from that usage. Its not like I'm not paying for the 387 to 396 Watts that the system is using. I know in the end the system usage is as you said and thus I am not stressing the EA500 since it outputs over 408W and I'm using about 75% of that. :)

Plus if you use the total wattage used by the system your really not as likely to have an issue of overloading it since you have a built in 15-20% buffer!

Just my thoughts...

I'll say this the temps of the exhaust from the EA500 is pretty toasty. I would not feel comfortable had I tried it on the EA430...



 
Sunin said:
I'll say this the temps of the exhaust from the EA500 is pretty toasty. I would not feel comfortable had I tried it on the EA430...



Click to expand...

How fast is the fan going on the PSU? I have only one 8800GT running with a Quad on an EA380 and it's kicked up to what I assume is the highest fan setting due to the load. It kind of defeats the purpose of me getting a fanless heatsink and quiet case fans so I'm going to have to upgrade my PSU, probably to a Corsair HX620 since I know it can handle the load quietly.
 
Yeah the fan is on full blast I would say... feeling other systems I can tell it is blowing harder and hotter then most others in the room.



 
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