Power Supply Capacity Review

[Zetro]

Hey guys,

I have been slowly putting together a machine for a friend of mine who has been doing humanitarian work/chasing tail for 2 years in South Asia. He is coming home in a couple weeks and I have a computer ready for him but don't feel 100% confident about if I left enough head room for the PSU I put in the system.

It is primarily for gaming and will never be overclocked.

The system is:

Core i7 930 D0 /w a Coolermaster Hyper 212 on it (1 fan)
ASUS P6T-SE
Corsair 3 x 2GB PC16000 Kit
Antec 300-2
Corsair CX600 (brand new - non modular) PSU
Gigabyte Geforce 670 2GB
1 x 140MM top fan
3 x 120mm case fans
D-Link PCI 802.11N Card
Kingston V300 240GB SSD
WD 1TB Green
Asus DVD-RW

In running a couple PSU calculators I get mixed results as I spec'd the machine for something closer to a 750Ti when I bought the CX600.

Am I pushing that PSU too much or should it be OK? I am in the 70% OK bracket but would feel better with some other opinions.

 

[mda]

Without an overclock, you should be fine with quite a bit of headroom. Probably not enough to safely fit another 670, but definitely enough for a powerful single card upgrade in the future and for the life of that system.

My rough logic not based on any chart assuming not overclocked:
CPU and board should not use more than 200 watts under full load
GPU should not use more than 200 watts under full load
Plus everything else (~50 watts).
= Way under 600w.

 

[Zetro]

That is what I was thinking as well - in the 450-500W range under full CPU/GPU load

Thank you for the verification. Should treat him well seeing as he was using a Dell compact desktop to play D3/LoL previous.

 

[Dangman]

You're fine.

HOWEVER, which of those parts have you actually bought brand new for this friend of yours? Which of those parts do you still need to buy?I ask because several of those parts are bad buys these days.

 

[Zetro]

Very few of it was brand new at all

-Antec 300-2
-Corsair CX600
-DVD-RW

The rest was out of my spare parts bin being the video card, drives, CPU, motherboard, ram, etc

 

[E4g1e]

Very few of it was brand new at all

-Antec 300-2
-Corsair CX600
-DVD-RW

Well, how much did you pay for each of those items?

If you paid more than $45 or so for either the case or the PSU, you've been ripped off. In addition, paying more than $20 or so for the DVD drive is also foolish.

Here are the reasons:

1) Although the Antec 300-2 case has an updated hard drive bay arrangement, the case itself is not as roomy on the inside as several other cases at around the same price point. especially from front to rear: While several cases can easily accommodate 12"+ long graphics cards, the 300-2 can barely accommodate an 11" long graphics card.

2) The CX 600 PSU is of significantly lesser quality than some PSUs that cost just a few dollars more.

 

[Zetro]

First, I live in Canada and we pay a lot more for hardware than in the US

Second, I got them as low as I can considering the first point and that is not what I was asking for help with in this thread

For the record...

Case - $65 PSU - $60 and $19 for the DVD-RW

 

[Coaxial]

No worries at all on the power front, even with some mild-moderate CPU overclocking.