PSU options on a watercooled CM690II

Skull_Angel

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
May 31, 2010
Messages
1,664
hello all, recently signed up, but I've lurked the boards for quite a good time (somewhere around a year or so, lol).

I'm currently having quite a time looking up a good quality psu that I can shoe-horn into the CM690II alongside a good low fin density 2x 120 rad (been researching for a good half a week and small enough psu's are questionable since I try to stick to seasonic and corsair).

the build hasn't come together yet, but this is what I've planned out so far (this is the basic build and I'm considering upgrading or adding more later on);

pc components;
-coolermaster cm690ii advanced
-i7 930
-asus p6x58d-e
-g.skill f3-16000cl9t-6gbtd
-xfx hd 5870
-ocz vertex 2 100gb
-samsung spinpoint f3 1tb
-undecided psu

cooling;
-ek supreme hf - full nickel
-(still undecided on board cooling components +/- gpu cooler(s))
-primochill typhoon split-window single-bay dual-loop reservoir (open for suggestions also)
-2x swiftech mcp655
-swiftech mcr220 (seems to be the only low-fin density rad that will fit inside up-top)
-thermorchill 120.2 or xspc rx240 or ek coolstream rad xt240 (listen in order from longest to shortest. the ek seems to preform the weakest but not by overly too much)
-(may also add a single 120 to the cpu loop, but undecided)
-and decent 1/2" id x 3/4" od clear tubing with low/no/sealed plasticizer
-multiple scythe GT ap-15s (probably around 7)
-undecided on fan controller
-bitspower fittings

hoping for this build to last the better side of several+ years with minor upgrades (possibly a second video card and/or eyefinity setup being the biggest); will be setup for gaming, music, hobbyist level 3d+2d editing, a bit of video encoding and similar (most likely multi-tasking with gaming + 2d/3d editing heavily for the most part). I do also plan on OCing the sucker (you could probably tell that already though, lol), probably keep the cpu around 4.0~4.2 and bumping it upwards of 4.4+ (wherever it'll let me safely slap it around, haha) when I want the extra performance, along with an upper mid-range oc on the gpu(s) nearly full-time. (throwing all this out there 'cause I know ya 'll like to ask some of this stuff, lol)

the major problem I'm currently having is trying to figure out which lower rad+psu options I can use will actually fit (the xspc rx240 is probably my perfered radiator choice here). with all these components it seems like I'm going to want to use a 1000w psu (to keep the CF option open), but possible options that seem like they might fit don't have much info on them in the way of third-party testing, so I've been chasing my tail the past several days, haha...

I'd also like to try to keep everything inside the case if possible since I'm going for the 'sleeper' look, lol (I have found case extenders for psu mounting that require some case modding, but I'd like to stay away from this like mentioned above).

so any help or advice on this matter that anyone can toss my way will be greatly appreciated, thanks.
 
it looks like the corsair 950tx should squeeze in there almost perfectly, my main concern is will it be able to handle a mid-range OCed 5870 cf setup with an OCed i7 lga 1366 and all the other hardware that's been tossed in there (w/o any strain if this build is going to last a while)? been trying to twist my brain around this for a while and didn't even consider sub 1000w psus (I'm not that awesome with psu math yet and most online calculators seemed to point to the high side of 900w).
 
A single HD5870 and i7 should not require more power than 500-600 watts, all peripherals accounted for. Crossfired HD5870's will not use more than 700-800 watts, and tri-crossfired HD5870's will not use more than 1000 watts.

An overclocked i7 uses approximately 200 watts. Each overclocked HD5870 uses approximately 200 watts. Everything else uses approximately 100-200 watts. And that is with everything maxed out to 100%.

In normal usage, most of the time you're sitting at 50% usage or less. Even in gaming, you're not likely to exceed 25-40% on the CPU. The GPU's are likely to be the only ones stretched out to the max, and even then, not likely, especially if you have 2 or more of them. Video encoding and editing might push your CPU to its limits, but that comes down to the application that you use, and how much you are doing.
 
An OC'd 4.2GHz Core i7 930 CPU + mobo + HDD can use up to 300W (minus 17W for idle GPU) at full CPU load:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cpu/display/power-consumption-overclocking_11.html#sect0

A stock clockd HD 5870 can use up to 235W at full GPU load:
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/gpu-power-consumption-2010_3.html#sect0

So at full CPU and GPU load, a Core i7 OC'd to 4.2Ghz, two HD 5870, motherboard, and HDD will use up about 770W to 800W. So yeah, the Corsair 950TX will be enough power for that setup.
 
ah sweet, thanks guys. that takes a load off of a big part of this build (...no pun intended...). now I just gotta wait 'till EK puts out the new revision of the supreme hf full nickel (for larger compression fittings), look up some chipset blocks and figure out how I want to set up these loops, but that's the fun part! sadly paying for it all isn't...
 
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