PSU Poll

[Mansize_tissue]

Very nice! 'Got it installed yet?

 

[Nicepants42]

hasnt the corsair 620hx run 8800gtx in SLi? maybe it was just dual gts.

Even if it could handle two 8800GTXs, we're talking an OC'ed Q6700 and no-one-knows-how-many water pumps and fans. Transporter_GW's last rig had one loop for the cpu and another for the GPUs, each with it's own 650 pump and dual rad. Plus CCFLs out the wazoo. Plus he's using 4gb of memory.

Anyone ever suggest to you that it's a good idea to keep your power consumption to ~75% capacity? The Cosair 620 would be gasping the whole way if it didn't just fail. I want my future components to have plenty of PSU headroom, so I'm glad he went with the Zeus 850.

 

[Redbeard]

Anyone ever suggest to you that it's a good idea to keep your power consumption to ~75% capacity? The Cosair 620 would be gasping the whole way if it didn't just fail. I want my future components to have plenty of PSU headroom, so I'm glad he went with the Zeus 850.

It would only be ~75% of its capacity at full load, at idle it'd be around 30% of capacity.

 

[Manny Calavera]

Even if it could handle two 8800GTXs, we're talking an OC'ed Q6700 and no-one-knows-how-many water pumps and fans. Transporter_GW's last rig had one loop for the cpu and another for the GPUs, each with it's own 650 pump and dual rad. Plus CCFLs out the wazoo. Plus he's using 4gb of memory.

Anyone ever suggest to you that it's a good idea to keep your power consumption to ~75% capacity? The Cosair 620 would be gasping the whole way if it didn't just fail. I want my future components to have plenty of PSU headroom, so I'm glad he went with the Zeus 850.

I have the following running off a Corsair HX520 :

Asus A8N-E
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ @ 2.42Ghz
Arctic Cooling 64 pro psm
Corsair PC3500 LL Pro 2 Gig kit (leds) @ 242 2-2-3-6 1T
2 15k.3 73 Gig Seagate Cheetahs +
Mylex Accelaraid 170 + 128mb ECC cache
WD 5000 YS RE2 (500Gb 7200rpm)
Maxtor D740x 60Gb 7200rpm
Lite-On 1693s dvd-rw
Samsung 18x SATA dvd-rw
Corsair Voyager 4gb
9-1 card reader
4 120mm case fans (1400 rpm)
eVGA 8800GTS @ 590/1960
Creative XFi Platinum
XFi Platiunm 5 1/4 drive bay
3 port Firewire 400 pci card
Logitech MX510
MS Ergonomic 4000 wave kb


My Antec TruePower 2.0 500w couldnt handle it,niether could a Antec Trio 550 I borrowed from work.According to my Belkin UPS it still has at least 150 watts in it free.

 

[Darkatom]

Great Choice on the PSU . I got one for my recent build and I must say im pretty happy with it. On a side note, I chose the 850 Zeus over the Enermax 1000 watt PSU .

 

[[Spectre]]

My Antec TruePower 2.0 500w couldnt handle it,niether could a Antec Trio 550 I borrowed from work.According to my Belkin UPS it still has at least 150 watts in it free.

The Belkin is showing your draw from the mains not what the unit is outputting to the system.

 

[Nicepants42]

Even if it could handle two 8800GTXs, we're talking an OC'ed Q6700 and no-one-knows-how-many water pumps and fans. Transporter_GW's last rig had one loop for the cpu and another for the GPUs, each with it's own 650 pump and dual rad. Plus CCFLs out the wazoo. Plus he's using 4gb of memory.

Anyone ever suggest to you that it's a good idea to keep your power consumption to ~75% capacity? The Cosair 620 would be gasping the whole way if it didn't just fail. I want my future components to have plenty of PSU headroom, so I'm glad he went with the Zeus 850.

It would only be ~75% of its capacity at full load, at idle it'd be around 30% of capacity.

So you expect that when Transporter_GW turns on this PC, most of the time he'll just be surfing the web? Ok, maybe you're right. But...

30% of 620 is 186. This Anandtech article points out that idle power consumption on their test rig with ONE 8800GTX is about 180W. Oops?

75% of 620 is 465W. This Anandtech article indicates that peak power consumption of 8800GTX SLI (on an unspecified test rig, unfortunately) was over 520W. This article didn't include any overclocking results. Also consider that AT generally doesn't use overclocked QX6700's, or 4gb of RAM, or two raptor 150's (plus storage), or a water pump (or three), or any CCFLs/fan controllers/displays on their test rigs.

 

[troisanh]

with them 4 options, id take the Zeus.

 

[Transporter_GW]

The corsair 620 will not handle my setup. I already know this for sure. I don't want to run the enermax galaxy since it always beeps when you have two 8800 gtx video cards. Just a bad design.

I will be doing some testing and give my final thoughts on this system later.

 

[Redbeard]

So you expect that when Transporter_GW turns on this PC, most of the time he'll just be surfing the web? Ok, maybe you're right. But...

I don't know how he uses his computer, but most people don't run their systems at 100% all the time. Nonetheless, you buy a power supply designed to handle the worst-case scenario, and if you're loading up a system with a bunch of hard drives and a couple 8800GTXs, I can fully understand wanting more than 620W available.

Everyone likes having headroom, I understand that fully.

30% of 620 is 186. This Anandtech article points out that idle power consumption on their test rig with ONE 8800GTX is about 180W. Oops?

I was ballparking it from our own numbers taken internally. I'm not sure how Anandtech measured their numbers, but they look about right for total system power consumption there, at idle. You have to remember that an SLI setup doesn't use that much more power than a non-SLI setup at idle because the 2nd card really isn't doing a whole lot. Not to mention our unit is rated at 50C, which is hotter than operating temperature in real-world scenarios the majority of the time. Honestly, it's probably closer to 40C, in which case our 620W unit would provide well over 700W reliably. (don't have the exact figures now, but we have done tests at 25C, 35C, 40C, and 50C and determined maximum safe output).

All the same, I was still probably a bit low on that "30%" comment, as in reality it'll probably be closer to 200W than 180W at idle for two cards in SLI.

75% of 620 is 465W. This Anandtech article indicates that peak power consumption of 8800GTX SLI (on an unspecified test rig, unfortunately) was over 520W. This article didn't include any overclocking results. Also consider that AT generally doesn't use overclocked QX6700's, or 4gb of RAM, or two raptor 150's (plus storage), or a water pump (or three), or any CCFLs/fan controllers/displays on their test rigs.

That article seems to say that two 8800GTXs in SLI topped out at ~480W power consumption in the majority of the tests. Their numbers look to be about right, but I didn't see the "520W" figure. I would dispute that figure unless they really overclocked/overvolted the processor quite a bit.

Again, I'm not trying to convince anybody to buy an HX620, I was just saying that it can, in fact, run dual 8800GTXs and when running them, it's not running 100% all the time or anything like that.

We use dual 8800GTXs in our show systems at trade shows, and we use an HX620 to power those systems, and they typically are overclocked to hell.

Keep in mind, though, that the biggest power draws (in order) on your PSU are most likely going to be Video Card, CPU, and Hard Drives.

Unless you have a peltier or some waterpumps and whatnot, the power consumption of fans, cold cathodes, etc, are all fairly minimal.

I didn't mean to come in here and contradict anyone, I just wanted to come in and defend our product against what I saw as an unfair statement. The HX620 is not "gasping the whole way" when running an 8800GTX system in SLI, and it doesn't run at 75% of capacity the entire time, so I felt the need to respond.

 

[Nicepants42]

I didn't mean to come in here and contradict anyone, I just wanted to come in and defend our product against what I saw as an unfair statement. The HX620 is not "gasping the whole way" when running an 8800GTX system in SLI, and it doesn't run at 75% of capacity the entire time, so I felt the need to respond.

Fair enough. I didn't mean to imply that the HX620 couldn't handle an 8800GTX SLI system, either - that comment was meant for this particular build which is going to include quite a laundry list of extra stuff that AT doesn't use.

FYI, If you check my link, the 520W figure is referenced right in the center of the page, between two pictures.

 

[Transporter_GW]

Check out the project:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1030669003&posted=1#post1030669003