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PSU Wattage Calculators

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kevineugenius

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 9, 2006
Messages
1,415
I understand that they're not perfect and watts aren't the only thing that matters. However, I just looked through a couple for a bit of baseline info and here is what I got:

Outvision-based calculator: 497W
Newegg's calculator: 655W
Asus' calculator: 950W

So, that basically covers every single power supply on the market right now... How do you *really* know how much power you need? I'm currently running a 700W and it seems to be problem-free, but I have a mobo issue and they won't replace the mobo until I've ruled out power supply problems for certain.

2600k
Gigabyte z68 UD4
G.Skill 2x4gb 1333
2x AMD 6870 1gb
1x 10k SATA
1x 7.2k SATA
1x Bluray SATA
1x PCI audio
2x CPU fans
3x oversize case fans (HAF 922)

I personally think moving up a couple hundred watts is the smart thing to do, but I've also had people on this very forum suggest that the 700 that I have is more than I need.
 
700W is perfect for that setup (More than needed if anything). What exact PSU do you have? Some "700W" PSU's really arent..
 
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I forget the model of it. It came out of an Alienware refurb case a few years ago, I want to say it's a Hipro... I've gotten quite a bit of life out of it, bench test with multimeter says it still works perfectly but that doesn't factor in loads and whatnot.
 
I'd go with a good 600-700w unit. What is your 700w?

Edit: Hrmmm, that doesn't tell us much. If you could get the model off of it and the ratings, that would help alot.
 
Hipro HP-W700WC3 is the beast, and psucalc.net says 525W. I'm not sure I can fully trust anything less than 600W with dual GPUs running 3x 1200p monitors... that's kind of graphics-intensive at times. I don't know what kind of stress they're pulling, but I'd imagine somewhere near 400W peak all by themselves. Logically, then, that means you'd power a Sandy Bridge quad-core machine with integrated graphics on just 125-150W. I don't buy it. Maybe my logic is faulty, maybe GPUs don't suck up the juice like they used to, maybe CPUs don't eat it like they did ten years ago either but... I dunno, seems pretty weak to me. I tried to power this system with 1 GPU on a 535W PSU and it wouldn't even boot. Granted, that PSU was a cheap-o pile of junk but at non-peak loads like just powering on and booting up, it should've worked fine IF these other calculators are accurate as well. Just a couple observations from my years of plugging things in and hoping for no sparks, not real scientific (yet).

Anyhoo, for now I picked up a TT 850W at Best Buy (why? Because I can return it...). If it fixes the problem, I'll start shopping for a real replacement and crying over the death of my wallet.
 
kevineugenius said:
Hipro HP-W700WC3 is the beast, and psucalc.net says 525W. I'm not sure I can fully trust anything less than 600W with dual GPUs running 3x 1200p monitors... that's kind of graphics-intensive at times. I don't know what kind of stress they're pulling, but I'd imagine somewhere near 400W peak all by themselves. Logically, then, that means you'd power a Sandy Bridge quad-core machine with integrated graphics on just 125-150W. I don't buy it. Maybe my logic is faulty, maybe GPUs don't suck up the juice like they used to, maybe CPUs don't eat it like they did ten years ago either but... I dunno, seems pretty weak to me. I tried to power this system with 1 GPU on a 535W PSU and it wouldn't even boot. Granted, that PSU was a cheap-o pile of junk but at non-peak loads like just powering on and booting up, it should've worked fine IF these other calculators are accurate as well. Just a couple observations from my years of plugging things in and hoping for no sparks, not real scientific (yet).

Anyhoo, for now I picked up a TT 850W at Best Buy (why? Because I can return it...). If it fixes the problem, I'll start shopping for a real replacement and crying over the death of my wallet.
Click to expand...

Is that Thermal take unit a TR2 RX by chance? If it is, it is barely a 600W unit...and does not stay within ATX spec limits for noise and ripple past 400W.
 
It's an SP 850M, I don't see anything saying TR2 or RX. However, with it installed (wooo it's quiet compared to my oversized Hipro) the boot loops continued... sigh. So I complained to Gigabyte again and this time they're sending me a UPS tag so I don't have to pay shipping but still going to be without my PC for 2-3 weeks while they process the RMA.

In other news, my system wouldn't boot on the TT PSU. I just hooked up the bare essentials, MB, CPU, 4x GPU, and 1x SATA to my boot HD. It said "Insert system disk" when trying to boot. I'm now wondering if Windows wrote the MBR or whatever they call it nowdays to the wrong hard drive or something. Only other logical jump is that the TT PSU was faulty right out of the box, but since I've seen sooooo many other threads and people with Z68 boards with the same problem, it just doesn't smell like a PSU problem to me. Plugged everything back into my old PSU and it actually fired up first try. So, perhaps I don't even need a power supply right now. Argh, I don't want to tear apart this PC again. I'm going to be out of thermal paste by the time this is over with. More likely I'll just ebay the Gigabyte board and get a Z77 though. I don't *need* it but they apparently don't have this issue like the Z68s have.
 
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