I have a Hiper 580watt psu powering my system. Recently I got a 2nd GTX 460 to sli, which proved to be too much for the PSU to handle. Since I have a spare 300watt Enermax lying around, I did the ol' paperclip trick to get the 300 watt running the 2nd GTX 460. It seems to be working fine. Is this a terrible idea? Any reason why this shouldn't work? If I turn the computer off, will I damage something if I don't manually turn off the 300 watt PSU as well?
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SLI with 2nd power supply
- Thread starter PRogers86
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It's a terrible idea because you're using a Hiper PSU, and should really get rid of that and get a new one that can actually output most of its wattage on the 12v rail. Lacks active PFC in addition to being an outdated design.
Something in the 550-600 watt range should suffice for a typical GTX 460 SLI system.
Something in the 550-600 watt range should suffice for a typical GTX 460 SLI system.
But I'm only using the Hiper psu for 1 GTX 460. The 2nd GTX 460 is running solely off of the 300watt psu. The Hiper can handle an i3 2120 and a single GTX 460 quite well. I'm just wondering if running each GPU independently on different PSU's would be a bad idea for some reason. I don't see why it shouldn't work.
cortexodus
[H]ard|Gawd
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Sounds about right to me...
It's less about it working (for the moment, anyways), and more about it not being a good idea for the reasons Tsumi listed above. You asked if anyone thinks your band-aid to this particular insufficient power issue is a bad idea or not; I'm gonna go with "yea, that's a bad idea"
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The Hiper PSU has mediocre regulation and ripple control, lacks active PFC, poor efficiency, and is overall just an old design in general. Whether or not it can handle it is one thing, whether or not it can handle it well is another.
[H]OCP's review. It's a unit that barely passed rigorous testing, but with only 360 watts available on the 12v rail and poor efficiency, it's really time you should be looking at an upgrade.
That is exactly what they are saying. This is how much a system with a single GTX 460 uses:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/07/12/nvidia_geforce_gtx_460_review/8
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More like, it isn't fit to run anything at all. Either keep it as a spare, or put it in a system that you don't care about. The decent ripple and regulation means that it is fit to power things, and won't cause them to blow up, but its outdated design and poor efficiency means that it's time to retire it.