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Would this work for a 5870?

H

H4wXx

n00b
Joined
Jun 14, 2009
Messages
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I recently got a 5870 which was having some issues for which I've deduced it was not receiving enough amperage, so I'm wondering if an upgrade to an Antec True Power New 650W power supply would provide enough amperage for my 5870.

Thanks in advance! :D

Edit: Was going to go with the EarthWatt's 650w, but [H]OCP's review of the Earthwatts 750w made me change my mind, sorry for the sneaky editing, lol.
 
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What PSU do you have now?

But yes both the EA650 and the Trupower New 650 have enough amperage on the +12V rail for that card. As for the rest of the system, that's unknown considering you haven't provided the specs of your system....

Oh and the Earthwatts EA650 did better than the EA750 under testing.
 
Sounds like a good decision. I would recommend something 750W and up, you never know if you get a great deal with another 5870 in half a year and want to cross fire them :D
 
At the moment I have an Earthwatts 500w, and my system specs are as follows; Core2Duo E6750 (2.66 ghz), Gigabyte N650SLI-DS4L, 4gb OCZ DDR2 800, 200gb WD HDD, 250gb WD external HDD.

As for something 750w or up, I'm thinking it might just be better to bite the bullet and get a Corsair TX750.
 
A 500w should be plenty for that setup, assuming it's not an overly old PSU. Really shouldn't need to replace that.
 
You don't need a PSU upgrade. The EA500 is plenty for your system even with a 5870.
 
Even with only 2 +12v rails at 17 amps a piece? My reasoning for believing my power supply is not cutting it is that my DVD drive would cease to work when I had the 5870 installed but it works fine now that I've switched back to my 8600GTS, also the fan on the 5870 would pulsate and my computer would not post for about 8 seconds after which the pulsating would stop (usually takes around 1). The pulsating would go away and my computer would post normally if I unplugged everything except the 5870 and CPU/Mobo/RAM, but only intermittently and only using a specific combination of one of the dedicated PCI-E cables (but only one specific one) and two Molex connectors off of two seperate Molex cables (via an adapter).
 
I would be more inclined to believe the issue is caused by something else, since your PSU should have plenty of power for the components you're using. However, if you do indeed want to buy a new PSU, the Earthwatts 650W would definitely be enough like Danny pointed out, as would the 650W Truepower New.
 
Just a quick question, do either of you know what the amperage requirements of a 5870 are? I'm not doubting the wattage of my power supply because my system should not exceed a draw of more than 450w, I'm just doubting the amperage because I've read that a 5870 requires something along the lines of at least 40 amps to itself.

To further my suspicions that a lack of amperage is the cause of my problems, it would make sense that unplugging components such as the hard drive, DVD drive, and fans, would allow for more amperage to be supplied to the video card which may explain why the pulsating would stop intermittently. Because if my video card is trying to draw 40 or more amps and my power supply cannot supply that, I don't doubt that it would cause problems.

Edit: Also, all mentions of pulsating fans I could find through google were paired with either a defective power supply, or not enough amperage.
 
Upgrade. /End discussion. No messing around with power when you're on the line.
 
I believe you have summed it up well, I've already made my decision anyways, lol. Going to get a Corsair TX750 in the near future :D .
 
H4wXx said:
Just a quick question, do either of you know what the amperage requirements of a 5870 are?
Click to expand...
The 5870 has a TDP of 188W, or about 16A. However, in practice it consumes about 130W of power at most, which is about 11A.
 
Well if that's the case, then what else could be the cause of my problems?
 
Well I've decided to give troubleshooting the issue another go, which led to my discovery that clearing the CMOS solved the problem until the BIOS reloaded itself, which leads me now to believe that it may just be my BIOS not liking the the card or something. I'm going to do a system torture test to see if anything fails, if not, then perhaps I came to the wrong conclusion.

However this is all because I am trusting that you're knowledge here is correct, if you for any reason doubt that an EA500 should do the job, or that the 5870 only requires 11A - 16A, I implore you to let me know before I end up killing this rather pricy card.
 
Under-powering the card won't kill it -- it has built-in safeguards, it'll just shut itself down. The PSU is more likely to take the hit if you're overdrawing, but it too has safeguards built in that should result in only a loss of power, no damage.

Run stress tests as planned, and if your system fails them either the card itself or your PSU is faulty.
 
You can run Crossfire 5870 on a quality 650W with no sweat. In fact, I originally bought my HX650 to do just that. I upgraded to an HX850 as I'm now going to be running 3 video cards.
 
MJZ said:
You can run Crossfire 5870 on a quality 650W with no sweat. In fact, I originally bought my HX650 to do just that. I upgraded to an HX850 as I'm now going to be running 3 video cards.
Click to expand...

You might well be able to do that, but I would never recommend it.
 
Well after stressing for 2 hours (all the time I had right now, will do more later), everything seems just fine. All the temps were within their acceptable range and nothing failed so I'm thinking the fan thing might just be related to my BIOS, because I'm sure if I was over drawing the PSU it would have gotten hotter than it normally does.

I'll do some more testing, but at the moment everything seems dandy. Gonna' go play some Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer now. :D
 
MJZ said:
Crossfire 5870s on full load on heavily overclocked Core i7.

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/29...870_graphics_card_in_crossfire_x/index14.html

A Quality 550W or 600W is enough. 650W is more than enough.
Click to expand...

A quality 550W or 600W PSU would not be enough for the following reasons:
Paul_Johnson said:
Yes and a quick search would turn up this topic a million times over. Here is the recap:

1) APFC can fool Kill-A-Watts into giving you abnormally low readings (some times giving better than 100% efficiency)

2) Power supplies derate with temperature anywhere from 2w/c above a nominal rated at value to 10w/c.

3) Kill-A-Watt's and most power meters sample too slowly to catch transient loads (the Transient load from our tests is 117w and is COMPLETELY missed by Kill-A-Watts).

4) Power supplies last longer if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

5) power supplies are quieter if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

6) Power supplies are cooler if you stay in the 40% to 60% range of their output.

The power meters in UPS software are just as bad. You have to spend some change before you get anywhere near an accurate power meter when your PSU has APFC.
Click to expand...
 
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