Doing this upgrade thinger, PSU (and maybe other) questions

midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi(> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
edited September 2012 in Hardware
So, I'm still picking stuff out for an upgrade, and I feel kinda silly having to ask some of this stuff, but here goes...

Gonna get a geforce GTX 660Ti (it has a GT 430 atm), add a Vortex 4 SSD, and it already has a Core i3 in it. I'm running it with an Antec 500W at the moment. I'm wondering if, first, I should pursue a larger power supply before I stick the new stuff in it (I'm thinking yes cause I run a decent number of peripherals). If so, I have other questions...

One, I know current consumer-level power supplies run the whole gamut of wattages, both constant and peak, anywhere from 200 to 1200 watts and beyond. How do you make sure you're not going way overkill or just barely limboing by(without knowing all your exact power requirements/rail usages)?

Two, if I do go overkill, will a larger power supply only draw what's being utilized (plus wasted to heat and whatnot), or will you do better for power-consumption (ie, power bills) by getting something smaller? I do realize a power supply will draw more if the stuff it's supplying demands more (up to its peak, and for as long as that will last), but I mean when it's sitting idle will a smaller supply draw significantly (significantly as in enough amps to make a real power bill impact) less current than a larger supply?

Three, if I'm looking at two supplies (I haven't done a whole lot of research yet, though), one that is a 750W continuous and one that is a 1000W continuous, basically identical otherwise, and the 1000W is only $20 more, would you go for it?

Four, any recommendations as far as brand/size/getthispowersupplyrightherebecausethisdealisawesomeforanamazingsupply/etc?

Five, am I totally missing or overlooking anything I should be asking/thinking about?

Like I said, I feel kinda silly for asking some of these, especially considering I work with electrical systems professionally, but I'm second-guessing the crap outta myself so there you go. =/

Comments

  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    As your resident local shill, it's my job to point out that the 7870 GHz Edition is faster than the 660 Ti. It's also $60 cheaper, even before MIR. You'll also get a free copy of Sleeping Dogs.

    Your PSU should be in the 700-800W range to accommodate future upgrades. This will handle dual GPUs if you ever want to try your hand at that. Your PSU's rating only specifies what it is capable of providing, not what it will draw when the system is in operation--only your components can determine that. But you can improve the power bill of the draw being placed on your PSU by looking for a SILVER or GOLD-rated PSU, which are better at converting power from the wall into useful DC current for your components.

    The Corsair TX series should be your one-stop shop for ridiculously good power supplies. They may only be bronze rated, but they actually perform in the silver class and are some of the best PSUs on the market, especially considering their price.

    I would be terrified of any 1000W PSU that's only $20 more than a 700W unit.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    @Thrax, please go and shill with F@H devs. That is all

    RE bronze\silver\gold\platinum: it should be noted that the best conversion occurs when your load is withing 10-15% of the max for that PSU. I can source that if needed or retract like a fool if that isn't true.
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    I'll be honest, I've avoided Radeon cards cause my experiences with them many years ago spoke of horrid drivers and user interfaces. Of course, that was years ago, but it left me scared to switch away from my GeForce comfort zone (also, like half my games have the NVidia logo stamped on them...). That being said, the laptop I bought off Dras has one in it, I think, and it seems to work just wonderfully... You know, I think I might save myself $60 (and hope I'm not making a horrible horrible mistake that I'll inevitably blame you for... <3@Thrax). That'll go well toward the PSU I'll be getting...

    And speaking of, thanks for the info. I seem to remember hearing about those now, but my brain could be making that up. I think I'll snag that 850W so I don't have to replace it forever. Most of the other PSUs I've seen have multiple 12V rails, though, and those only have one. Any idea as to why?

    And for the record, the 750W/1000W PSUs I was looking at were Rosewill. No idea what that might mean for PSUs, but they made a good impression on me with a fan I picked up years ago.

    @Tushon, while F@H might be awesome and I'll very likely start doing it again soonish, it's not really going to factor into reasons I get a video card. At least not in my primary gaming rig. If you have other arguments in the Radeon/GeForce debate, though, I'd love to hear them. Right now, $60 less for essentially the same graphics performance (I know it says faster, but that's by a not-huge margin) sounds like a good deal.
  • Cliff_ForsterCliff_Forster Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    Big honkin single 12V rail > several distributed 12V rails - Especially if it's from Corsair or Seasonic. They make bad ass single rail supplies, and it just simplifies things for installation, you don't have to worry about balancing anything. I think the idea of distributing the rails came from some ATX safety spec guidelines. Ask yourself, am I dumb enough to open up my power supply and grab a capacitor with my bare hand? If you answer no, a big fat single 12V rail is for you.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    There are not other good reasons.

    Rosewill is newegg house brand and is to be shunned. Corsair, Seasonic, PCP&C and Silverstone are all excellent brands, even more so when you shell out a little extra for the higher efficiency.

    linky (those brands + 80+ bronze and up, sorted by rating, 750-850W)
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
  • I'm powering my six core rig running two 6870's in crossfire with this. I'm very pleased, I really like the fully modular design, it helps allot when routing the cables.
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    If I end up really liking this card, I might dual it. I think my next upgrade should probably focus on my mobo/proc, though (dual will require a new board anyway). I have a Lenovo Ideacentre K410, slightly modified, and figure that while the core i3 seems to be doing everything I want it to do, that and the PCIe 2.0 are going to be what's holding me back the most after this new stuff goes in. Of course I have been wrong before...
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    PCIe 2.0 vs. 3.0 is a non-issue except in a few outlying cases (quad GPU, heavy GPU compute, etc.)
    midga
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian

    I'm powering my six core rig running two 6870's in crossfire with this. I'm very pleased, I really like the fully modular design, it helps allot when routing the cables.

    I'm also using that and love it for the same reasons. If I ever go dual instead of upgrading, I'll love it some more.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    Check it out
    http://www.anandtech.com/show/6168/rosewill-fortress-platinum-450w
    These guys have tested a bunch of PSUs and have good data.

    In reality you want your idle (not sleep) load to be about 15-20% of the rating and your full load about 60-80%.
    This gets you the best eff. (and therefore cooler and quieter).
    Going a little big doesn't hurt, but if your system actually draws 350W don't buy a 750W PSU.

    I have a semi-modular cable set up and like it. Power cables are permanent and aux cables are modular.
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    I suppose Rosewill is upticking in quality again then. They were good 5+ years ago, then switched manufacturers to a much poorer component quality and their recent reviews sunk.
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    I found a thing for calculating PSU requirements. I didn't even consider such a thing would exist, but the interwebs randomly pointed me at it a little bit ago. I ran a calc with both my current system (estimated 259W req.) and the system with the stuff I'm gonna put in it (estimated 354W req.). I think I'm gonna be well under that 60-80%, lol

    Well, I guess now I can play around with RAID and not be worried about all the extra drives drawing too much power XD
  • Those calculators make some assumptions that it will be a quality supply. I realize there was some reference to efficiency at load, and what amount of overhead gains the most efficient use of the supply. With today's dynamically clocking chips and graphics your system is in a constant state of adjustment. It's nearly impossible to know what it's draw will be from one cycle to the next. All you can do is plan for the worst case scenario and have ample overhead. Antec does not make junk power supplies. If you have a 500 watt 80 plus rated Antec supply you can get along with it until you make a decision to crossfire.
  • fatcatfatcat Mizzou Icrontian
    edited September 2012
    A Geforce 660Ti 3GB will compete with a 7950 w/Boost and you get Borderlands 2 with it.
    Our performance results were not too far apart in most of our gaming between the Radeon HD 7950 w/Boost and GALAXY GTX 660 Ti GC at high AA settings. We often found both video cards with fewer than 10% performance difference. We saw a few instances where the Radeon HD 7950 w/Boost was faster, and we even saw a few instances where the GALAXY GTX 660 Ti GC was faster at higher settings. So much for the extreme memory bandwidth advantage on the Radeon HD 7950.
    So @Thrax, are you saying a 7870 is faster than a 7950?
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    I'm saying that the most trusted reviewer in North America compared a 660 Ti with a 7870 and showed that the 7870 was faster.

    Of course a hella overclocked 660 Ti (Galaxy 660) is going to compete with a 7950, for the same reasons a hella overclocked 7870 also competes with a 7950.
  • The 7870 is at least running neck and neck with the 660 ti in all major benchmarks. It runs a couple degrees cooler, and draws nearly 40 watts less while costing $60 fewer. Clear winner.
  • fatcatfatcat Mizzou Icrontian
    just gonna post this a walk away ;)

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  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    Dude, if I had known Steam kept AMD drivers updated, I wouldn't have held out as long as I did. o.o
    So far the performance is good. I haven't tried anything to push it and see what it can really do, but I did bump settings to see if what would lag on my previous card would no longer lag. That was pleasant.
    I went ahead and installed the Corsair cause it was shiny and there and I wanted to. It's a power supply. I have nothing really to say about it other than it's pretty quiet.
    I haven't installed the SSD yet. I was really surprised how small the box for it is when I saw it, though.
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    midga said:

    Dude, if I had known Steam kept AMD drivers updated, I wouldn't have held out as long as I did. o.o
    So far the performance is good. I haven't tried anything to push it and see what it can really do, but I did bump settings to see if what would lag on my previous card would no longer lag. That was pleasant.
    I went ahead and installed the Corsair cause it was shiny and there and I wanted to. It's a power supply. I have nothing really to say about it other than it's pretty quiet.
    I haven't installed the SSD yet. I was really surprised how small the box for it is when I saw it, though.

    i've done the steam amd driver thing once and it messed up. took forever to get it working/undo all the crap. probably just an edge case, but i'll stick to doing it the old-fashioned way.
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    Well, I'm over a full day in, and it's awesome, except my Youtube video watching experience is rife with random video pauses. The audio is fine, but the video will just stop playing for a second or two or ten and then just pick right up where the audio is at. @Thrax or anyone else, you have any experience with this issue?
  • TushonTushon I'm scared, Coach Alexandria, VA Icrontian
    This is fresh image, right? Latest driver from AMD website?
  • shwaipshwaip bluffin' with my muffin Icrontian
    midga said:

    Well, I'm over a full day in, and it's awesome, except my Youtube video watching experience is rife with random video pauses. The audio is fine, but the video will just stop playing for a second or two or ten and then just pick right up where the audio is at. @Thrax or anyone else, you have any experience with this issue?

    you can try disabling HW accel for flash. Not sure it's the best solution, but it may work. Try right-clicking on any flash video, going to settings and it should be in the first window that pops up.
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    I'll give that a shot. Tushon's post got me thinking, and I think I'm just not going to worry about it too much until I'm on a fresh install with my SSD.
  • ThraxThrax 🐌 Austin, TX Icrontian
    Cat 12.8 has intermittent flash acceleration issues on select platforms (rare). Will be fixed in a few days with 12.9, or you can use the 12.7 Beta driver, which has all of the latest performance enhancements for Radeon.
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    Awesome, thanks for the info, @Thrax!
  • midgamidga "There's so much hot dog in Rome" ~digi (> ^.(> O_o)> Icrontian
    Just an update, I have a fresh install on my SSD now, and I haven't noticed the issue with Flash. I haven't watched anything over ten minutes yet, but I'm feeling good about it. :)

    Also, I gotta say I'm really surprised how well this system is performing. It's actually an older model IdeaCentre than I thought (a K320) though there doesn't seem to be much different from the K410 I had assumed it was. It's still a Core i3, it's running 6GB of ram at a speed I'd have to look at (not on the system atm), but because of that fairly awesome Radeon and the SSD it's maxing settings on Borderlands 2 and a Crisis 3 engine game I'm playing without a touch of lag.

    It's good stuff :D
  • AlexDeGruvenAlexDeGruven Wut? Meechigan Icrontian
    Most gaming is going to be GPU-bound for performance. Unless your CPU is literally limping at getting the software up and running, or is having trouble pushing the data to the card, you can do pretty well for quite a while just by upgrading the GPU.

    I went through 3 GPUs on my C2D E7200, and only replaced it when my normal applications and some less-than-GPU intensive games started slowing down.
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