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Wasted expense?

V

vval2

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Oct 20, 2016
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With video cards requiring less power now a days are 1000w+ needed? I was told to get a good power supply in case i wanted to SLI or Crossfire and well i guess i kinda over did it with a 1600w psu. Should i keep it or return it and get a 850w or so psu?
 
What do you have in your system? In any case, 1600 watts is never necessary for a dual GPU system. However, GPUs today draw as much power as GPUs in the past, and even more power than the early GPUs. GPU power increased from the first GPUs until about the GTX 2xx/HD4xxx area, where it mostly plateaued till today.

Good means high quality. The size of the PSU is not an indicator of quality.
 
its a mid range system but not too new my psu died and had to get a new one so got the one with the most wattage i could find. the psu is a lepa g1600w 80 plus gold certifued. the gpu is a gtx 970 considering adding another or just upgrading to 1070 or 1080. the cpu is a fx 8350 4ghz oc to 4.5. 16 gb ddr 3. not sure if the hhds factor in much but running a 256 gb ssd, 3tb 72000 hdd, and x4 1tb hdds. i think its 5 or 6 fans and 1 pump plus some rgb strips.
 
970s are the equivalent of GTX 260s, they are the mid-range chip, just nVidia has figured out they can sell them at high end prices if they release them first. 970s draw ~200 watts at most. Same story with the 1070 and 1080. The 1080 will be about equivalent to the GTX 275, 460, 560, and 680 in the power ladder. 1080 will be about 220 watts at most.

The Lepa G1600 is not the highest quality PSU you can buy, and I have heard of multiple people having issues with them. Your current system will be adequately powered by a 550 watt PSU, 750 watt for SLI. The EVGA 750 G2 will be higher quality than the Lepa and far better suited to your system.
 
vval2 said:
Thanks hope i can return it and what would be best 2 970 or 1 1080?
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I always go with a single powerful card over an SLI config - SLI profiles aren't always 100% and often don't arrive on a particular game's release day.

I ended up with a 1080 SLI because my wife bought me one for my birthday, but if I had the cash for 2 1080's, I would either have held out for the 1080Ti or would have grabbed a Titan XP.

Edit: I use a Corsair RM 850W power supply and it runs both 1080's overclocked and my overclocked i7 5930k.
 
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i do alot of iray rendering would have loved a titan xp my self but thats out of my budget for now. I really should have posted here before i purchased the psu would have saved me lots of down time
 
The GTX 1080 is about 25% faster at rendering than a GTX 980, which would probably make it about 30-40% faster than a single 970. It'll be about 70-75% the speed of two 970s in rendering, assuming the rendering scales perfectly and depending on the type of rendering and software.
 
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A Killawatt meter is $20 and will show you exactly how much wattage your system is actually pulling under use. My 4790k / 970 typically draws 320w max while gaming. Double that and even 600w is way overkill.

Power supplies are the worst offenders of "bigger number must mean better"
 
melk said:
A Killawatt meter is $20 and will show you exactly how much wattage your system is actually pulling under use. My 4790k / 970 typically draws 320w max while gaming. Double that and even 600w is way overkill.

Power supplies are the worst offenders of "bigger number must mean better"
Click to expand...
Yeah, if one doesn't have a UPS with a built-in power usage display a power meter like that is rather worth it. I've got a 6600k and 970 that only draws ~250W at the wall while under full load. (that includes a 20W monitor, a ~5W HTPC machine and a network switch)
 
Keep in mind gaming generally does not stress your system to the max. You should always plan for a minimum of max load at your planned overclock levels + 10%.
 
Tsumi said:
Keep in mind gaming generally does not stress your system to the max. You should always plan for a minimum of max load at your planned overclock levels + 10%.
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Generally, PSUs are the most efficient at around 50% load.

With that in mind, I generally like to get something that the constant load wattage is about twice what I think the system will pull.

That also tends to help the longevity as well since form my experience, a PSU will tend to last longer and run cooler if it isn't loaded up to near maximum all the time.
 
cyclone3d said:
Generally, PSUs are the most efficient at around 50% load.

With that in mind, I generally like to get something that the constant load wattage is about twice what I think the system will pull.

That also tends to help the longevity as well since form my experience, a PSU will tend to last longer and run cooler if it isn't loaded up to near maximum all the time.
Click to expand...

You're talking about a few percentage difference at most, and you will have a more inefficient idle power draw, as efficiency drops off below 20%.

Are you gaming and/or folding or some other distributed computing project all day long? If not, your computer is not at full load all the time. Gaming power draw is also typically 50-70% of maximum theoretical power draw.
 
Tsumi said:
Keep in mind gaming generally does not stress your system to the max. You should always plan for a minimum of max load at your planned overclock levels + 10%.
Click to expand...
Note how I specifically said "Full load". I specifically loaded up Prime95 and Furmark one day to get the thing that high. "Normal" gaming runs around ~220W (something I forgot to mention is the 6600K is indeed overclocked but not overvolted by much at all)

Far as the PSU goes, it's got a 450W one in it at the moment. (one of the bitty little Silverstone ones for ITX cases)
 
vval2 said:
With video cards requiring less power now a days are 1000w+ needed? I was told to get a good power supply in case i wanted to SLI or Crossfire and well i guess i kinda over did it with a 1600w psu. Should i keep it or return it and get a 850w or so psu?
Click to expand...

Return it and get something around 1000w if you still want a hefty padding just in case.

I just got a camelx3 update, the EVGA T2 1600w I was eyeing for a while is finally under $399, but doh, I already downsized from quad 290x so I no longer need a stupid large psu. I'm running a 6700K and a txp with a full loop and a ton of fans and at worst it draws 580w benching maxed out before conversion. After factoring efficiency its only pulling 510w, so it could stand another txp easily. And in your case a 1kw will cover any of the gpus now or in the near future.
 
A 750 watt PSU will cover any single CPU/single GPU system. The top CPUs max out around 250-300 watts on water, big die GPUs at 300-350 watts on water. On air, that's more like around 200-250 watts and 250-300 watts respectively, easily handled by a 650 watt. And if you stay with Intel's mainstream platform, those CPUs top out around 150 watts and typically less, allowing you to get by with a 550 watt for a top end mainstream Intel + big die GPU. It has been this way since about 2011, with Intel's Sandy Bridge and nVidia's Fermi.
 
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