Corsair CMPSU-850TX 850W ATX12V PSU

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crap. Just bought one 750w for 120 with 20 rebate. Works really quiet.

Anyone know a good guide or website for calculating likely power usage? I'm thinking I'm going to run a nVidia 260 or 280, but may SLi it later. I'm running an i7 920 with the 2nd up Gigabyte board. Only one hard drive, and probably only one DVD burner for now. I'm trying to get a feel for how much power I need. I have an OCZ 650 that I'm confident will handle the first video card and the board, but I'm uncertain how we'll I'll do on the 2nd card if I decide to add one later - particularly if I add another hard drive.

#2 - 2 years ago, 500w was considered a lot. 850w and 1000w seems like a lot to me. Have you checked Tom's Hardware? Maybe NVidia has information on their site.

Well, keep in mind that 850 and 1000w units are targeted towards the server or hard core gamer set. The later bunch may be running something like crossfired 4870's, which are known to be power hogs. The problem is, I don't know how much consitutes a power hog these days.

Google the words - pc power calculator - and you'll find what you need gummy.

I am running one of these now. It is silent, has connectors for anything you will need for the foreseeable future, and runs like a champ in my main PC. I am running an AMD XP2 6000+, 2 HD's, 2 DVD burners, an Nvidia 9800 GT+, and 3 GB of RAM. Runs at about a 33% load according to my UPC software.

A good 400W PSU will run a standard clocked system with one nVidia 260. A good 600W will run two SLI'd. Overclocked 280 SLI and more hard drives would tend to bump that up to needing a 850W PSU, however if you've already put that much money into a system it can make sense to spend the extra couple dozen bucks to make sure you have more than enough PSU capacity.

9 times out of 10 if you Google for a pc power calculator you'll find one that grossly overestimates the amount of power required, but at least that's better than underestimating.

dave_c is probably right. The online calculation claimed I needed close to 500 watts of power when it appears I am only drawing about 300. Then again I also agree that having a bit of available overhead is good if you decide to go with an SLI set-up or add a few drives. I was running a decent 400 watt Antec supply at one point in this same set-up and I would sometimes get flaky reboots and odd OS errors. Since replacing it I've had no issues. Maybe the power supply was going bad or the supply from the wall wasn't perfect but...

at least there is not a rebate with this.

Awesome, the 20% off code sealed the deal for me. I've only used Antec PSUs so far. Let's hope I have good luck with Corsair as well.

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