The Gaming PC Building/Upgrade Thread

[Twistedpixel]

Garcian Smith said:

Twistedpixel said:

 

Words

As I've already made my position clear on your sources (or lack thereof), I'll respond to the only thing that you linked and repeat my link demonstrating the actual wattage that a full system sporting a Radeon 4850 consumes at full 3D load. Graphics card manufacturers notoriously overinflate the PSU wattages needed to run their cards, mostly because of the aforementioned cheap inefficient PSUs that people who don't know any better buy for their home-built systems. Here's an anecdote: I recently installed a Radeon HD 4350 in my girlfriend's computer and ATI's recommended PSU wattage for that was 350W. Which, as anyone who knows anything about the 4350 knows, is laughably high. I think her PC runs a 250W PSU or something piddly like that.

Otherwise, keep in mind that that 230 watts at full 3D load was for the entire system. You could easily balance your system on a two-rail 350W PSU by dedicating one rail to the GPU and the other to the rest of the system. And that's if it's two rails in the first place - many quality PSUs, including the Corsair that I have in my home system, feature just a single rail.

 

EDIT: I just checked again, and that 230W figure was actually after they overclocked the card. The actual wattage at stock, for the entire system at full 3D load, was just 202W. Even more proof that a 350W PSU could handle that system.

The source: http://www.overclock.net/ati/594302-ati-power-consumption-graphs.html

Collated from Xbitlabs.com and GPUreview.com

Orange represents Furmark, red represents typical game power. HD 4850 = 120W max, HD 5750 = 85W max.

As for the PSU, then with further research I revise my reccomendation to an Antec Sonata 3 with an Earthwatts 500W PSU and 2 6 pin PCI-E cards. $110 which IIRC is the same price as the two components you suggested seperately. It has a 12cm fan with a variable speed control.

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129024

Keeping a PSU under 30% typical load during idle can help extend its life. The closer its run to full capacity the lower the expected lifespan and the more noise you can expect from it. It also gives the option of running up to an HD 5870 class card, theres no point in a computer which you cannot upgrade without ripping it apart. I wasn't saying that it wouldn't run, I was saying that it may not be such a good long term prospect.