By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Raistline said:

I would like to make a minor correction for a statement made earlier, It was made a few pages back.
To the person that suggested a 400W PSU for a 4770k paired with a GTX 980, this is a very bad idea.

For a gaming machine (especially if you plan to overlcock anything) you should always buy a PSU that is rated at least %20 higher than the actual system draw, even if you have a Platinum rated PSU. The reasoning behind this is that if you buy a PSU that is too closely rated to your actual draw the PSU will be working at full capacity at nearly all times of operation. This will cause an early failure of your PSU, random reboots, BSOD's during power spikes among other PSU related issues.
If you get a PSU that is rated at lest 20% higher than actual draw on your system it will not run as hot, will last longer and even after a few years when it is no longer able to run at maximum efficiency it will still be able to power your system without the above motioned issues.
A 4770K (or comparable CPU), with 2 drives (any combo of SDD, HDD, and ODD), and a GTX 980 should have at least a 550W Silver rated PSU for the best stability over the long term. (this assumes a typical system with 3+ fans and 2-4 USB devices connected at all times)

The power draw for a 4770k@4.4GHz + 980 is less than 300W(including the rest of the system). Meaning the system won't even reach 80% PSU capacity.

http://www.computerbase.de/2014-09/geforce-gtx-980-970-test-sli-nvidia/12/

People are too fast overestimating actual consumption of hardware. Especially when it comes to Intel and Nvidia which have notoriously high efficiency.

The only reason I will probably buy a 450W or 480W PSU for my i7 5770k + Big Maxwell combo is that smaller PSUs do not have enough connectors. Broadwell i7s will draw even less than Haswells due to the shrink and I would rather kill myself before I buy a 500+W PSU ever again.



If you demand respect or gratitude for your volunteer work, you're doing volunteering wrong.