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Raistline said:
vivster said:
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.

Since the site you are using is not in English I will refer to tomshardware which does the most extensive testing out of any site that I know of.

Here is the direct link with the wattage usage for a non-overclocked system using a GTx 980. It is on the low end and suprisingly lower than I orignaly thought. Avg draw is ~175W peaking at just under 350W. This is one Sata device, adding a second would at max add another 10W per device. The average machine has 2 or 3 so we can  asume 360W max load for an average PC.

360X1.2 so that you have teh 20% overhad puts you at 432 Watts. If you have a PSU with enough conneciton for everything you would be perfectly safe with a 450W Silver PSU, or a 475W Bronze. You could get by with a 400 but the PSU will have a higher chance of failure working at 85%+ of max fequently.  The power draw shown for 60 seconds reaches max draw frequently enough to base your PSU purchase on that.

Here is the link. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-970-maxwell,3941-12.html. Look for graph labeled with TOTAL.

While I absolutely respect Tom's Hardware I will go by my personal experience(I use a power measurement tool on my current PC) and that of computerbase which I absolutely trust. My PC will only have 2 SATA devices. One SSD and one slow spinning 2TB drive which won't even reach 10W together. There also won't be a lot of fans inside the case.

I am expecting with the big maxwell and i7 57xx with both base clocked an overall draw below 350W. Sadly There isn't much choice regarding low powered PSUs with high 80+ standards. Looks like I'm limited to Enermax 430W Gold, BeQuiet 480W Gold or Enermax 500W platinum.

So ultimately this whole discussion is pointless because the market won't let me buy a 400W Platinum or Gold PSU to my liking^^

The PSU market really needs to step up its game. I couldn't even find a proper 100-200W Gold PSU in ATX form factor for my cute little server that consumes 80W at peak.



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