Quote:
Originally Posted by alanbjames
u would be surprised how power some of the new cards use.
I have a sapphire R7 260x (oc) and it needs 75watt of power.
There are still shops selling pcs with quad core processors using 400watt PSUs.
When u take into account the CPU, Hard Drives, USB and so on and so on it doesnt leave much room for expansion.
|
400 watt is perfectly fine for a quad core CPU and a high end graphics card. A decent quad-core CPU (non overclocked) uses a maximum 60-80w of power. A high end graphics card uses 200w of power. Hard drives, USB and so on use less than 10w put together which means your total is still barely 300w peak, assuming everything were running at max at the same time.
I have a 430w power supply which is perfectly sufficient for
two quad-core processors, one of the most power hungry graphics cards on the market, a ridiculously inefficient motherboard, and
ten hard drives. This 430w supply is actually rated at a peak output of 500w, and I have seen it draw 530w from the wall before the safety cut-out kicks in.
I also have a 430w power supply in a server system with a quad-core Xeon processor, twenty-six hard drives, and three server RAID controllers, which at full load, uses barely over 200w. That still leaves enough space for
three of your graphics cards.
I also manage a server system at work with dual 8-core Xeon CPUs (16 cores total), 128GB RAM and six 10,000 RPM SAS hard drives. That system uses 328w at full load. Still enough overhead for your graphics card - on top of two Xeon processors 128GB RAM and 6 server hard drives on a 400w power supply.
Seriously, some of the numbers some people come up with are absurdly over-inflated.