GTX 690 & my PSU?

DFBHDTS

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Hi guys,

I currently have a GTX 660Ti however I am looking to upgrade as I am giving this card to a friend, plus there will no doubt be some demanding games coming out close to Christmas. I'm concerned that my PSU might not be good enough to grab a 690? I want to get a titan as they will be small enough to SLI when they go down in price but my case only has room for 1 690 at the moment as my HDD and SSD are in the way for SLI of that card.

Anyway here are my specs:

i7 3770K OC to 4.6ghz
Asus P8Z77 Ivy Bridge
1tb HDD
120gb SSD
Nvidia GTX 660Ti
16gb RAM
700W basic chillblast PSU


The fact that I have a basic PSU is what is concerning me. I have only just got my PC (Christmas) and I'm not sure whether I am going to have to do some fiddling and grab a new PSU or if a 690 will do for the time being? My plan was to grab a 690 then upgrade my PSU later down the line to future proof it for the next lot of cards.


What do you guys think I should do anyway?

Cheers
 


1) The titan is a limited edition card - there's a set, very small number of them. They're going to go UP in price, not down.

2) As the generation of video cards gets newer, the video cards draw less power. It makes no sense to upgrade your power supply "for the next generation of cards" when, in all likelyhood, a 790 will draw less power than a 690.

3) Your power supply, if it were actually 700 watts, would be more than enough for a 690. However, it's not of a reliable brand - I'd be surprised if it were even able to push 600 watts.


This means that upgrading your power supply IS in fact something you should do - but to prevent your computer from frying or blowing up, not to "future proof." Buying a 690 or a Titan? Utter waste of money.

What screen resolution are you playing on? If it's 1080p or lower, then a 670 is going to max pretty much anything out there, and two 670s is basically the same amount of power as a 690 for $200 less. (And no, you should not buy a 680 - it's only 5% faster than a 670, but it costs 25-30% more.)

 

DFBHDTS

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Ok well the PSU I have at the moment is made by the people who actually built my PC. http://www.chillblast.com/CB-Basic-700W-PSU.html

Is there any way of seeing if it can use 700W or close to that without blowing up my PC? lol.

I'm running on 1920x1080p at the moment. Just my GTX 660Ti gets below 30 fps on some games on ultra so I would like to be playing at a comfortable fps for most of the demanding games.

The only thing I am worried about is that the people who built by PC wired it up very neatly so I have a nice airflow, and if I am going to change the PSU I can see me taking the entire thing out, and having no idea where to stick the new one in and stuff! I mean I can change a lot of components with ease, but never changed a PSU so not very confident in my ability to do it haha.

So you are saying I should just grab a GTX 670 (or an overclocked one) and just wait to see what cards come out later in the year?

Thanks for the quick reply guys.
 

ShalomJuitsie

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most likely if you get your hands dirty, you will benefit-. By going into your computer you can rearrange your hardware to allow for SLI as well-I would consider a 4 gb card and the 670 makes sense- the titan is a total ripoff and way over priced- a devious way to raise the price of nvidia's high end single cards-release a new generation card with turned off parts so you can up the price on the high end card-Recall the 580 came out and was charging 600 a year or two ago-Sleezy tactic
 

DFBHDTS

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I'll look for an overclocked 670 then and then look at upgrading my PSU very soon. Will have to do some research for to get my confidence up in doing it. My system cost me almost a grand so you can understand why I'm a bit weary at fiddling. Fiddling with gfx, RAM, drives is nice and easy, the PSU seems a bit of an arse to sort out lol.
 
The PSU is one of the easier parts to change out in a system mainly because there are no drivers needed after you change it out. The PSU plugs into all of your parts, so you would need to take off all covers and get access to all parts of your system. You would unplug each item until all of them are unplugged. Then you unscrew the 4 screws (assuming it's like most other PSU's out there) holding the PSU to the case and remove the PSU. Next thing to do is install the New PSU and hook all of the parts back up (being mindful of where the wires are located and making some room for airflow.

It's up to you, but I would consider upgrading the PSU first before attaching a more power hungry GPU to your existing PSU.
 

DFBHDTS

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Ok sure thing. I think it's safe to say I will get my PSU sorted then! Wish I had paid a few extra bob to get a better PSU. But then again when I bought the PC it was my first venture back into PC gaming since 2003. So I have a lot of catching up to do!

I'll give it a try but I think I will purchase an EVGA 4GB GTX670 FTW. I have modded skyrim seriously so could do with the extra Vram. Then grab a better PSU like a month later. :)


 

ShalomJuitsie

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of course, but he only asked the question because of his interest in the 690-that said- I recommend taking a chance on going into your computor and getting to know it-it's not that big a deal