Enough Power??? --- Corsair AX860i

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Eggz

Eggz

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Sep 3, 2013
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Hi Tom's people!

I just upgraded my motherboard to OC better. The old one didn't let me, but now I don't have enough power with my current 600w PSU (system shuts down with any CPU OC). Now I'm looking at the Corsiar AX 860i.

My goal is to run the 3930k at 4.5 Ghz - 4.7 Ghz for a 24hr OC, and the memory at 2133 Mhz, so maybe the lower end of that. Is the AX 860i enough? I want to get some opinions, and you Tom's people know a lot about this stuff. Here are my specs:

Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Gene
CPU: i7-3930k
PCI1: Nvidia GTX 780 ti
PCI2: Nvidia GTX 750 ti
PCI3: Ceton InfiniTV-4 PCI-e
SATA1: Samsung EVO 750 GB
SATA2: Barracuda 2 TB
SATA3: LG Blue Ray Burner
RAM: Mushkin Redline 32 GB PC17000
Cooler: Corsair H100i
Fans: Noctua NF-S12A PWM x 2
Case: Corsiar 350D (with stock case fans)
USB: Card reader, PS3 Controller Charger, Blutooth Dongle, Keyboard/Mouse receiver dongle, & USB speaker output

I think that's about everything that sucks power from my computer. When I did an online calculator, it said I'd draw 643 watts, but I don't know whether that's under a full or partial load, and I don't know whether that accounts for doing an OC on the CPU.

Also, I don't plan to add anything to the computer, especially since it's already packed. I'll appreciate your feedback.

Thanks!

Side note: I moved this here from the "components" forum to get more reads. Maybe a mod can get rid of the other thread for me? I couldn't figure out how to do it on my own.
 
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Mar 21, 2014
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Yes, that's easily enough power.
One question though, why are you running a 750 TI along with a 780 TI? I don't see the benefit since you can't SLI them. The 750 TI is weak enough compared to the 780 TI that I'm also doubtful you'd get a performance increase even from using the 750 TI as a physics card.
 
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Eggz

Eggz

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Ha, yeah, everyone gets so confused about that. It is actually a PhysX card, and it does a really good job. I'll share something I wrote for someone else who asked me a similar question. It's copied between the lines below. But I don't want to derail my own thread. The short of it is that the little 750 ti card gives a surprisingly solid boost to even a powerful graphics setup, at least in PhysX apps. Love!

________________________________________________________________________________

Here are two useful articles about the latest information on dedicated PhysX cards (if you haven't already read them). The first one is called "How much difference does a dedicated PhysX card make?" It shows that, in PhysX titles, a gtx 650 handles PhysX as a dedicated card better than two Titans in SLI.

The second article is called "Using Maxwell's GTX 750 Ti as a dedicated PhysX card." It shows that the 750 ti is actually a little bit better than the 650 and 650 ti were. As a PhysX card, a 750 ti will last you MUCH longer than it would as a primary card, though it's not the worst primary card.

As a disclosure, keep in mind that not everything uses Nvidia's proprietary PhysX, but for things that do, having a dedicated card is really nice. A 750 ti currently offloads PhysX for my 780 ti, and it really makes a big difference in PhysX titles. Here is a link to my personal benchmark results using Nvidia's PhysX benchmark.

780 ti only - 79.3 (average) 104.6 (max)
W/ 750 ti - 122.1 (average) 218.5 (max)

To be fair, that bench was the biggest improvement, and games weren't as much of a jump, but they still were. The best thing is that it prevents little hickups and major frame drops. :D
________________________________________________________________________________

But back to the power, will it be enough if I do an overclock like I was talking about in the OP? Also, I know the 80+ stuff says to remain within the range of 20% - 80% of the power supply, and the 50% mark is the most efficient. That's where I want to be.
 
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Admirable
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That's the first time I've seen actual specific framerates about a PhysX card. Normally when I google it people who tried it just say it "didn't help much from what they can see", which is very unspecific and not very helpful, especially since I had no way to know if they were even trying it in a game with a lot of PhysX like Metro LL or Borderlands 2.

I may keep my 660 for this purpose when I upgrade to an 860, if there's a significant chance of it improving framerates in PhysX games.

More to the point, the PSU you chose is platinum certified (which I'm certain you know), so you should be able to keep it working efficiently at a lot higher than 50% load.
This review in particular indicates that the AX860i performs very similarly under any load.
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story3&reid=317
 
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Eggz

Eggz

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Hey-oh! . . . I'll just break out the response on each topic :D

PhysX - Yeah, it took me forever to dig up the information I put in that post. I get a little obsessive when it comes to research - for better or worse. In this case, it was for the better. There's a surprising number of people that just say things without having looked into the matter. Also, it only worked for me after doing a driver sweeper and fresh install, which only took about 10 minutes, but I still had to do it. Before resetting the drivers, though, it was actually 1 fps slower with the 750 ti running PhysX (i.e. the same within margin of error). Here is a Google Drive folder with screen shots I made that show the performance comparisons before and after my driver fix. I got some help by messaging back-and-forth with a guy named Kenneth Surgent who kindly shared on YouTube his dedicated PhysX results with Borderlands 2 and some other things. Here is the video on how he set things up for Nvidia's PhysX benchmark. Dedicated PhysX is a very essorteric solution that few people know much about. Maybe I should write a Tom's tutorial. That might actually be helpful. We'll see. Anyway, I hope you have fun with it once you move forward in your upgrade cycle.

Power - That's great news! I knew the AX860i was a solid supply, but I had know idea it was THAT good. I'll feel confident about it being in my system and just forget about power issues once I swap out the PSU. I've also never had a fully modular supply, so that will be great for managing the cables. Looking forward to it, and thanks for sharing!
 
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