correct Power supply wattage..

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Stan Dinaround

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Aug 10, 2014
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Hi,
I,m almost at the finishing line in the building of my first Gaming PC, but one issue is proving a bit of a pain to workout correctly, so heres hoping anyone here can help shed some light on it..
I have AMD FX 8350 CPU, MSI R9 270X GPU, ! SSD and 1 HDD, 3 fans,2 of which run LEDS. RW/DVD drive and possibly a sound card( but not sure which yet) 4 DDR3 RAMM sticks at 2gb a piece, and all this on a ASUS M5A97 evo r2.o Motherboard..
I'm hearing from some sources that I should be looking at atleast 750w psu to run it, using extreme calculator, even with a few added extras, they reccommend 450w.. T|his is a fairly large discrepancy, so any advice is welcome.. My thinking is that this set up will see me comfortably through the next 4-5 years with minor tweaks here and there, using 1080hd tv as moniter. I understand the concept that a PSU designed to work at optimal levels, being prehaps 90% total capacity, so surely buying 750w psu is not only going to be a waste of extra cash, but the PSU isn't going to be running at optimim performance on full load... Any suggestions/recommendations.. cheers.
 
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Titan
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May 18, 2007
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Your system should use about 350W and for peak efficiency, you usually want to stay under 70% of its rating so 450-500W would be a good starting point if you have no plans for any major additions within its expected useful life.

If you want the PSU to last for 4+ years, the main factor would be quality more than quantity. Shop around and see what you can get from your favorite brands from tiers 1-3.
https://community.newegg.com/eggxpert/computer_hardware/f/135081/p/45344/323062.aspx?Redirected=true
 
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Stan Dinaround

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Aug 10, 2014
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Cheers for replying so quickly, It's only really a better alternative to PS4/XBOX 1, it's going to see alot of gaming and mostly only films etc.. and honestly, once I got started, I couldn't help myself but to go a little over board with some of the components, hence my belief that this will easily see me through to the 2018/20's.. that's not to say in the future I don't become a bit of a geek and start playing around with other stuff like animation etc.. but for now, gaming and media is pretty much all this bad boy is going to be called upon for..
That in mind, you think 450w-550w will be more than enough..
 
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Stan Dinaround

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Aug 10, 2014
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It's not so much a question of saving money buying a smaller unit, more getting a unit that fits the requirements... I'd hate to buy a PSU that just chews up my electricity but doesn't get out of first gear doing it, if you get my meaning..I get furture proofing and such, but when I used extreme calculator, I added numerous extra's, like muliple SSD's and rw/dvds etc, and it still didn't recommend ouwt over 500w.. Ths is what's confusing me..
 
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junkeymonkey

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all you can do is what you feel is best for you ... we just post our opinions toward your ? don't it seem silly to spend $1200 on a build and then back it up with a $65 who knows what psu that if you were to need to upgrade to a more powerfull gpu down the road then find it don't cut it on that card and have to go spend that much or more on another psu ??? or find the one you went cheap on has 2ed or 3ed tier parts that pops and now took out the psu and the card or board right along with it?? not me .
 
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Dark Lord of Tech

Dark Lord of Tech

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Solution
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InvalidError

Titan
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The CPU and GPU account for 80-90% of all the peak power your computer will need which is what your baseline PSU sizing is about. That's why adding small extras make almost no difference.

Unless you plan to overclock or upgrade the GPU to something that uses considerably more power, a quality 500-550W PSU should be fine. Otherwise, you may want to bump that up to 600-650W.
 
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