PSU Suggestions

Hey guys,

I need a recommendation on a power supply. There are many seemingly good ones out there but I thought I'd consult you all here first.

First of all my system build has the following specs:

CPU: Core i7 920 (expecting overclock to 3.6)
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD5
RAM: 12 GB OCZ Platinum 7-7-7 DDR3-1600 (2GBx6)
VGA: BFG NVIDIA GTX 260 192 Core in 2-Way SLI
HDD: WD Caviar Black 1TB
Opti: 1 DVD-RW Samsung
1 LG Blu Ray Super Multi
Case: Thermaltake Xaser---Has 2 140mm LED fans, and 4 120mm regular fans
CPU Cooler: Zalman CNPS 9700 LED (using 1366 LGA converter bracket)


Also, being conservative for upgrades I opted to vouch for the following possible upgrades I've been thinking about adding:

**Adding a WD Velociraptor 300GB HDD
**Adding a solid state disk
**Adding a Blu-Ray drive
**Adding a PCI-e x1 sound card for my use with my recording equipment
**Frontbay card reader, fan controller, and temperature gage

So with all of this in mind I bought a lifetime membership to extreme outervisions PSU calculator and got the following calculation:

**760 Watts recommended
**12A---3.3V
**17A---5V
**53A---12V

Also, I'd like for my PSU to be relatively quiet. I don't expect it to be insanely quiet given my power expectations and I do have a noise dampening project in the works for my case, but I don't want something insanely noisy. Also, modular would be a huge plus for me.

So with these requirements in mind I took a gander over NewEgg quickly and found a few ones that seemed good:

Corsair CMPSU-850TX
XCLIO Greaterpower X14S8P4 (Modular)
SevenTeam ST-850ZAF (Modular)
Xigmatek NRP-MC851 (Modular)
Corsair CMPSU-850HX (Modular)

The Xigmatek is very appealing, its modular and satisfies more than what I need for my requirements and its got a mail in rebate for 40 bucks but it also has 4 12V rails which from what I hear, splitting is not in your best interest (neither is modular from what I hear which is why I'd rather to only deal with the modular problem). The Corsair TX series seems to be the best option....its only $120 after its rebate and has only a single 12V rail to boot (rated at 70A !). Corsair also seems to be reputable with keeping the noise level down on their PSU's. At this point if I wanted the same in modular I'd have to be willing to shell out another $70 which is something I'll have to deal with myself. But in the meantime does anyone have any other reccomendations or agreement with my picks? I appreciate the time!

from the brands that u have listed, i am only familiar with corsair and xigmatek. what u should be looking for is a psu with 80+ efficiency certificate, those use most of the drawn electric power, thus keeping both the PC and your wallet safe.

and for your system, i think u should get at least 900w psu, recommended 1000w. u will upgrade parts in future, and also, over time, the rated power of the psu drops a little, its a normal thing cause of the capacitor aging.

u don't need more than 6GB of ram, there is no game or application that use that much ram, u will just waste your money. 4gb for ddr2 and 6gb for ddr3 is more than enough.

Corsair, by all means.

Keep in mind that modular cabling only makes sense if you have a lot of unused cabling. If you are going to use most of the cabling, modular is not worth it.

So I've been browsing a little more at Newegg and have come up with that I'd really like to have the modular capabilities. In that case I'm in a different price range and cannot decide again. My choices now are:

Corsair:
CMPSU-1000HX

Kingwin:

ABT-1220MA1S
ABT-1000MA1S

Newegg has a rebate for the Corsair so I might as well have gone for the 1K Watt as the rebate makes it equal in price to the 850. The KingWin are lower priced but the 1200W KingWin has a rebate, making it equal to the 1K Watt Corsair and I don't think I'd ever have to worry about upgrading ever with the 1200W. Thoughts?

I've been leaning toward the corsair this whole time. Yes the KingWin's have nice coax-style connecters that bolt down but it glows(not too big of an issue) and it has only a one year warranty.

Quickly though I need some schooling in power supply features. The PSU calculator I'm using seems very good and accurate. But in an attempt to get a real world estimate on power consumption I took a look at a 3-way SLI review on the GTX 280's here : [url=http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-280-sli-triple-review-test/3][/url]. For 3 GTX 280's its showing a max power consumption under load for the entire system as 749W real world measuring. Obviously VGA card manufacturer's overestimate to ensure the user gets a stable graphics card performance....but is this PSU calculator misleading me? I realize the amperage on the rails is important but any of the PSU's I choose will have plenty for that. Am I missing something here?

Lol I have access to the pro version of the calculator. That's the one I've been using.

After reading some more reviews, the Kingwin seems nice, but it seems less stable than the corsair and the 1 year warranty on such a unit is too scary. I'll be going for the 1000HX from Corsair, its got a rebate on Newegg. Thanks for the help!