jsc said:
Yes. Two 4850's - 15 - 18 amps. OC'd E8500 - 8 amps. That's about 280 - 300 watts. RAM and drives - another 100 watts. Fans - pocket change.
I estimate that the PSU would be running 75 - 80% of rated capacity. That is a little higher than I am comfortable with, but the VX550 is a pretty good power supply.
One of my systems has an OC'd Q9550, 4 GB RAM, a GTX260, a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard, 3 hard drives and an optical, and a Soundblaster card all powered by a Corsair 750TX.
Running 3 instances of Prime95 to load the CPU and 3DMark06 to load the GPU, it pulls 375 watts from the wall as measured by my Kill-a-Watt meter. Figuring 80% efficiency, the system pulls 300 watts from the PSU.
So, I could do it without getting a new PSU. Great.
Anyway, I wasn't thinking in a permanent OC. I would save the O.C. profile on my Bios and load it when needed. I don't need that much power all the time.
Before having too HD4850, I ran the OC for 3 or 4 months (always overclocked), during winter, and I had nice temperatures and the system was stable. I just changed the FSB too 400 and everything on Auto and never had any trouble. I even ran Prime95 for 24 hours.
Well, maybe I'll use it when I need more power.
Thanks for your answer.