I have a suspicion you will be fine within your parameters (<85% utilization).
After reading reviews and tests that report full system power draw (as measured directly), I think power supply needs are over-hyped. I have an e8400 (sometimes @3.6) in a p35 board with 2 sticks of ram, 2x HDD, 2x ODD, 5 fans, two USB devices, and an EVGA GTX 260 (Good choice! They have been AWESOME to deal with about my fan breaking after 8 mos. use...their suggestion when I was looking for an alternative to my system being down for a week or two? "use an after market cooling solution, but save the broken fan. If the board itself dies, return it to stock and RMA it"). This is all powered by a Corsair vx550. My first choice was a vx450, but it doesn't have the second connector I need for my GPU. I'm convinced my rig doesn't need more than that, without running anywhere close to the ragged edge even. Plus it would run more efficiently. Also, you won't be using 100% of all your components at one time often, if ever, I bet.
182W TDP for each GTX 260 (stock) is peak, not continuous or average. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that under full load you will not be drawing that for each card, but you may see transient spikes. Some good power supplies can even handle very brief spikes beyond their rating.
from another site that tested the card:
* Idle/2D power mode: approx. 25W
* Blu-ray DVD playback mode: approx. 35W
* Full 3D performance mode: varies - worst case TDP 236W for GTX 280
* Full 3D performance mode: varies - worst case TDP 182W for GTX 260
* HybridPower mode: effectively 0W
This is interesting, from the same article:
Our test system contains a Core 2 Duo X6800 Extreme Processor, the nForce 680i mainboard, a passive water-cooling solution on the CPU, DVD-rom and a WD Raptor drive. The results:
* PC in Idle = 159 Watt
* PC 100% usage (wattage gaming Peak) = 302 Watt
The monitoring device is reporting a maximum system wattage peak at roughly 302 Watts, and for a PC with this high-end card, that is not excessive at all.
...and here are the author's recommendations:
GeForce GTX 260 | 280 SLI
* A second GeForce GTX 260 requires you to have a 700 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a high-end system. That power supply needs to have (in total accumulated) at least 50 Amps available on the 12 volts rails.
* A second GeForce GTX 280 requires you to have a 800 Watt power supply unit at minimum if you use it in a high-end system. That power supply needs to have (in total accumulated) at least 55 Amps available on the 12 volts rails.
I think he means those to accommodate the worst-case scenario, so you would should be fine within your parameters. Look around at reviews especially for video cards and find graphs for actual measured power use for a test system that more closely matches yours. This type of info is common. I found several that had a test rig that was similar enough to mine to extrapolate my needs. Luckily for you, they seem to prefer quad cores. I have also found a lot of information about the average need for things like HDD's, ODD's, etc., and even some real world info for specific parts I have. You will have to decide for yourself whom to trust about what regarding accuracy. Also, I think the online calculators I used at first are full of crap. According to them, I am running at the ragged edge of my needs. NO WAY IN HELL.
Edit after reading other posts tmade while I typed, went outside, dicked around, and typed some more
I'm not familiar with the calculator mentioned. Also, the 182W TDP is stated by Nvidia.
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