Looking for suggestions

[wildkitten]

A friend and I are looking to build out new towers. We are considering for the cases the Cooler Master HAF X RC-942-KKN1 but was intrigued by the Corsair Graphite 600T in Tom's air cooled article published today. Does anyone have any suggestions between the two based on personal experiences? I noticed the Corsair Graphite is wider, I think because of cable management, but would be nice to hear other people's experiences.

Also, what is considered a good power supply? I have read up some on the whole gold/Platinum efficiency thing, but i suppose I am a little confused still. I'm not interested in running SLi or Crossfire, but will be getting one of the newest video cards. Probably 1, maybe 2 Blu-Ray/DVD burners, 3 hard drives and possibly a smaller SSD for the Windows install for bootup. Should I be looking for an 850W or even higher?

I am hoping to wait till the socket 2011 from Intel comes out, but am also curious as if this will play a factor in the power supply decision. Or maybe a current Sandy Bridge 1155 core i5 or i7 will be good for long term, possibly even upgradibility.

Any advice and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[purple stain]

Depends on which cards and how many you'll be running but usually a good 850watt should be able to cover a SLI/Crossfire of even the most high performance card.But if you decide to add 3 or 4 cards you might want to go bigger.

The CPU shouldn't play a factor in choosing a PSU.

What is your budget for a PSU?

 

[popatim]

For most single graphics cards a 600w quality unit will be more than enough even with all those extra drives. A 6970 uses less that 300w maximum and would leave you room on the PSU to OverClock.

 

[Raiddinn]

You will be fine with an 850w from a good PSU maker (Antec, Seasonic, Corsair, XFX).

You would probably be fine with a 650w as well. The thing with this is that you can figure out how much power you expect the system to draw and then figure out where that falls in a given PSUs power delivery curve and make your decision for optimal efficiency.

An 850w psu would supply 425w at say 86% efficiency whereas a 430w PSU might only supply 425w at 82% efficiency Very few PSUs are as efficient at 20% or 100% as they are at 50-55% and the parts wear faster the farther away from the 50-55% of max wattage that you go.

However, the efficiency doesn't matter as much as providing the parts with the sufficient amount of power.

Gold/Platinum/etc save you money on electric bills.

Having the required number of amps on the 12v rails saves you money by not blowing up your motherboards, hard drives, video cards, etc.

Don't go cheap on the PSU, spend $1 per 10w and you should be fine.

 

[one-shot]

I can run an i7 920 @ 4.0 GHz, GTX 570, and 2 GTX 260 Core 216s at full load and not max out my Corsair TX750W. Wattage at the wall was 800W. 800 * 85% ~ 680W from the PSU. Unless you plan on running 4 GPUs, 750W high quality PSU is enough.

 

[wildkitten]

Depends on which cards and how many you'll be running but usually a good 850watt should be able to cover a SLI/Crossfire of even the most high performance card.But if you decide to add 3 or 4 cards you might want to go bigger.

The CPU shouldn't play a factor in choosing a PSU.

What is your budget for a PSU?

About $200, maybe more. I'm trying to keep the system around $1500 total, and I don't need a monitor, I have a good one. I just want a good quality case and PSU, MOBO and CPU that will last awhile.

And I can honestly say I am not looking for SLi or Crossfire. I like to play some games, but not the latest bleeding edge graphics ones.

 

[purple stain]

Well if your waiting for 2011 you might as well wait it out for the new cards as well.That way you can take advantage of the PCI-E 3.0.

As for the PSU I think this will work well for you...

Seasonic 650 watt(Modular) $130 + Free Shipping

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151088

That's one of the best PSU's on the market.Very high quality and it should last you a while.

 

[wildkitten]

Best answer selected by wildkitten.

 

[purple stain]

So you think your going to wait for the PCI-E 3.0 cards?