Strong enough power to OC?

[Bnic4545]

I just upgraded my CPU and am looking to overclock it, but I'm not sure if I'll need to upgrade my power supply as well. My current setup is:

Core i7 2600k
GTX 550 Ti
MSI P67S-C43
600W CoolMax
16 GB RAM

I want to OC the CPU to 4.0-4.4 GHZ, will 600W do? Or should I consider a 750 or higher?

 

[deadjon]

600W will be fine for OCing your 2600k - they are extremely efficient.

4.5ghz is doable at ~ 1.3v on a 2600k I beleive.

CPU overclocking tends not to be PSU limited anyway - especially not at 600W

 

[jsc]

Coolmax PSU's are not the best, but overclocking your CPU will not add more than about 25 watts to the power consumed by your system.

One of my systems has an OC'd Q9550, 4 GB RAM, a GTX260 - a card with similar power requirements to yours, 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% PSU efficiency, the system pulls 300 watts from the PSU.

I estimate that your system will consume 325 - 350 watts at full load (slightly greater than mine because of 16 GB of RAM).

deadjon,
We posted nearly simultaneously. The problem with Coolmax PSU's is that they are overrated. For all practical purposes, Bnic has a 500 watt PSU.

I have a couple of Coolmax PSU's running low-spec systems here in Saudi Arabia. Not bad PSU's provided you derate them 20%.

 

[deadjon]

I took a quick look at the amp ratings on the Rails and noticed that they arent terrible. They arent 80+ rated though.

As far everything goes, maybe overclocking a Prescott to whatever stupid clock they could go to before burning out might stress a PSU - Sandy Bridge CPUs have tiny baby TDPs that dont even rise that high when overclocked.

Ive not heard much from Coolmax though - I gather they are cheap PSUs, fairly reliable but not great performers. I think Ill avoid em though, Ive always been an Antec man - next PSU I go for will probably be the High Current Gamer series. Im currently running a CP-850 and the Effiency on that is wonderful - its not officially Bronze rated but by all accounts it is - and with a 64a combined rating on the rails it can push any SLI/Xfire setup out there (Quadfire and QuadSLI is a nogo though )

 

[Bnic4545]

Thank you for the responses, sounds like it should be ok at least for now.