GTX 460 Upgrade question. (Power consumption)

[nick3318]

Hey guys, the currect specs on my desktop are as follows:

Asus Maximus Formula
Intel QX9650 running at stock 3.0 ghz (more to follow on that...)
EVGA 8800 GTX 512
Also it might be important to note that I'm also running 4 300 gb Raptors in raid 0.

Now all of this is currently powered by a 550W corsair power supply. The quality of the PSU is great without a doubt, but im concerned that an upgrade might be a bit to much for the watts it provides. (Though I know little about power consumption, hence why I'm here).

Right now I'm looking at this:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6488511&csid=ITD&body=MAIN#detailspecs

Is the 550W still going to be enough for my system? I really don't want to have to upgrade the PSU right now.

Any other thoughts or concerns about the upgrade?

Also: The CPU was stupid expensive (2 and half years ago...) and I've never even bothered to overclock it. I'll probably bump it up to 3.2 or something easy yeah?. My air cooler keeps it running extremely cool so I'm not worried. Would an overclock hurt my power consumption by any significant amount as well?

Sorry for kind of shotgunning the topics here, but I hope you guys can help answer my questions. Once I built my PC I didn't really concern myself with learning to much more.

Thanks a ton guys!

 

[hunter315]

Yeah, the 550W corsair is fine for any single GPU so you wont need to upgrade.

 

[combatpro]

+1^ its more than enough for your system with a gtx 460

 

[jyjjy]

You could run a GTX 480 on that.

 

[nick3318]

I noticed there were a few version of that card on Tiger Direct. The one I linked is the most expensive but also has the highest shader and memory clock.

Would I save money and end up with the exact same experience if I just went with the lower priced cards and did the OC myself?

 

[jyjjy]

Yeah, don't pay extra for someone else to OC your video card. You can easily OC it yourself and you'll get much better results.

 

[hunter315]

Just make sure to get one of the 1GB ones, it has a larger memory bus to it has significantly better memory bandwidth and seems to perform noticeably better.

 

[nick3318]

Right on guys. Yeah I'm only looking at 1gb ones.


One quick final question

Any reason to go with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125333

over

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=6491184&CatId=3670

Clocks look pretty similar. I'm just wondering if one brand is better than the other in any meaningful way. (Overclock performance etc).

Thanks for the many replies though you guys, rad and helpful as always.

 

[jyjjy]

Yeah, if you want the best OC go for a card that has voltage control. Asus and MSI usually have that covered. I'm not sure about the other brands.