Help picking psu for new buiild

[James296]

first off I'm unsure (or clueless, take your pick ) when it comes to Power supplies.

Now on to the fun stuff. this psu is for a $2000 build I'm going to be doing with two sli'd GTX 570s. Current planned cpu is BD, however, if BD turns out to be a flop then I go with plan B.

Plan B: still get psu but instead I'll do just a quick upgrade to current comp to hold me over till IB gets here (I may just go with SB-E instead of IB and call it good)

Just so you can get an idea (and to get a pesky question out of my hair [:aford10:4]), here is the current parts list:

Cpu: cpus not out yet, silly
Motherboard: none, neither chipsets are out yet (but the 990FX chipset mobos are looking sweet and I'm still going to picking a 1155 mobo ..... just in case ).
Ram: going with a 2x4gb(8gb) G-skill sniper, low-volt, DDR3, 1600 ram
Graphics Card: two GTX 570s in sli setup but haven't decide weather it's a Galaxy, MSI, EVGA, or maybe even Gigabyte ones yet (priced very closely so I'm holding out)
Hard Drive: 1 - 2tb Sata III 7200 rpm HD
PSU: I'm asking for your help on this one, hopefully no more then $300 on the psu.
Case: been decided, a Silverstone Raven RV03B-W.
Optional: Hyper 212 aftermarket cooler and if budget allows I'll throw in a Sata III SSD boot drive.

two things I really want is reliability and long life (high possibility that it will power the next build 2.5-4 years down the road).

I did do a quick power cal (using newegg's psu cal) and it throws up anyway between 850w to 1160w. so I'm going to guess that I need a 1200w or greater psu but correct me if I'm wrong.

Any help will be much appreciated .

 

[Silvune]

This link shows a system with a very power hungry and overclocked Intel Core i7-965 (which is much more power hungry than any Sandy Bridge CPU, I would guess that it will also be more power hungry than any CPU on the horizon) and two GTX 570s in SLI consuming 578 watts at the wall. So the DC consumption is going to be lower than that, even more so with a less power hungry processor and is the number that you want to base your build around. Another thing is that ~500W would only be consumed if/when you were stressing the system with gaming or other intensive tasks. Altho I doubt that 500W (or more) would be consumed by any system unless really torturous stress testing software running on both the CPU and GPU at the same time - this is based a lot on what I've seen other members of forums like this one have said.

I agree with Guru3d's conclusion that a 750W PSU is enough. Altho if want to upgrade your GPUs in the future and want the option to get two 300W graphics cards then you'd want at least an 850W. I don't think you'd need more than a 1000W unless you wanted to run three graphics card or have literally no limitations.

Something to consider is that the RV03 can only take PSUs up to 18cm in length. I also think that a modular one is kind of necessary in that case.
So I think three good options for a good 750/850W PSU would be the Corsair AX-750/850, Seasonic X-750/850, XFX 750/850W Black Editions, Silverstone Strider Plus 750 or 850 or OCZ ZX 850 as these are all high quality, high efficiency, shorter than 18cm and should be below $300.

 

[James296]

thank you Silvune for that little Raven rv03 fact [:jaydeejohn:5] , I did not know that I was limited to a psu length of 18cm(or 7.1 inches).

Anyway, I don't ever plan on adding a third gfx card to this build since I'll never be able to use all that power before I need do another build (limited cpu upgrades). What I do plan, however, is to do a mild overclock to the cpu and possibly add another HD and/or SSD in the future. Would a 1000w psu work better?

 

[Emperus]

You have the budget to get the best PSU's available in the market currently.. However, you won't need anything more than a quality 850W unit (even leaving some considerable headroom).. They will also cost less enabling you to may be go for a GTX 580 SLI setup (BTW, both are overkill if you are considering gaming on a single monitor).. The Corsair HX 850 is a perfect PSU for your setup..

www.newegg.com/Product/ProductSpecification.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011

 

[Silvune]

Anyway, I don't ever plan on adding a third gfx card to this build since I'll never be able to use all that power before I need do another build (limited cpu upgrades). What I do plan, however, is to do a mild overclock to the cpu and possibly add another HD and/or SSD in the future. Would a 1000w psu work better?

Short answer is no. I think you would need more than a mild overclock on the CPU as well as having substantial overclocks on the GPUs to begin to need more than 850W. And HDDs/SSDs use next to no power and don't have an impact on PSU choice unless you have like 10 of them and mostly then it's about making sure you have enough connectors.

The Corsair HX850 is 18cm long exactly, I'm not so sure if this would fit, but it would be less comfortable than most of the other units that I have mentioned.

Corsair AX850, Seasonic X-750/850 are 16cm long. Turns out the Corsair AX750 is 18cm long - I assumed since it was the same internally as the Seasonic X-750 that they would have the same case dimensions.

The XFX Black Editions are both 17cm long.

Both of the Silverstone units I mentioned are 16cm long.

The OCZ ZX 850 is 17.5cm long.

 

[James296]

I went searching for XFX's Black edition psu but unfortunately it looks like it has be discontinued. the corsair HX850 seems to be getting good reviews and Corsair PSUs seem to be trusted so I'll go in that direction.

I thank everyone for their help and I'll be on my way

 

[James296]

Best answer selected by James296.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey