How many watts???

[p000n-tang_be4r]

Hey all, I'm new to this forum and I'm planning on building my first gaming pc and I'm having some trouble deciding how much power my psu will need.
I was planning on using a Gigabyte GA-970A-D3 Motherboard with a AMD Phenom ii x4 840, Corsair CMP4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 RAM, two 500TB 3.5 hard drives and the Gigabyte GeForce GTS 450 1GB but I was planning on upgrading the graphics card to something better in a couple of months. For cooling I'll be using a Cooler Master V8 and the games I'll be playing are things like GTA IV, Crysis 2 and COD. My price range for a power supply would be like $70-$130 so I'm not looking for anything to expensive.

Thanks for the help gyz

 

[mrhearnden]

anything around 500 watts should be sufficient enough but leave a little scope for improvement if your pallning to upgrade so maybe get a 650?

 

[QwertyMusicMan]

With $70 you can buy a great 650w PSU. Just read the reviews on newegg and make sure it's a good one.

 

[mrhearnden]

even with that price you will get a great one good luck

 

[trogdor796]

I would stick with good quality brands such as Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, certain OCZ models. Like others said, with $70 you should be able to get a good 600-650W power supply, just look at the reviews and make sure it's 80+ certified(all good brands are).

 

[kajabla]

With just about any single graphics card, you'll be fine on 500W, if it's a good model like this Corsair ($60): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139027
650 will do you fine for SLI with low- to mid-end cards, and 750 will be enough for two of almost any card, excluding only the very top end.

 

[mrhearnden]

dont forget to look for one with japanease capacitors too, but most 80+ have these anyways mate

 

[obsidian86]

more then enough and a great price

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371030

 

[tomskent]

Id say dont waste your money on a gts450 now only to get a new more powerful card in a couple months. Just save up for the better card.

ps. Im using a power hungry ATI 4870 with a 2500k/Z68 board and the max watts ive pulled from the wall socket is 224 watts during heavy gaming. So as you can see you dont need a crazy power supply for the latest systems and mid range cards.

 

[p000n-tang_be4r]

Sweet thanks for the help gyz I appreciate it

 

[beenthere]

You can always get an accurate answer to how much power is required from your PSU by inputting your current or future PC hardware into the link below. It evan allows you to decide how much of the PSU capaicity you want to use, if you want to use capacitor aging, etc.

Once you know how much power is required for your PC, buy a Quality PSU so you don't need to replace it in six months and your damaged mobo and other hardware.

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

 

[photonboy]

There are actually TWO things to look at:

1) WATTAGE (find a good online calculator. Should be at least 600W IMO)

2) Amps (at least 1.25x that of the addon graphics card. The Amps for the +12V rail is often on the side of the PSU and would also be in the manual. For example, I usually recommend at least 48Amps for a GTX570 which needs 38Amps just to be safe.)