New PSU for my CF Build

[tjcoops]

Hi Guys,
Having built a 6850 Crossfire system back in April, I've never had the system at it's full potential. I have negative scaling on EVERYTHING. I'd tried everything, overclocking the processor to eliminate a bottleneck, checking my graphics cards, checking my PCI E slots, completely uninstalling everything to do with AMD and reinstalling the latest drivers and CAP.

I never thought the problem would be my power supply because it claims that it's 650W, plenty. To add to that, my Dad said it was a brilliant PSU. How wrong he was. It doesn't even produce 450W of power. It's a coolermaster RP-650-PCAP. I have now found out the hard way that this power supply is a lump of steaming donkey poop.

So now I'm on the hunt for a power supply that will feed my system enough juice. I'm in the UK and have the budget of up to £60, I could push to £70 at a squeeze. I want as good quality as I can afford

My System:
CPU - AMD Phenom X2 550BE UNLOCKED to 4 cores running @ 3.5GHZ
RAM - Kingston HyperX Blu 1333MHz, 2x2GB
Motherboard - ASRock M3A770DE
Graphics - 2x Gigabyte HD6850s
HDD - WD 500GB Green

Thanks in advance,
Tristan

 

[ko888]

For a system running with two Radeon HD 6850 graphics cards in 2-way CrossFireX mode a power supply with a combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 35 Amps or greater and with at least two 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors is recommended.

Look for the Antec 520W Neo Eco Modular PSU 80Plus Bronze for £42.52 Ex VAT (£51.02 Inc VAT). It doesn't include an AC power cord so you'll have to provide your own (i.e. reuse the one from the old power supply unit). It has a combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 40 Amps and has two PCI Express supplementary power connectors.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/520w-antec-neo-eco-modular-psu-82eff-80-plus-bronze-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-quiet-fan-atx-scan-exclusi

If you want a little more reserve capacity you can look for the Antec Neo Eco 620W Modular Power Supply for £54.95 Ex VAT (£65.94 Inc VAT). You'll have to provide your own AC power cord for this one too. It has a combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 48 Amps and has two PCI Express supplementary power connectors.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/620w-antec-neo-eco-modular-psu-82eff-80-plus-bronze-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-quiet-fan-atx-scan-exclusi

 

[davcon]

Antec True Power New 650W Modular
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/650w-psu-antec-truepower-new-modular-82eff-80-plus-bronze-sli-crossfire-eps-12v-quiet-fan-atx

 

[FinneousPJ]

Your motherboard can only run Crossfire in 16x/4x mode.

 

[davcon]

^+1 good point!

 

[tjcoops]

Thanks for the replies. I had a thread on the GPU section of the site. Although I'll not get full performance with 16/4 crossfire I found out that I should still get some form of increase over one card. Which I don't.

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll be sure to check out the PSUs

 

[tjcoops]

My dad has got an OCZ GameXtream 1010. It has a continuous output of 1010w and 4 12v rails at 20amps each.

Would it be sufficient?

 

[FinneousPJ]

If it really outputs 1010W it will power three systems like yours