$2500 High End Gaming/Rendering PC

viiag

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Apr 22, 2012
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I'm looking to put together a new rig in hopefully the next week.

After rebates I'm targeting $2500.

I need to support high end gaming as well as professional 3D environment design/render.

The $2500 is the budget for just the tower, I'm planning to purchase either 2 or 3 27" 1080 monitors. I have all the other peripherals I'd need.

I'm partial to Newegg just because I know their reputation, but if anyone has a reputable vendor outside of that in mind, I'm open to options.

I'm based out of the USA.

I'm looking to do some light to moderate OC, but staying out of the watercooling space.

Here's the rub. I'd been planning to run either SLI (GTX680) or Crossfire(Either the 7970s or 7950s) but I don't think my wall current can support an appropriate power supply. The apt. I'm in has a single 15amp breaker for my office. Off that I'm running a cable modem, a gigabit switch, a printer and my girlfriends (high end) laptop. It seems like all the power supplies I've been looking at to support what I want to do require 13->15 amps of wall current. Am I simply looking at the wrong power supplies or do I need to drastically scale back my plans?

Purchased Hardware So Far
(Rosewill Thor v2, 4x4 Cas 9 Gskill ares DDR3 1600, Samsung 830 SSD 128GB, 1TB WD Black Cavier 7200RPM)

As soon as they release I'm looking to purchase the new i7 3770k Intel Processor.

For a mobo I'd been looking at the ASUS P8Z77-V DELUXE LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131818

For an optical drive: LG Black 12X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 12X DVD-RAM 10X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA 12X Super Multi Blue with 3D Playback & M-DISC Support WH12LS39 LightScribe Support - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827136241

I'm still up in the air over cooling (air) and PSU

 
Solution


The wall provided 15 amps at 120 volts .....use 115 for conservative purposes.

115 x 15 = 1725 watts available "at the wall.

An 850 watt PSU will easily handle twin 680's. According to the test here:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=153

The 850 watter at full load pulls 1001 watts outta...

serialkiller

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The biggest problem is gonna come when you will connect the pc to your wall outlet.

The cpu only will eat more than 15 amps and those monitors will blow up. the gtx 680 needs 38 amps on psu so its impossible to make a 15 amps pc which will be a render and high gamer.

But if you can solve that problem then i can do the rest. 2 x 680 will eat 76 apms so atleast 100 amps for the whole system. or even more.

For rendering use i7 3930k will be better choice.

I suggest the folling build.

Intel i7 3930k
asrock x79 extreme4
Cm hyper 212 evo
corsair vengence 4x4 gb 1600mhz ddr3 ram
evga gtx 680 2gb or evga gtx 580 3gb x2
crucial m4 128gb ssd
seagate baracuda 1tb 7200rpm hdd
asus 24x dvd burner
pc power and cooling silencer mkii 950w 80+ silver
corsair carbide 500r
windows 7 pro.
 

viiag

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Apr 22, 2012
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Am I nuts or does that require you to have 2 x 20 amp breakers just for a single graphics card? 100amps is more current than even my stove gobbles up from the wall. Surely we're not talking 100 amps from house current?
 

jsrudd

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From what I've read the GTX 680 uses about 300 watts. That is equal to about 25 amps (since it uses 12 volts). So two would probably be about 50 amps. Still no where near 15 amps.

Have you looked at professional GPUs as opposed to the consumer level cards you've mentioned?
 

cbrunnem

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this is wrong.

first just because you input a certain amperage doesnt mean you cant output more. a typical wall socket can supply 30 amps of power and my psu can output a max of 34 amps so you can gain amps. also if psus are made how i think that are then you dont add the two 38 amp requirements. the two/four 6 pin pcie connectors should all originate from the same junction so you have to add the currents going into the connectors and it has to equal what went into the junction. meaning if the psu can only supply 60 amps on that particular rail then if you are using 4 pcie connectors then each will have 15 amps on them. look up kirchoffs current and voltage laws.

that wall can supply well over 1500 watts and remember that its prolly rated at either 110 or 120 volts but thats the RMS value so its actually higher.

OP you would need to have 20 amps worst case scenario cause thats the standard outlet output but most countries around the world have standard of around 15 amps.
 

drumsrule786

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Jul 30, 2011
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ok no offense but serialkiller it is clear you know nothing about electricity. Amps x Volts=Watts. Your cpu can use 100 amps, but since it runs around 1.3 volts, it will only be drawing 130 watts from the power supply, which in turn will pull approximately 1.1 amps at 120 volts from the wall. Same for graphics cards, although high end ones will pull more power.

As for the PC in questions, the single 15A outlet should be fine, the only time a PSU will actually pull that many amps is if the machine has 4 GPUS and everything is being fully loaded. PSU's don't pull their rated wattage all the time, that number is only how much power the PSU can deliver.

For you monitors I would suggest a 27" or 30" high resolution monitor like the Dell U2711 or U3011, they are expensive, but they have double the resolution of 1080p HD and much better color reproduction than cheaper monitors, I have a U2711 and its great for everything.

A good cpu cooler is the cooler master hyper 212. Cheap too. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103099
 

cbrunnem

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it has a max power draw of 225 watts. two 6 pin pcie at 75watts each and the pcie slot of 75 watts.

read above post. your wrong about the current draw.
 

viiag

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Apr 22, 2012
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I had looked at some of the Firepro line of commercial cards, however I'm looking at rendering as a secondary concern and gaming as a primary. Most of the benchmarks I've seen indicate that while commercial cards rock for rendering, they don't fare so well in the gaming space.
 
Here's my current recommended $2,500 ($2,317) build .... pull out what ya already have.

Case - $ 270 - Thermaltake Level 10 GT Snow http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811133192
Case Fan - $ 12 - Thermaltake Blue120 mm http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835106149
PSU - $ 165 - Corsair HX850 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011
MoBo - $ 240 - Asus Sabertooth Z77 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131821
CPU - $ 340 - Intel Core i7-3770K
Cooler - $ 90 - Phanteks PH-TC14PE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835709001
TIM - $ 5 - Shin Etsu http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835150080
RAM - $ 140 - (2 x 4GB) Muskin Blackline DDR3 1600 CAS 9 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226314
GFX - $ 500 - Asus GTX 680 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121626
GFX - Later - Asus GTX 680 Same
HD - $ 90 - Seagate Barracuda 1TB 64MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148840
SSD - $ 250 - Mushkin Chronos Deluxe http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820226226
DVD Writer - $ 75 - Asus Model BW-12B1ST/BLK/G/AS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827135252
OS - $ 140 - Win 7-64 Home Professional http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116992
 

viiag

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Apr 22, 2012
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and that PSU doesn't flinch powering those graphics cards?
 


The wall provided 15 amps at 120 volts .....use 115 for conservative purposes.

115 x 15 = 1725 watts available "at the wall.

An 850 watt PSU will easily handle twin 680's. According to the test here:

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story2&reid=153

The 850 watter at full load pulls 1001 watts outta the wall at 85% efficiency.

Have to remember that the PSU concerts the 120 to 12 volts.....efficiencies aside for the moment, 1/10th the wattage produces 10 x the amps.

As for the monitors, a typical 120 Hz 24" monitor draws about 38 watts, say 40

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824009222

3 times 40watts = 120 watts

1000 watts + 120 watts = 1,120 watts which is way less than 1725 available....amp load should be @ 9.7 amps....less than 2/3 ya breaker rating. So as long as ya don't have other loads going at same time, should be fine. And lets not forget.....those of full load amps ..... most of the time ya gonna be about 50% of full load.

Here we see total power consumption of 473 watts ... in SLI

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-sli-review/4

Our test system is based on a power hungry Core i7 965 / X58 system. This setup is overclocked to 3.75 GHz. Next to that we have energy saving functions disabled for this motherboard and processor (to ensure consistent benchmark results). On average we are using roughly 50 to 100 Watts more than a standard PC due to higher CPU clock settings, water-cooling, additional cold cathode lights etc.

Measured power consumption two cards in SLI

System in IDLE = 155W
System Wattage with GPU in FULL Stress = 473W

So .....

473 / 85% eff = 556 watts for overclocked system with all those extra goodies so this is very conservative.

556 watts + 120 watts for (3) 120 Hz Monitors - 676 watts total or about 5.8 watts at the wall.
 
Solution


See above post ..... max system consumption in the Guru3D test was 556 watts with all those extra loads (water cooling, OC'd i7-965, etc) that OP doesn't have.....that's 65% load which is well within the safe zone. Does that mean a 650 watter would be just fine ? No way, you want to account fo capacitor aging, voltage stability and ripple so you definitely want a "cushion".

Could you stress it higher, yes of course ...run Furmark, but that imposes loads never seen outside of running furmark and is supposed to represent real world consumption. To go to the most conservative numbers, let's look at nVidia's recommndations:

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus/geforce-gtx-680/specifications

Maximum Graphics Card Power (W) = 195 watts
550 WMinimum System Power Requirement (W) = 550 watts

Total Wattage recommended by nVidia for "worse case" scenarios therefore = 745 watts and an 850 watter provides plenty of cushion.
 

viiag

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Apr 22, 2012
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You sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. I owe you a debt of gratitude for helping me cut through all the murk and mire when it comes to figuring out the draw from individual components!
 
My pleasure !

Try this in the future:

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

They put the consumption of stock 680's in SLI at 374 watts

Here's what I did with it

High End Desktop MoBo
Intel 2700k OC'd to 5.0 Ghz @ 1.375 volts
Two GTX 680's
2 7200 rpm SATA Drives
1 SSD
1 Blue Ray Burner
5 USB Device
1 Firewire Device
1 Fan Controller
1 Card Reader
6 LED 120mm fans
2 LED 250mm fans
10% capacitor aging

Total = 617 watts total consumption even with the above being a bit "overboard".

And , yes, Id still use an 850 watter over a 750 as the prices are so close and the extra cushion means more headroom, "cleaner" power and increased efficiency as PSU's hit peak efficiency point at about 50% load.
 
Some 850 watt choices:

First Choices (10.0 jonnyguru performance rating):

Antec CP-850
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story4&reid=142
$120 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371024

Corsair HX850
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=153
$160 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139011

XFX Black Edition (now XXX Edition)
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=165

Second Choices (9.5 jonnyguru performance rating):

Corsair TX V2
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=218
$125 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139022

Corsai AX-850
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=197
$170 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139015

XFX Core Edition 850
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story6&reid=217
$102 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817207011


NZXT Hale90
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=199
$180 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817116012

Third Choices (9.0 jonnyguru performance rating)

Antec HCP-850
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=215
$200 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371053


Others

Toughpower XT 850 (8.5)
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story4&reid=172

OCZ Z Series 850 (8.5)
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=167

Silverstone Element ST85EF (6.0)
http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story5&reid=164
 

viiag

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Apr 22, 2012
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I wound up going with the HX850 after all the positive accolades I've seen. Thank you so much again.