Is 500W Enough

itzhazed

Honorable
Nov 26, 2012
28
0
10,530
Hello guys,

I plan to grab a Sapphire Vapor-X 7950 soon. I currently have a Corsair CX500. Will this be enough?

AMD FX 6100 @4.0 GHZ
AMD 7770
GIGABYTE GA-970A-D3
16gb Gskill Ram
CX500
H80
 
Solution
For a system using a single Radeon HD 7950 graphics card AMD specifies a minimum of a 500 Watt or greater power supply. The power supply should also have a maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 30 Amps or greater and have at least two 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors.

Total Power Supply Wattage is NOT the crucial factor in power supply selection!!! Sufficient Total Combined Continuous Power/Current Available on the +12V Rail(s) rated at 45°C - 50°C ambient temperature, is the most critical factor.

You may find power supplies on the market that supply more than enough Wattage to run the system. However, some of them lack Sufficient Amperage capacity on the critical +12 Volt...
For a system using a single Radeon HD 7950 graphics card AMD specifies a minimum of a 500 Watt or greater power supply. The power supply should also have a maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 30 Amps or greater and have at least two 6-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors.

Total Power Supply Wattage is NOT the crucial factor in power supply selection!!! Sufficient Total Combined Continuous Power/Current Available on the +12V Rail(s) rated at 45°C - 50°C ambient temperature, is the most critical factor.

You may find power supplies on the market that supply more than enough Wattage to run the system. However, some of them lack Sufficient Amperage capacity on the critical +12 Volt rail, which is necessary to properly power the critical components in the system (i.e. CPU and GPUs). This is the reason why graphics card manufacturers may overstate the power supply wattage, usually by at least 50 Watts, in an attempt to take into account some of those power supplies that have the weaker +12 Volt rail(s).

The Corsair Builder Series CX500 V2 ( 75-001667 / CP-9020047 ), with its maximum combined +12 Volt continuous current rating of 38 Amps and with two (6+2)-pin PCI Express supplementary power connectors, is more than sufficient to power your system configuration with a single Radeon HD 7950 graphics card.
 
Solution