SLI power supply

[100586112]

So for the past year I've been using a Galaxy MDT gtx 580 which runs pretty nicely and I have yet seen any issues with. I started to have this crazy idea (....derp) of wanting SLI. Now the individual card itself has a min req of 600W which my TX750 Corsair can handle. Now here are some of my questions:

Does that mean if I SLI another it would use 1200W?

What would I be able to compare the MDT gtx 580 to if I were to choose a different path for SLI?

Since the card has 3 fans, will having 2 gtx 580 help with lowering noise level since it would even out the stress between 2 cards?

Is it even worth it to SLI this card?

Sorry if any of these questions have been answered previously. I'm kind of a noob when it comes to all this.

 

[EzioAs]

750W is enough to SLI 2 580s. To be honest, I think you should keep the card for a while and upgrade to next gen highest end card (or 2nd highest depending on improvement over this gen). You could upgrade to a 670/680 but I don't think it's worth it.

 

[samuelspark]

So for the past year I've been using a Galaxy MDT gtx 580 which runs pretty nicely and I have yet seen any issues with. I started to have this crazy idea (....derp) of wanting SLI. Now the individual card itself has a min req of 600W which my TX750 Corsair can handle. Now here are some of my questions:

Does that mean if I SLI another it would use 1200W?

What would I be able to compare the MDT gtx 580 to if I were to choose a different path for SLI?

Since the card has 3 fans, will having 2 gtx 580 help with lowering noise level since it would even out the stress between 2 cards?

Is it even worth it to SLI this card?

Sorry if any of these questions have been answered previously. I'm kind of a noob when it comes to all this.

I would SLI the card if you could find it used for around $200. Also the 600w minimum requirement is for the entire system not the graphics card.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_580_sli_review,14.html
You actually should be OK on your current PSU. ^^

 

[samuelspark]

750W is enough to SLI 2 580s. To be honest, I think you should keep the card for a while and upgrade to next gen highest end card (or 2nd highest depending on improvement over this gen). You could upgrade to a 670/680 but I don't think it's worth it.

580 SLI outperforms 7970/680.

 

[100586112]

I would SLI the card if you could find it used for around $200. Also the 600w minimum requirement is for the entire system not the graphics card.

http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_580_sli_review,14.html
You actually should be OK on your current PSU. ^^

Ahh.. omg thank you so much. This card is hard to find for $200.00. It's been discontinued everywhere and even if people still have stock, they jacked the price. sad

 

[MatildaPersson]

Don't SLI 580. Get one of the newer GTX's, like a 670.

As a general rule, don't SLI (or Crossfire) anything but the top tier cards. Older cards aren't updated, so they won't have SLI profiles for newer games and will perform, possibly, very poorly.

As to the PSU question, well, there's two answers.

1. An 850watt, *good* PSU is enough for most any SLI or Crossfire situation. Never cheap out and buy an "okay" or bad PSU. They are one of the most important parts of the computer.

2. If you want to run your PC as efficiently and quietly as possible, you want to get a PSU that you will use around 60% of during heavy use. This is the area in which they are most cost effective and generally their fans have only hit around a third of their speed. It's no cheap and it's not needed, so many people won't do it. But you pay for the premium.

750watt - cutting it close. Not recommended, but possible.
850watt - fine. No problem.
1200watt - better. More expensive and unnecessary, but more efficient and cooler temps.

Stick to solid brands, too. I can't stress how important it is to get a solid PSU. Corsair make some great units. As do Seasonic and Cooler Master, but do lots of research into the exact PSU before buying.

I'd be happy to lay out some examples of good GPU upgrades for you. You just need to tell me what you want it to do and if you could, tell us your CPU and motherboard. But I'd recommend not trying SLI with your current card.

 

[EzioAs]

580 SLI outperforms 7970/680.

Of course they do. I knew that. However, I prefer and will usually recommend people going single card rather than going SLI/crossfire.

 

[samuelspark]

Don't SLI 580. Get one of the newer GTX's, like a 670.

As a general rule, don't SLI (or Crossfire) anything but the top tier cards. Older cards aren't updated, so they won't have SLI profiles for newer games and will perform, possibly, very poorly.

As to the PSU question, well, there's two answers.

1. An 850watt, *good* PSU is enough for most any SLI or Crossfire situation. Never cheap out and buy an "okay" or bad PSU. They are one of the most important parts of the computer.

2. If you want to run your PC as efficiently and quietly as possible, you want to get a PSU that you will use around 60% of during heavy use. This is the area in which they are most cost effective and generally their fans have only hit around a third of their speed. It's no cheap and it's not needed, so many people won't do it. But you pay for the premium.

750watt - cutting it close. Not recommended, but possible.
850watt - fine. No problem.
1200watt - better. More expensive and unnecessary, but more efficient and cooler temps.

Stick to solid brands, too. I can't stress how important it is to get a solid PSU. Corsair make some great units. As do Seasonic and Cooler Master, but do lots of research into the exact PSU before buying.

I'd be happy to lay out some examples of good GPU upgrades for you. You just need to tell me what you want it to do and if you could, tell us your CPU and motherboard. But I'd recommend not trying SLI with your current card.

That's not how it works...
580 SLI only consumed 720w when using a heavily overclocked first gen i7 extreme edition with water cooling and such creating about 50-100w above the average user. A 750w will be perfectly fine with headroom. Also, as I said, 580 SLI (590) outperforms any single high end GPU of this generation. The 580 was also the best card last gen.

 

[EzioAs]

Don't SLI 580. Get one of the newer GTX's, like a 670.

As a general rule, don't SLI (or Crossfire) anything but the top tier cards. Older cards aren't updated, so they won't have SLI profiles for newer games and will perform, possibly, very poorly.

As to the PSU question, well, there's two answers.

1. An 850watt, *good* PSU is enough for most any SLI or Crossfire situation. Never cheap out and buy an "okay" or bad PSU. They are one of the most important parts of the computer.

2. If you want to run your PC as efficiently and quietly as possible, you want to get a PSU that you will use around 60% of during heavy use. This is the area in which they are most cost effective and generally their fans have only hit around a third of their speed. It's no cheap and it's not needed, so many people won't do it. But you pay for the premium.

750watt - cutting it close. Not recommended, but possible.
850watt - fine. No problem.
1200watt - better. More expensive and unnecessary, but more efficient and cooler temps.

Stick to solid brands, too. I can't stress how important it is to get a solid PSU. Corsair make some great units. As do Seasonic and Cooler Master, but do lots of research into the exact PSU before buying.

I'd be happy to lay out some examples of good GPU upgrades for you. You just need to tell me what you want it to do and if you could, tell us your CPU and motherboard. But I'd recommend not trying SLI with your current card.

I agree with you recommending Seasonic and Corsair but not Cooler Master. However, this probably applies best to their lower end units so it's not a clear cut situation.

750W is more than enough. It's not barely. Most reviewers calculate the power consumption from the wall (which is always more than the DC power the system actually needs).

 

[MatildaPersson]

That's not how it works...
580 SLI only consumed 720w when using a heavily overclocked first gen i7 extreme edition with water cooling and such creating about 50-100w above the average user. A 750w will be perfectly fine with headroom. Also, as I said, 580 SLI (590) outperforms any single high end GPU of this generation. The 580 was also the best card last gen.

SLI with older cards is simply a bad idea. No updates to their drivers and no modern SLI profiles means bad things. Two mid range cards make more noise, more heat and use more power than one good, high end card. With the addition of the update problem, SLI with old cards becomes simply not worth the money. Add a slight bit more and get a good card.

As to the PSU: being over 75% or so of a PSU's max output is fine, but not ideal. As I said, most PSU's are made with fans that don't kick in until around 25% load and warm up and become louder the more they are used. They also lose efficiently the closer to their limit you go, meaning they send more power through the lines, but deliver less and have more dirty power -- or power that has dips and drops.

Around 60% is the place to be for the best performance. It's not the cheap option and it's a luxury, but it's the way it goes.

 

[MatildaPersson]

I agree with you recommending Seasonic and Corsair but not Cooler Master. However, this probably applies best to their lower end units so it's not a clear cut situation.

750W is more than enough. It's not barely. Most reviewers calculate the power consumption from the wall (which is always more than the DC power the system actually needs).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Seasonic make both Corsair's and Cooler Master's PSU's? Not all of them, perhaps, but some? I know they make the high end Corsair line.

 

[100586112]

Corsair TX750
Galaxy MDT GTX 580
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4x x 4gb) DDR3 1866
i5-2500K Sandy Bridge
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM
ASUS DRW-241st
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO

That's my current build so far as I can remember off the top of my head.

So overall if I were to be able to find a card that is at the range of $200 or lower, then would it be worth my time to do it?

Sorry I'm not understanding how the SLI profiles work. So techinically speaking if I played BF3. It may not be compatible?

 

[EzioAs]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't Seasonic make both Corsair's and Cooler Master's PSU's? Not all of them, perhaps, but some? I know they make the high end Corsair line.

I know Seasonic makes Corsair's current AX series (not the AXi, the standard AX), but I don't know about Cooler Master OEM. Most of their units are tier 3 at best, while most of Corsair or seasonic units are tier 1 or 2 anyway. This is just about the psu, I love CM's peripherals and cases though.

 

[MatildaPersson]

Corsair TX750
Galaxy MDT GTX 580
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4x x 4gb) DDR3 1866
i5-2500K Sandy Bridge
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM
ASUS DRW-241st
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO

That's my current build so far as I can remember off the top of my head.

So overall if I were to be able to find a card that is at the range of $200 or lower, then would it be worth my time to do it?

Sorry I'm not understanding how the SLI profiles work. So techinically speaking if I played BF3. It may not be compatible?

That motherboard isn't ideal to use in SLI, as it will use dual PCI 2 x8 mode. That's quite slow. You want PCI 3 x16 or x8. Plugging in a second card will probably be noticeably worse, to be honest.

The way SLI works is each card renders every second frame, like this:

Card 1: frames 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
Card 2: frames 2, 4, 6, 8, 10

Nvidia update the drivers of the modern cards to do this as best as possible. They release "SLI profiles" for individual games.

If the cards are out of sync, usually thanks to lacking a profile or having a bad one, they cause microstutter, which is like screen tearing, but worse. SLI with modern cards rarely sees microstutter and most people will not notice any. But some people are unlucky and get a lot of it. It's something to be aware of.

 

[EzioAs]

Corsair TX750
Galaxy MDT GTX 580
G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (4x x 4gb) DDR3 1866
i5-2500K Sandy Bridge
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200RPM
ASUS DRW-241st
ASUS P8Z68-V PRO

That's my current build so far as I can remember off the top of my head.

So overall if I were to be able to find a card that is at the range of $200 or lower, then would it be worth my time to do it?

Sorry I'm not understanding how the SLI profiles work. So techinically speaking if I played BF3. It may not be compatible?

SLI in BF3 works fine however it may not be that way in other games. Take GTA4 for example, that game doesn't even support SLI. Sometime, the scaling are also too low and really bumps people spending that much money for graphics card. That's why I always recommend 1 card over 2.

For me, SLI/crossfire is only applicable best under the condition that you have either one of the two top cards (680/670 or 7970/7950 for the current gen) and you want more performance because it's not enough for you especially if it's 2560x1440/2560x1600 or multi-monitor.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Don't SLI 580. Get one of the newer GTX's, like a 670.

As a general rule, don't SLI (or Crossfire) anything but the top tier cards. Older cards aren't updated, so they won't have SLI profiles for newer games and will perform, possibly, very poorly.

As to the PSU question, well, there's two answers.

1. An 850watt, *good* PSU is enough for most any SLI or Crossfire situation. Never cheap out and buy an "okay" or bad PSU. They are one of the most important parts of the computer.

2. If you want to run your PC as efficiently and quietly as possible, you want to get a PSU that you will use around 60% of during heavy use. This is the area in which they are most cost effective and generally their fans have only hit around a third of their speed. It's no cheap and it's not needed, so many people won't do it. But you pay for the premium.

750watt - cutting it close. Not recommended, but possible.
850watt - fine. No problem.
1200watt - better. More expensive and unnecessary, but more efficient and cooler temps.

Stick to solid brands, too. I can't stress how important it is to get a solid PSU. Corsair make some great units. As do Seasonic and Cooler Master, but do lots of research into the exact PSU before buying.

I'd be happy to lay out some examples of good GPU upgrades for you. You just need to tell me what you want it to do and if you could, tell us your CPU and motherboard. But I'd recommend not trying SLI with your current card.

And who's general rule is that? Because I don't see it written in stone anywhere, in fact that "General rule" can pucker up and kiss my chocolate starfish!

 

[MatildaPersson]

I know Seasonic makes Corsair's current AX series (not the AXi, the standard AX), but I don't know about Cooler Master OEM. Most of their units are tier 3 at best, while most of Corsair or seasonic units are tier 1 or 2 anyway. This is just about the psu, I love CM's peripherals and cases though.

I've found the high end cooler master PSU's to be splendid, myself.

I'm a total Corsair fangirl, though. I love most everything they release. It's always such good quality.

 

[EzioAs]

That motherboard isn't ideal to use in SLI, as it will use dual PCI 2 x8 mode. That's quite slow. You want PCI 3 x16 or x8. Plugging in a second card will probably be noticeably worse, to be honest.

It's ideal. PCIe 2.0 x8=PCIe 1.0 x16 and still provides enough bandwidth for cards like the 580. This is proof of it http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/11.html

 

[MatildaPersson]

And who's general rule is that? Because I don't see it written in stone anywhere, in fact that "General rule" can pucker up and kiss my chocolate starfish!

That's an odd way for a moderator to act. Rather silly.

You'll find most industry professionals won't tell you to delve into SLI or Crossfire with anything but the higher end cards for the obvious reasons: noise, heat and electricity. SLI and Crossfire are designed for maximum performance, not to buff lower cards up a notch.

 

[MatildaPersson]

It's ideal. PCIe 2.0 x8=PCIe 1.0 x16 and still provides enough bandwidth for cards like the 580. This is proof of it http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Intel/Ivy_Bridge_PCI-Express_Scaling/11.html

Ah, but who would run 580's in SLI?

 

[samuelspark]

That motherboard isn't ideal to use in SLI, as it will use dual PCI 2 x8 mode. That's quite slow. You want PCI 3 x16 or x8. Plugging in a second card will probably be noticeably worse, to be honest.

The way SLI works is each card renders every second frame, like this:

Card 1: frames 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
Card 2: frames 2, 4, 6, 8, 10

Nvidia update the drivers of the modern cards to do this as best as possible. They release "SLI profiles" for individual games.

If the cards are out of sync, usually thanks to lacking a profile or having a bad one, they cause microstutter, which is like screen tearing, but worse. SLI with modern cards rarely sees microstutter and most people will not notice any. But some people are unlucky and get a lot of it. It's something to be aware of.

Dual x8 is actually pretty good considering the fact that the 580 doesn't fill the bandwidth. x8 is pretty much the highest you are going to see on a standard motherboard anyway.

 

[EzioAs]

Ah, but who would run 580's in SLI?

Yes, I agree OP shouldn't go SLI 580 either.

 

[MatildaPersson]

Dual x8 is actually pretty good considering the fact that the 580 doesn't fill the bandwidth. x8 is pretty much the highest you are going to see on a standard motherboard anyway.

Dual x8 what? PCI 3? Sure. 1? Not so much lol.

The better 1155 socket boards go right up to dual x16, I think. Obviously a lot of the 2011's do.

 

[samuelspark]

That's an odd way for a moderator to act. Rather silly.

You'll find most industry professionals won't tell you to delve into SLI or Crossfire with anything but the higher end cards for the obvious reasons: noise, heat and electricity. SLI and Crossfire are designed for maximum performance, not to buff lower cards up a notch.

You obviously don't seem to understand that the GTX 580 was the best GPU last Gen and still remains very powerful.

 

[MatildaPersson]

You obviously don't seem to understand that the GTX 580 was the best GPU last Gen and still remains very powerful.

Problem is, it's not updated like the 600's and the SLI profiles will render SLI in new games moot.

Nothing wrong with the card. Its just not what you want to SLI with.