I'm looking at two psu's that are the same price. one is 80 plus platinum at 860W and the other is 80 plus Gold at 1000W. They are seasonic and EVGA respectively. According to my calculations I get more for my money out of the 1000W EVGA supernova at 80 plus gold... but, is that much power neccessary? I'm looking into building and SLI setup for 1440p with either 2 770's or 2 780's.
80 plus gold or platinum
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Someone Somewhere
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I wouldn't bother with platinum, and only with gold if it didn't cost a lot more than a bronze one.
Where are you buying from? I'll make a recommendation.
Where are you buying from? I'll make a recommendation.
tiny voices
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I get over 100 extra watts of headroom for the future by investing in the Supernova even though its gold rated. This gives me some space for a custom liquid cooling loop if I ever decide to build one plus a bunch of extra like fans and storage. It also means I most likely wont have to worry about needing a new power supply for my next few builds as power demands fluctuate between generations.
Evil Joker
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tiny voices
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tiny voices
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Fans use ~5w and HDDs use about 5w as well. A liquid loop will not really use any power either. Those things will add up to nothing really. I would definitely not get over 850w for this build. It is simply a waste and pointless.
Evil Joker
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Here we go again:
I wanted to point out some things that nobody has mentioned and clear up some misinformation presented.
Having a 1000w instead of an 800w CAN be quite beneficial for your electricity bill AND your components.
PSUs work best at "average" (50%) load.
That means if you expect your "normal" usage to be 500w, you should be buying a 1000w.
PSUs always have their maximum efficiency in the 40 - 60% range so the 500w on a 1000w PSU gives you the biggest bang for your bronze/silver/gold/platinum buck.
A 1000w platinum running at 50% would be about 90% efficient which means that 500w internal would be pulling about 550w from the wall and only 50w would be waste heat inside the PSU.
On the other hand, if you had a 500w platinum PSU pulling 500w (100% load) then your efficiency would likely be about 80% and you would be using 600w from the wall with 100w being heat inside the PSU (100% more).
That extra 50w pulled out of the wall gets tacked straight on your power bills AND it serves to break the internals of the PSU faster. Obviously, a PSU can rid itself of a constant 50w of internal heat more easily than it will a constant 100w of internal heat. The latter case is asking twice as much of the exhaust fan.
Nobody wants their internal cooling to have to work twice as hard.
It pays to plan how much you expect to draw off your PSU on a routine basis and try to buy a PSU that will keep that load at 40 - 60% of the PSUs maximum load.
Also, nobody else pointed it out, but another gain from buying a bigger PSU than you need is that your PSUs output will fall below your requirements less quickly.
It doesn't matter what the brand is, all PSUs internal components age. They age more quickly if you are drawing 100% of max than if you are drawing 50% of the max, but regardless they all age, even the awesome brands.
The PSUs maximum output can drop as much as 10% of max or even more per year (more especially if it is running at 100% load all the time).
If you get a 1000w and you only need 500w, it would take 5 years of 10% per year loss to maximum output before you would drop down to your 500w max need.
If you bought a 500w and you were maxing it out on day 1, at the end of year one you might already be down to 450w or even 400w max power for your 500w max system, potentially leaving you in danger of a variety of problems from damage due to lack of power to the computer not even being able to turn on and everything in between.
It is better to go larger than to go smaller. In any event, I would advise you to take the above into strong consideration when buying your next PSU.
That why I said I'd go for a 1000W psu
But I get your point an 860W will do the job extremely well
I wanted to point out some things that nobody has mentioned and clear up some misinformation presented.
Having a 1000w instead of an 800w CAN be quite beneficial for your electricity bill AND your components.
PSUs work best at "average" (50%) load.
That means if you expect your "normal" usage to be 500w, you should be buying a 1000w.
PSUs always have their maximum efficiency in the 40 - 60% range so the 500w on a 1000w PSU gives you the biggest bang for your bronze/silver/gold/platinum buck.
A 1000w platinum running at 50% would be about 90% efficient which means that 500w internal would be pulling about 550w from the wall and only 50w would be waste heat inside the PSU.
On the other hand, if you had a 500w platinum PSU pulling 500w (100% load) then your efficiency would likely be about 80% and you would be using 600w from the wall with 100w being heat inside the PSU (100% more).
That extra 50w pulled out of the wall gets tacked straight on your power bills AND it serves to break the internals of the PSU faster. Obviously, a PSU can rid itself of a constant 50w of internal heat more easily than it will a constant 100w of internal heat. The latter case is asking twice as much of the exhaust fan.
Nobody wants their internal cooling to have to work twice as hard.
It pays to plan how much you expect to draw off your PSU on a routine basis and try to buy a PSU that will keep that load at 40 - 60% of the PSUs maximum load.
Also, nobody else pointed it out, but another gain from buying a bigger PSU than you need is that your PSUs output will fall below your requirements less quickly.
It doesn't matter what the brand is, all PSUs internal components age. They age more quickly if you are drawing 100% of max than if you are drawing 50% of the max, but regardless they all age, even the awesome brands.
The PSUs maximum output can drop as much as 10% of max or even more per year (more especially if it is running at 100% load all the time).
If you get a 1000w and you only need 500w, it would take 5 years of 10% per year loss to maximum output before you would drop down to your 500w max need.
If you bought a 500w and you were maxing it out on day 1, at the end of year one you might already be down to 450w or even 400w max power for your 500w max system, potentially leaving you in danger of a variety of problems from damage due to lack of power to the computer not even being able to turn on and everything in between.
It is better to go larger than to go smaller. In any event, I would advise you to take the above into strong consideration when buying your next PSU.
That why I said I'd go for a 1000W psu
But I get your point an 860W will do the job extremely well
You are right. I'm still getting the 1000W for the same reason I want an unecessary sli setup which is to be worry free about getting max performance. And I had a 750W bronze supernova that I recently sold to a friend that was getting the job done just fine with one 780 but I just like the comfort of knowing I'm not
stressing the power handling of the PSU. I understand that you can also go too high where you are actually losing efficiency like if I got a 1500W. I've watched alot of videos of guys actually measuring power draw from the wall at various loads with various PSU's and pc configurations. While chossing the seasonic would be more than good enough I feel better with choosing the EVGA for my needs.
Someone Somewhere
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Remember that you're never going to get anywhere near 850W - that already includes a whole pile of overhead.
If I went for the bare minimum needed to run your build with no OCing (but still full load on both GPUs and CPU), that would be maybe 700W.
If I went for the bare minimum needed to run your build with no OCing (but still full load on both GPUs and CPU), that would be maybe 700W.
With 80 plus platinum at 860W I would get 774W max efficiency at the max power handing of the psu. Considering the bare minimum at full load without overclocking would be using the max effiency of a 700W psu makes me uneasy about using a 860W psu even at 80 plus platinum. 870W max efficiency from an 80 plus gold 1000W psu just makes me feel much more comfortable about the long term performance of my system and even future systems.
p.s.: I will be overclocking.
Someone Somewhere
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Your math is wrong. The rating on the PSU is the output power, not input. It is perfectly feasible to run hugely OCed 780Ti SLI on an 850W PSU, even if it was 80plus standard.
Someone Somewhere
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That total power is output power. You don't need to do anything more to it.
To get input power for an 80Plus PSU, you'd take the output power (e.g. 500W), divide by 0.8 (0.8=80%), getting 625W. That's what the PSU would draw from the wall.
To get input power for an 80Plus PSU, you'd take the output power (e.g. 500W), divide by 0.8 (0.8=80%), getting 625W. That's what the PSU would draw from the wall.
Someone Somewhere
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Yes. And an 850W one will give you 850W of power.
The only difference efficiency makes is your power bill and the environment.
The only difference efficiency makes is your power bill and the environment.
I just read up a little more on 80 plus and didnt just skim it this time. Thank you for clarifying that. I wish I never sold my bronze 750W supernova. Ignorance is a disease we all catch from time to time I suppose. Luckily I only lost $20. If I buy it again soon I'll make that back with a possible rebate. Again...Thank You.
Someone Somewhere
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I agree with psu's are more efficient at 50% load. But the 850W I recommended is to be able to handle absolute max loadings safely - same as wattage claculators do. On average, I'd expect the psu would run actually less than 50%. Most pc's spend more time at idle or near idle internet browsing.
Someone Somewhere
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tiny voices
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