Can I run a Sapphire Vapor-X R9 280X on a 500 W PSU?

[little_fish]

i have the following setup
i have T3500 Dell workstation
Xeon W3680 processor
8gb for ddr3 4x2gb
with dell 500w psu
Can I run a Sapphire Vapor-X R9 280X on a 500 W PSU? in this build

 

[Math Geek]

does the psu even have the right connections for the card? that card needs 2 x 8 pin connectors and somehow i doubt the dell psu has them on it. that tells you all you need to know.

that gpu is a 250w card plus the cpu is another 130w. throw in the rest of the system and you'd be seriously pushing even a quality 500w psu. not a good idea at all. i'd suggest you go for a less power hungry card or a new psu to go with it.

 

[little_fish]

does the psu even have the right connections for the card? that card needs 2 x 8 pin connectors and somehow i doubt the dell psu has them on it. that tells you all you need to know.

that gpu is a 250w card plus the cpu is another 130w. throw in the rest of the system and you'd be seriously pushing even a quality 500w psu. not a good idea at all. i'd suggest you go for a less power hungry card or a new psu to go with it.

i have a 6 pin connector and 4 pin i think there is adapters for them an all i have else in my system is a hard drive and nothing else 😀 and do u think the original dell powersupply isn't good enought and won't give me a full 500w ?

 

[Math Geek]

there is no way you can use an adapter to change a single 6 pin into 2 x 8 pin connectors. it does not work that way. a 6 pin connector gives 75w to the gpu. while an 8 pin gives 150w. so even through some miracle daisy chain of adapter you can get 2 8 pin connections into the mix, they still will never be able to give the 300w total power that the card will need to run.

so you will need a new psu for that card, there really is no way around it. i can offer a few suggestions if you wish. just give me a budget and i can see what is available to fill the need. a solid 600-650w psu would be good enough and can be had for a decent price considering what you have already spent on the gpu

 

[little_fish]

there is no way you can use an adapter to change a single 6 pin into 2 x 8 pin connectors. it does not work that way. a 6 pin connector gives 75w to the gpu. while an 8 pin gives 150w. so even through some miracle daisy chain of adapter you can get 2 8 pin connections into the mix, they still will never be able to give the 300w total power that the card will need to run.

so you will need a new psu for that card, there really is no way around it. i can offer a few suggestions if you wish. just give me a budget and i can see what is available to fill the need. a solid 600-650w psu would be good enough and can be had for a decent price considering what you have already spent on the gpu

I was actually gonna buy it from a friend with a decent price
and i was curious if my psu can run it after i saw this http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2203996/500w-evga-psu-280x.html some ppl actually said it will work with 500w psu
and i didn't mean that im gonna use 1 6 pin adapter to 2 8 pin i meant that i'll use 1 6 pin to make 8 pin
and another 4 pin to 8 pin thats to get 2x8 pin how i thought the power setup will go i actually don't know about the wattge of each rail but it would be nice if u tell me the cards with simillar performance to the 280x ty for ur help

 

[Math Geek]

a gtx 960 is almost as good and probably the best you can run on the psu with its 6 pin connector. look close though as some of the super overclocked and super cooled models take an 8 pin connector.

right now amd gpu's are very power hungry compared to similar nvidia gpu's. for lower power psu's like yours, the nvidia ones are a better match since they use so much less power.

on the amd side an r9-270 or r7-370 are about the best you can do as they only need a 6 pin connector.

and to answer the other question about the other thread you have to look at the psu itself he was asking about. that one has the needed 2 8 pin connectors and also has 40 12v amps which is 480w of power. look at your psu and see what 12v power it has. i'm willing to be it is not this much, the evidence is in the fact it only has a 6 pin connection. psu makers usually only put the connections in that the psu can actually handle. this avoids people buying and hooking it up only to find it really does not give the power the connections suggest it does. bit of a liability thing for the psu makers to do it this way. all psu's are not made the same and the total wattage they claim is only a small part of the story.

i've seen "750w" psu's that only provided 250w on the 12v rail, which is where most of the parts get their power. so in reality this "750w" psu was only a 250w one since it could only provide that much power to where it is actually needed.

 

[little_fish]

a gtx 960 is almost as good and probably the best you can run on the psu with its 6 pin connector. look close though as some of the super overclocked and super cooled models take an 8 pin connector.

right now amd gpu's are very power hungry compared to similar nvidia gpu's. for lower power psu's like yours, the nvidia ones are a better match since they use so much less power.

on the amd side an r9-270 or r7-370 are about the best you can do as they only need a 6 pin connector.

and to answer the other question about the other thread you have to look at the psu itself he was asking about. that one has the needed 2 8 pin connectors and also has 40 12v amps which is 480w of power. look at your psu and see what 12v power it has. i'm willing to be it is not this much, the evidence is in the fact it only has a 6 pin connection. psu makers usually only put the connections in that the psu can actually handle. this avoids people buying and hooking it up only to find it really does not give the power the connections suggest it does. bit of a liability thing for the psu makers to do it this way. all psu's are not made the same and the total wattage they claim is only a small part of the story.

i've seen "750w" psu's that only provided 250w on the 12v rail, which is where most of the parts get their power. so in reality this "750w" psu was only a 250w one since it could only provide that much power to where it is actually needed.

well here's a photo from my powersupply (it was 525W mybad) 😀 http://imgur.com/PuUpeDj
maybe u will find something usefull xD i'll consider the 960 maybe i can get gtx 760 with my budget
but tell me if it's a shitty power supply so i consider changing it

 

[JUICEhunter]

The 280x gets most of it's power from the 8pin 150w connection, but it still needs more which is why most models also need a 6pin 75w. Since you don't have an 8pin 150w you're depriving then GPU of it's main power. That 4pin only gives 18w max you can't run a 280x stably.

 

[little_fish]

The 280x gets most of it's power from the 8pin 150w connection, but it still needs more which is why most models also need a 6pin 75w. Since you don't have an 8pin 150w you're depriving then GPU of it's main power. That 4pin only gives 18w max you can't run a 280x stably.

there is in the pic http://imgur.com/PuUpeDj 3 rails that give and max output of 500W is there anyway to know which ons are these ? can i use 2 of them to provide the power i need ? im so noob in power stuff 😀 i just wonna understand xD

 

[Math Geek]

the 3 rails combine to make a total of 500w. each rail is 18 amps which is a max of 216 watts if you are only taxing 1 rail. if you are taxing all the rails, as in a complete system, then each rail will provide less than it's max since it is wired to only allow a total of 500w between the 3.you don't get to chose which rail does what, it is already decided inside the psu. one rail may go to the cpu and sata connections, second one may go to motherboard and molex connections and the last may be the pcie connection. or some other configuration. you never really know how it is broken up unless you really dig into the internals of it.

the trouble you are facing has to do with the connections that are there. each connection is only rated for so much power and that's all it gets. using adapters to change a connection to a different one does not increase the power that connection originally had going to it. it still only gets what it started at. so the 6 pin gets 75w no matter if you change the end of the cable to an 8 pin or something else. it may look like an 8 pin but it is still a 6 pin as far as the psu is concerned. true, your psu might actually have the power for the card if it had the connections for it which would mean the psu maker had planned out how to deliver the 150w per 8 pin connection. since those cables are missing, then the maker did not plan for the power draw and unless you take the psu apart and rewire it from the ground up to put out the power, it will never be able to.

psu's that come with prebuilt systems are normally not off the shelf parts but are designed for the system it is in. they are not designed for upgrades or anything else. the psu will work fine for how it came out of the box and can handle parts sold with that pc. they don't want you to be able to upgrade, they'd rather you spend more up front and get the better parts from them at a huge mark-up. this is why that dell psu, though decent amount of power, is not designed for gpu's it was not sold with and won't run many of them.

a gtx 960 is the best ti will be able to support with it's 6 pin connection as that's all the power it was designed to give to the graphics card.

 

[JUICEhunter]

I actually saw the picture of your psu before my post, Math Geek summed it up but I'll try to explain it in different terms.

You can't put a Porshe steering wheel on a Toyota and expect it to run like a Porsche. (You can't turn a hoe into a housewife).

There is no way to get more than 75w out of a 6pin, there is no way to get more than 18w out of a 4pin. Most of your psus power is for the motherboard, processor and drives. You're not even close, the gpu would boot up but than choke when gaming which makes the update without the right power pointless.

 

[little_fish]

the 3 rails combine to make a total of 500w. each rail is 18 amps which is a max of 216 watts if you are only taxing 1 rail. if you are taxing all the rails, as in a complete system, then each rail will provide less than it's max since it is wired to only allow a total of 500w between the 3.you don't get to chose which rail does what, it is already decided inside the psu. one rail may go to the cpu and sata connections, second one may go to motherboard and molex connections and the last may be the pcie connection. or some other configuration. you never really know how it is broken up unless you really dig into the internals of it.

the trouble you are facing has to do with the connections that are there. each connection is only rated for so much power and that's all it gets. using adapters to change a connection to a different one does not increase the power that connection originally had going to it. it still only gets what it started at. so the 6 pin gets 75w no matter if you change the end of the cable to an 8 pin or something else. it may look like an 8 pin but it is still a 6 pin as far as the psu is concerned. true, your psu might actually have the power for the card if it had the connections for it which would mean the psu maker had planned out how to deliver the 150w per 8 pin connection. since those cables are missing, then the maker did not plan for the power draw and unless you take the psu apart and rewire it from the ground up to put out the power, it will never be able to.

psu's that come with prebuilt systems are normally not off the shelf parts but are designed for the system it is in. they are not designed for upgrades or anything else. the psu will work fine for how it came out of the box and can handle parts sold with that pc. they don't want you to be able to upgrade, they'd rather you spend more up front and get the better parts from them at a huge mark-up. this is why that dell psu, though decent amount of power, is not designed for gpu's it was not sold with and won't run many of them.

a gtx 960 is the best ti will be able to support with it's 6 pin connection as that's all the power it was designed to give to the graphics card.

i get it now so i may have the power but not the connections i get it now but the 960 mostly uses 2x6pin or 1x8 pin connector how would that work ? the only one using 1x6 pin is asus strix i guess
where do i get the second 6 pin if im gonna use 2x6 pin ?

 

[little_fish]

I actually saw the picture of your psu before my post, Math Geek summed it up but I'll try to explain it in different terms.

You can't put a Porshe steering wheel on a Toyota and expect it to run like a Porsche. (You can't turn a hoe into a housewife).

There is no way to get more than 75w out of a 6pin, there is no way to get more than 18w out of a 4pin. Most of your psus power is for the motherboard, processor and drives. You're not even close, the gpu would boot up but than choke when gaming which makes the update without the right power pointless.

i get ur point but i think ur wrong about the 4 pin if im not wrong if the 4 pin one the 12V rail it can go up to 60 watts 😀 this thread is becoming a learning curve for me lol

 

[Math Geek]

you can only use a 960 that needs a 6 pin. there are super overclocked models that use an 8 pin or even 2 6 pins as you have noticed but you just can't run them on that psu.

i know it sucks but this is the nature of the prebuilt pc beast and why we try to talk folks out of prebuilt pc's as much as we can. these weird one of a kind cases the prebuilts like to use are also a problem as many parts don't fit into them causing headaches for owners of these machines. they also make up their own mobo designs that are not compatible with many other parts including special psu connections not found on off the shelf psu's!!

3rd part psu's are not designed for a specific pc but rather to provide a specific amount of power to as many parts as possible. you chose one that offers the power you need and not be penned in by one designed for a certain machine and only that machine.

 

[JUICEhunter]

Is it a 4 pin that's a square (2pins on top of 2pins) or flat (4pins in a straight line often referred to as a molex cable)? I was under the impression you were talking about the flat one, if it's the square one that goes by the CPU that's a little better but even if you had 2x 6 pins let alone less no one is going to recommend a 280x with your PSU, this site is full of experts and this thread is getting views and no one is jumping in saying "I'm running my 280x on a 500w OEM PSU just fine".

If a thread has multiple posters saying what I'm going to say I usually won't junp in which is what's happening with this one, the main reason I jumped in is because I don't think you believed math geek and all their points are spot on.

Go ahead and buy it and if there's any issues you could start another thread like these:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916373-pc/72024669

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2131332/500w-power-supply-280x.html

https://teksyndicate.com/comment/1786126 that person has a 500w bronze and than someone said they had the same PSU and had same problem with a weaker 280 non x. "I got this adapter and it works fine" - said no one ever, at least not with similar specs to yours. I know how it goes, you want someone to tell you it'll be fine but no one wants to be responsible for a bad experience and have to answer "why, but you said this".

 

[little_fish]

Is it a 4 pin that's a square (2pins on top of 2pins) or flat (4pins in a straight line often referred to as a molex cable)? I was under the impression you were talking about the flat one, if it's the square one that goes by the CPU that's a little better but even if you had 2x 6 pins let alone less no one is going to recommend a 280x with your PSU, this site is full of experts and this thread is getting views and no one is jumping in saying "I'm running my 280x on a 500w OEM PSU just fine".

If a thread has multiple posters saying what I'm going to say I usually won't junp in which is what's happening with this one, the main reason I jumped in is because I don't think you believed math geek and all their points are spot on.

Go ahead and buy it and if there's any issues you could start another thread like these:

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/916373-pc/72024669

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-2131332/500w-power-supply-280x.html

https://teksyndicate.com/comment/1786126 that person has a 500w bronze and than someone said they had the same PSU and had same problem with a weaker 280 non x. "I got this adapter and it works fine" - said no one ever, at least not with similar specs to yours. I know how it goes, you want someone to tell you it'll be fine but no one wants to be responsible for a bad experience and have to answer "why, but you said this".

im already not getting the 280x im gonna go for 2x6 pin card i guess mathgeek already made me understand why the adapters won't work unless i have wattage to run it 😀 ty for ur help
do u think i can get extra 6 pin connector out of molex the 12v rail i read here it gives 60 watts
http://www.playtool.com/pages/psuconnectors/connectors.html#peripheral ?

 

[little_fish]

You can use 2 molex to 8 pin pci-e connector

it will do the job large cards like this include them in packet or you buy them they are cheap

http://www.amazon.com/Molex-PCI-E-Power-Cable-Graphic/dp/B00KTXSL22/ref=sr_1_3?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1460913774&sr=1-3&keywords=2+molex+to+8+pin

you may need and this

http://www.amazon.com/Athena-Power-4-pin-PCI-Express-Cable-PCIE4628/dp/B0032MT0OU

the 2 molex will povide the exta power if you need it anyway.

i don't have 2 molex in my psu xD mostly im going for a card with 2x6 pins would be easier for me i guess 😀 ty

 

[JUICEhunter]

You could run a 380/380x 960/970 because of their efficient architectures, some of the older generations you can run are 670/760 but for AMD you're looking at slower 370/270/270x/7870/7850 just depends on the deal. You might as well get a new 950 if you're considering getting any of those older slower GPUs.

I've only used the 2x molex to 6 pin to get a 2nd 6 pin to run my old 670 on my old PSU and that was fine but I still worried about it although it still works to this day in my friends pc not sure how just one works. If you're paying too much for an old GPU get a 2 GB 960 for $160 and you will only need a single 6 pin and won't have to worry about adapters.