Getting an EVGA 8800 GTS 320MB, a few questions

[tasandmnm]

I am getting the standard version, not the SC. I do plan on overclocking it a little, so any advice on that would be great. Is the stock cooling pretty sufficient and is there anything cheap/homegrown I can do to improve the cooling efficiency? (for example on an old card of mine I removed the heatsinks and cooling fan and cleaned the old paste off and put down some arctic silver which dropped my temps by quite a few degrees and allowed me to squeak a little more performance out of it) And is there anyone using the stock EVGA card and getting good OC results? If so what kind of numbers are you reliably getting?

Second off I only have a 500W power supply. I am hoping this won't be a problem since I won't have a ton of stuff hooked up. I will be using an AMD 4600+ Windsor with a Western Digital SATA HD, a Samsung internal DVD burner, 2 gigs of Corsair XMS, and that is about it. I will be using onboard sound for at least a while as well as onboard lan/wifi on an Asus M2N32 SLI Deluxe board. FYI the 500 watt power supply is the one that comes with the Raidmax Smilodon case, both the case and the power supply that comes with it has gotten very good reviews on Newegg and there is at least a few people running the stock PSU in SLI mode with no problems.

 

[tasandmnm]

Great advice, thanks a lot

I decided aginst that case and went with a Coolermaster Centurion 534 and got a separate power supply. Now...anyone got any tips pertaining to the EVGA card?

 

[MotoR6er]

I want to add a question to this... And you probably know tas. I'm thinking of getting the same card in the future. It will be possible to run SLI with these cards as long as you have a mobo that supports it right?

 

[tasandmnm]

I wish I had the link but there is a small program out there that will allow you to input what processor you are using, graphics card, fans...basically everything that draws power from the PSU, and then tells you how much power you will be using. I will try to find it again, I am sure it is not 100% accurate but it will give you a good idea of what you need.

BTW I have had the EVGA 8800 GTS 320MB in my system for 5 days now and I am very impressed with it. I got a very nice overclock out of it and I didn't have to mod anything other than to use Ntune to change the GPU fan setting to 100%. Awesome card for the money....and with the EVGA upgrade program if there is a price drop in the next 90 days I will be able to upgrade graphics cards for not a lot of money

 

[Twisted_Sister]

You are refuring to the eXtreme PSU Calculator. You cna find a link to it in the PSU 101 sticky. There is a link to that page in my sig.

You seem to be the power guy... I just bought a SILVERSTONE ST75F ATX12V / EPS12V 750W Power Supply for a new rig.

Good PSU? I plan on 2 sata hard drives, OC'ng a Quad 6600, and running single 8800 GTS OC'd... enough? (I think so, but I'm not sure I entered everything correctly in the calculator).

On to the topic, just bought a stock 8800 320... looking to OC it safely... any details folks?

 

[big_tuna]

i think its a great psu,i have it running the system in my sig.it runs quiet and powers everything fine