GTX 960 Power connection

[parxysm79]

Recently I had an MSI R9 270X Hawk edition which worked for about 3 months and then after a driver update it was dead, completely irrelevant to my problem but the warranty replacement card I'm getting in the next few days is the GTX 960 Gaming 2G also from MSI.

I'm fine with this as it's more powerful but now after reading up on it I'm worried about the power of the card, the R9 270X used 2x 6 pin power connectors, which my PSU has so it powered the card just fine. The GTX 960 will have 1x 8 pin connector. I'm not sure what to do, will a 6 pin work just fine as I've read on forums the other two are ground wires and don't carry extra power? Is there an adapter I can use without risking damage to the GPU.

My PSU is a Cooler Master RP-650-PCAR, 650W as the model name suggests. The rest of my specs are a modest Intel i5 4460 cooled by a Cooler Master Seidon 120V, 8GB Corsair Vengeance LP RAM, Asrock H97-ITX/ac Motherboard, I have one HDD and another SSD.

I'm pretty confident that the PSU has enough wattage left for the card, but the connector issue is worrisome. I don't know that much about Power supplies but on the side it says +12V1 with 18A below it and +12V2, also with 18A below it. Does this mean my PSU has split 12V rails with 18A each, is this fine for the GPU? I've read conflicting arguements that split rails is not good for powering GPU's while an Antec page (http://www.antec.com/PSU/Myth2.php) dispelled that as a 'Myth'.

Can anyone with more knowledge than me make a recommendation... I really don't want to upgrade my PSU but I don't want to ruin a perfectly good GPU either.

 

[Suztera]

If your psu is the Cooler Master RP-650-PCAR, you can simply combine the 6 pin and 2 pin together to form an 8 pin pcie cable. no need for adapters.
Your psu should run a GTX 960.

 

[parxysm79]

If your psu is the Cooler Master RP-650-PCAR, you can simply combine the 6 pin and 2 pin together to form an 8 pin pcie cable. no need for adapters.
Your psu should run a GTX 960.

I've just checked the PSU, there is no 2 pin to go together with the either of the 6 pin pcie cables. I've counted all of it just now and the PSU has:

2x6 pin PCIe connecters
1x24(split in a 20+4 connecter) for the motherboard
4-pin connector that also goes into the motherboard
6 molex connectors (of which 4 are currently unused)
3x SATA power connectors.
There's another connector type that I don't use and I don't know what it's for, it has 4 pins, like a Molex but smaller and has a plastic standoff at the 3rd pin.

The PSU is rather old, I bought it for my previous PC, think it's now in its 6th or 7th year. I've gone to Cooler Master's website and downloaded the PSU manual, which does state that it has 2x 6+2 PCIe connectors, and mine certainly doesn't... which means the model has since been refreshed but kept the exact same Product Number.

Are products like these (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812200420) safe for this kind of midrange GPU, from what I've read it does not seem to draw alot of power, I've also wondered maybe there's a way to use both 6pin connectors to combine into one 8 pin connector, surely that would be able to drive the GPU? It did drive the R9 270X which uses more power...

 

[Bossyfins]

http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-Express-Power-Adapter-PCIEX68ADAP/dp/B001TK3TJY is what you would need. However, is MSI replacing the 270x with the 960?

 

[parxysm79]

MSI isn't replacing the part directly, I bought it at the store as online shipping in my country isn't all that great or cheap so stores provide similar prices with better guarunees etc... I requested that the Radeon card be replaced with the GTX 960 as they have very similar prices here. It's not that I dislike either AMD or Nvidia, I alway buy the most bang for buck card I can find at the time of buying, when I bought the Radeon card, it was the best I could find. What made me shift to nvidia for this round at least is that the support for linux in terms of drivers is alot better, combined with the GTX 960 being arguably the best bang for buck currently, it was the logical choice for my budget. I'm paying about $15-20 to the store to swap the card for the nvidia card, which seems like a good deal to me. Currently Radeons are strangely expensive in my country, this fluctuates alot though. Anyway would that converter you linked be fine, and if it isn't would it damage the card, would it simply not start up, or crash under high load?

 

[Bossyfins]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812887002&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleAdwords-PC-_-pla-_-Internal+Power+Cables-_-N82E16812887002&gclid=CjwKEAjws5CrBRD8ze702_2dyjYSJAAAJK9yjb4fK530nsr1wLW7UVXQHLUEjJ6n4tv2-gRQKn1g4BoCmf3w_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

This would also work.