How much wattage should a PSU have for 2, or even 3 higher-end GPUs?

[sterlin22]

I plan on buying the GTX 1080 / 1080 Ti or equivalent when the NVIDIA Pascal Series is released.

This will likely also be the first time I'll experiment with SLI cards, buying a 2nd GPU within the same tier at some point further down the road.

This is my current rig:

i7-4790k @ stock
EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0 4GB @ factory OC
8GB DDR3 1333 (I would upgrade to 16 by then)
Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB
1TB 7200 RPM HDD
Gigabyte UD5H Z97X
Corsair GS 700 Watt

Thing is, I don't even have a clue as to an estimated / ball-park-figure safe wattage to have for the PSU for support SLI cards. And I know this can't be 100% guaranteed as the Pascal series specs aren't available.

Any ball park figures? Is 700 Watts even close to enough?

 

[M0j0jojo]

I plan on buying the GTX 1080 / 1080 Ti or equivalent when the NVIDIA Pascal Series is released.

This will likely also be the first time I'll experiment with SLI cards, buying a 2nd GPU within the same tier at some point further down the road.

This is my current rig:

i7-4790k @ stock
EVGA GTX 970 ACX 2.0 4GB @ factory OC
8GB DDR3 1333 (I would upgrade to 16 by then)
Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB
1TB 7200 RPM HDD
Gigabyte UD5H Z97X
Corsair GS 700 Watt

Thing is, I don't even have a clue as to an estimated / ball-park-figure safe wattage to have for the PSU for support SLI cards. And I know this can't be 100% guaranteed as the Pascal series specs aren't available.

Any ball park figures? Is 700 Watts even close to enough?

Depends on the what high end GPU we are talking about?

 

[cdabc123]

pascal is going to be very energy efficient so 700 watts for a 2 card sli might not be too unreasonable. however a psu will only use as much as it needs so if you bought a good quality 12-1500 watt one you would be set for life

 

[rcald2000]

Choose an appropriate wattage tier 1 or 2 power supply using the two resources below.

*** power requirements for graphics cards ***
http://www.realhardtechx.com/index_archivos/Page362.htm

*** PSU tier list ***
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html

 

[rcald2000]

@sterlin, I have no idea how much wattage Pascal based cards will require when they release. One would hope that it would be comparable to cards today. For example, two GTX 980 Ti's in SLI would need 850 watts, which is what I have. I also happen to have a EVGA G2 1300 watt backup PSU, that I purchased at a discount. I don't anticipate ever needing more than that, but you never know.

 

[sterlin22]

Thanks for the input guys! Very informative. I'll let this topic remain unsolved for a little while, just in case anyone else feels like chiming in with some guesses / theories / rumors / recommendations.