looking for a power supply enough to power my graphics card

cameron_f

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Jan 9, 2014
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i'm on a budget but i don't want one that will fry my computer. I have a 180w power supply now and that more than enough to power what i have now. I want to upgrade to a 1060 or 1070 but i'm not sure how high i should go because i'm also planning to overclock. Thanks
 
Solution
TBH if you can power your entire computer with a 180W PSU, and you want to get a 1060 or 1070, a card that will end up using more than your entire computer already consumes, I think you will be best off looking at a complete rebuild.
All that matters is the 12v RAIL on your PSU.

Your Answer:
Your going to want a psu that provides at least 35-40 amps on the 12v rail, one like the Antec HCG 620 will be sufficient.
You really can't go to big, the psu converts ac to dc, and dc will only pull as many amps as the load requires. you can power something like a fan thats 12v 1a with a psu thats 12v 100a, it will only ever use 1amp because that is all the resistance the power has to overcome to complete the circuit.

Get a DECENT rated psu that has a 12v rail of over 35 amps.

if you have a 180w psu by the way, most likely your board wont be able to handle that GPU of that power, you will prob have to get a new motherboard and cpu.

You dont want to bottleneck your pc
 
Actually, you can go too big. A PSU is only made to run most effectively at a significant portion of its rated load. Use an 850+W PSU for a rig that pulls 300W max and you're wasting money on the PSU, wasting a little more money on power (low loads are less efficient), and causing the PSU to degrade faster.

While a large PSU may only supply 1A to a 1A load, its voltage regulation will be inferior and it will pull excessively high power from the wall compared to its output power on the DC lines. A gold rated PSU might be only like 70% to 75% efficient at best in those circumstances, possibly worse.


Acting under the assumption that the 180W unit is currently at least barely enough for your computer since you aren't complaining about it not working at all, I'd say you should go for a 400W to 550W PSU of reputable quality. A 620W like the Antec bailojustin suggested would also be acceptable, but I'd put a hard limit at looking at PSUs over 650W. That's just not efficient and a waste of money at that point.

Any modern PSU from Seasonic, Antec, XFX, Corsair, and a few others if you need more suggestions within that wattage range will be fine. They'll have enough 12VDC amp ratings since good quality, modern PSUs can supply 100% of their wattage on the 12V line (5V and 3.3V lines are stepped down from the 12V line with DC-DC converters), so specifically looking at 12V current isn't as important as it used to be, granted it doesn't hurt.
 
A added discrete graphics card may take 75w for the pcie slot plus 75w for every 6 pin aux pcie power lead it needs, and 150w for each 8 pin lead.
So, you are looking at 450w typically for a GTX1060 and 500w for a GTX1070.
This assumes the psu is of good quality. You can't believe wattage on cheap units.
Look for a tier 1 or 2 unit from a list such as this:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2547993/psu-tier-list.html
Seasonic is always good.
 


the motherboard is a memphis2-s, and this is all temporary, i'm planning on building one soon i'm just doing this until i can