Power Supply Wattage Help

[BWMFrisch]

I am in the process of building a PC, and I have been looking around for power supplies. When trying to calculate the wattage I would need, the only calculators said anywhere from 850 - 1300 watts. Can anyone give me some better advice as to what wattage range I should be looking for? Here is what I have/am planning on getting -

Tower: NZXT Phantom 820
Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair formula V - Z
RAM: 16 GB
Processor: AMD FX 8950
Cooling: NZXT Kraken x60
Video: AMD R9 series card (haven't decided one which one yet, but will most likely crossfire two of them)
Optical Drive: 2 Blu-ray drives
HDD: 2T WD Black

If it makes a difference, this PC will be used for gaming, software development, and video game design and development. Thanks!

 

[Adroid]

Depending on the type of R9 I would recommend minimum 850W of a reputable brand (seasonic, xfx, or similar).

Are you aware that the radeon cards are currently having issues with crossfire? Nvidia provides a much better sli option currently. For a single card, radeon are great, but I would do sli over crossfire.

 

[JohnPMyers]

80% on deciding how large of a power supply you need depends solely on which graphics cards you're getting. I could just say get 1000W to blanket any possible GPUs you might crossfire, but it could be less than that if we knew what you're looking to get.

 

[varun_02]

Go for a minimum 1000 watt from corsair or seasonic.
It will also give you some headroom for future upgrade.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

A quality 850W PSU is all you need for your system.

CORSAIR HX850 850W

 

[BWMFrisch]

I was not aware that they were having difficulties. Is this a software or a hardware problem? I've had some issues with NVIDIA in the past and would be reluctant to switch back unless necessary. As to the cards, let's just say the R9 290X, since you can't go any higher, and that there were two in crossfire. This is the max I would want to upgrade, so that'll be a nice ceiling number.

 

[shortstuff_mt]

A quality 850W PSU will power your system with crossfire R9 290X GPUs. You can go with a higher wattage rating if you want for additional headroom, but it's not really necessary.

 

[Adroid]

Note a crappy 850W will NOT be adequate. I recommend Seasonic (made by Seasonic), XFX (made by Seasonic), or Corsair (the good ones are made by Seasonic).

 

[Adroid]

I was not aware that they were having difficulties. Is this a software or a hardware problem? I've had some issues with NVIDIA in the past and would be reluctant to switch back unless necessary. As to the cards, let's just say the R9 290X, since you can't go any higher, and that there were two in crossfire. This is the max I would want to upgrade, so that'll be a nice ceiling number.

I believe the Crossfire issue is mostly a software/driver issue... Here is a good article.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-r9-290x-hawaii-review,3650-25.html

Note the minimum/average frame time variance compared to Nvidia. You may notice this in some worst-case scenarios. It may not bother you at all.