Which Power supply and RAM?

CSMReaper

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Oct 31, 2014
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I currently have a cosair cx750m and was wondering if it would be a good idea to get the corsair professional series ax860i m for a more efficient as its 80 platinum instead of 80 bronze as well as give me more growing room for additions to my rig. Also I have 2 8GB sticks of crucial ballistix sport RAM, I know I will be using all four slots to max out at 32GB and was wandering if i should just add 2 more of these or if I should get 4 8GB corsair vengeace instead? Which should I go with and why? I run games in ultra settings and multitask a ton, i have three monitors and have on average 6+ pages up at any given time as well as listening to music.

I use
asrock z87 extreme4 motherboard
Intel I7 4770k cpu
2 EVGA 770 4GB graphics cards
i am going to be getting 2 samsung 850 pro series 128GB SSD as well
Thank you for any helpful input and anwsers
 
Solution
The larger 850 AX is a nice PSU, my question is how much "room to grow and for what" are you planning? Currently you are obviously running a PSU that works. If you eventually move to something like 2 970s you are actually going to need LESS power. How much you multi-task doesn't have a lot of difference on the power available to you or that you use. Even with all your devices working simultaneously i would say you have 100-150watts overhead... Each PSU draws max 250 so x 2 that is 500W... so you have 250 w left over for everything else.

All that being said you would be more power efficient and use the power more efficiently and save a bit of money with the AX.
 
If you want to throw the money in a AX series psu, then sure why not, but i would recommend maybe going for something cheaper, yet still much better than the CX. Don't know their exact pricings and series, but Seasonic, XFX and some EVGA psus are defently also worth to take a look at.

Here's a tier list for psus that you can use:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/id-1804779/power-supply-unit-tier-list.html

Would go for anything on tier one and Tier Two Class A, maybe Tier two class B if it has a good 80+ rating. The CX is Tier Three.


For the RAM i would defently get some extra crucial memory, you won't notice any performance difference at all between different brands, probably not even between different speeds, so get the crucial instead of replacing all of your ram.
And have you actually checked how much memory you use when multitasking and have 6+ pages open? You'll never exeed 8GB in a game, not even on Ultra. The term multitasking could cover alot of programs, so check the Task Manager's Performance tab to see how much you actually use. I'm using 8GB or RAM, and I'm sometimes using pages all the way over to the minimize button, and even more! So check how much you use when "multitasking", then consider if you actually need the extra RAM, if you've come close to the 16GB limit when multitasking, then it's not a bad idea at all to upgrade, just don't replace all of your current RAM. 😉


Hope this helped you!
 


Hi - You are most likely running your current PSU at 85-90% of it's potential when gaming & multi,
so for that reason you may want to get a more powerful PSU and a good quality 850w unit will
lv headroom on a sys with 2 770's. I agree with NiCom tho, don't lock yourself into one model without
checking the other very good/ex options available.

Yes, gold/platinum efficiency will result in lower elect bills, but it would take years, not month's to recoup the
difference in cost.

As far as ram goes, there is no guarantee that adding 2 more sticks of the same brand/model will run
smoothly, in fact very often they don't. The safest, but more expensive solution is to buy a set of 4x8g
sticks as they will have been tested to insure they work well together.
 
Solution