Will an EXTREMELY bad PSU bottleneck my gaming performance?

[LeopardStrike]

Sup guys. Please do respond as quickly as you can (by saturday is best)
So I have a decent system.
GPU - EVGA GTX 770 (superclocked) 2gb
CPU - AMD FX-6300 (meh)
ASRock 970 Pro3 2.0
eh, other crap, ask me if you need more info

*** Now, my PSU is from when I ordered my case (I had my case prebuilt but I now have a different gpu and mobo)
So, I tried checking my order history but could not find the wattage on my power supply. So obviously it's this all black generic-looking power supply. I unscrewed it, no sticker or whatever saying the wattage. I'm guessing its probably 350-400w maximum.
Gtx 770 requirements are MINIMUM 600w...... Obviously way more than my (guesstimated) psu wattage.
Do you think I would get better performance out of gaming if I got.. say, a 750W power supply?
I'm looking at this one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139051&cm_re=corsair_power_supply-_-17-139-051-_-Product

Thing is, some people say your system would crash if your PSU wattage is too low, and other people say your PSU limits things to keep it from crashing, or something along those lines. And my computer never completely crashed from a lack of power, which is odd.

I was looking to order an MSI Gtx 970 this Monday. Same system requirement as my 770 (which is 600w minimum)

Do you think I should order a decent PSU first, or should I just keep my generic-ass trashy PSU with a probably 400w max and get the GTX 970.

Also, I'm looking to overclock my GPU, because the 970 is said to OC nicely, but obviously it draws even more power when OC'd.
So....? Thanks for future replies

 

[Calculagator]

If your psu is not working it will cause your system to crash. Your system isn't crashing so your PSU must be working-at least for now. There has to be a sticker on it somewhere that lists the input and output power unless you peeled it off. It may be on a side against the case. GPUs' PSU requirements are just estimates. The important thing is how much power they actually use and how much the rest of your system uses. Tom's had an article a while back testing an R9 295x (the most power-hungry GPU) on a 400w or so quality PSU--no problems. They regularly overestimate the size of PSU needed because its always easier to be on the safe side.

By all means-do get a better PSU, but don't expect to get any better performance.

 

[LeopardStrike]

Hey thanks a lot for the reply.
However, how can I check how much watts my computer all together is using?
Do I have to google my components and check their wattage, or is their a program for checking it?
Because I can't find any program that searches for it.
Also, how much power will overclocking take up if lets say... I overclock my GTX 770 (evga) +100 mhz? A lot or just like 20 watts?

 

[amej8]

PSU calculators you find on Google are just estimators. There are a ton of them out there.

The Corsair CX series is one of their lower tier series. Read here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/361469-28-what-differences-corsair-series

As far as I've seen, the EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2 is one of the best ones for it's value you can get right now. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438018

 

[Calculagator]

Hey thanks a lot for the reply.
However, how can I check how much watts my computer all together is using?
Do I have to google my components and check their wattage, or is their a program for checking it?
Because I can't find any program that searches for it.
Also, how much power will overclocking take up if lets say... I overclock my GTX 770 (evga) +100 mhz? A lot or just like 20 watts?

Measuring actual power use of individual components is actually pretty difficult. I was thinking more in terms looking at the spec. I'm not sure about yours, but the standard maximum power use for a gtx 770 is 230w. The rest of your system probably uses less than 150w when gaming. It's not an exact comparison but from these benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1037 you can see that their test system only used about 315w when fully using the gtx 770. And then here http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1355 with a GTX 970 it used 20-30w less than the 770.

Overclocking is even more difficult to measure because it depends on the properties of individual chips. It is possible to overclock and still use less than stock power. It's also possible that a very small overclock could use 50% more power.

 

[LeopardStrike]

Hey thanks a lot for the reply.
However, how can I check how much watts my computer all together is using?
Do I have to google my components and check their wattage, or is their a program for checking it?
Because I can't find any program that searches for it.
Also, how much power will overclocking take up if lets say... I overclock my GTX 770 (evga) +100 mhz? A lot or just like 20 watts?

Measuring actual power use of individual components is actually pretty difficult. I was thinking more in terms looking at the spec. I'm not sure about yours, but the standard maximum power use for a gtx 770 is 230w. The rest of your system probably uses less than 150w when gaming. It's not an exact comparison but from these benchmarks: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1037 you can see that their test system only used about 315w when fully using the gtx 770. And then here http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1355 with a GTX 970 it used 20-30w less than the 770.

Overclocking is even more difficult to measure because it depends on the properties of individual chips. It is possible to overclock and still use less than stock power. It's also possible that a very small overclock could use 50% more power.

Thank you very much sir, I got a corsair 750cx couple weeks ago, so I'm good to go now, but thank you for the information, now I know a little more 😀

 

[LeopardStrike]

PSU calculators you find on Google are just estimators. There are a ton of them out there.

The Corsair CX series is one of their lower tier series. Read here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/361469-28-what-differences-corsair-series

As far as I've seen, the EVGA SuperNOVA 850 G2 is one of the best ones for it's value you can get right now. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817438018

Hey thanks a lot for the psu calculators, even if they are estimates, at least it'll tell me how much power I'm using >_<