PSU Capacity testing

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floydbloke

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#94120 6-Dec-2011 15:47

So I’ve just bought a GTX260 to replace my 8800GT. I suspect this will push my PSU to its limit but being of Dutch heritage I’d prefer not to have to buy a more grunty one unless I absolutely have to. On-line PSU calculators suggest I may be OK but getting close to marginal. System is rock-solid at the moment.

Is there a a reasonably reliable, and safe, way to confirm whether my existing PSU is up to it. I’m thinking along the lines of installing and running some iterations of 3DMark, or similar that pushes the CPU and GPU towards some of their upper limits. If the machine doesn’t crash (or catch fire) it might be OK. If it does fail somehow, time to open the wallet, watch the moths fly out, and spend some cash on a new power supply.

Not a particularly scientific approach. Any better suggestions?

Rig specs:
Q6600
2 x @GB DDR2 RAM Sticks
2 x SataII HDD
1 x SATA DVD/RW
8800GT (old, to be removed)
GTX260 (new)
1x Firewire Card
1 x TV Tuner (happy to take this out if it helps, don’t really use it these days)

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Zeon

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#554537 6-Dec-2011 16:14

Lol what's your PSU model and power rating (on each of the different voltages in amreres)?

At worst you'll likely just see glitching e.g. with your screen freezing and turning funny colours at worst the PSU may fry.

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floydbloke

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#554548 6-Dec-2011 16:36

Zeon: Lol what's your PSU model and power rating (on each of the different voltages in amreres)?

At worst you'll likely just see glitching e.g. with your screen freezing and turning funny colours at worst the PSU may fry.

I'll pull it to bits tonight and check the max current draws for each rail (hopefully it's written on there somewhere). I know the total rating is 420W. I'll keep the fire extinguisher handy, I guess if it does fry than it's conclusive proof that I need more grunt.

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Zeon

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#554560 6-Dec-2011 16:49

Oh you should be fine. Replaced an 8800GT with a Radeon 6950 myself a month ago on a 420watt Enermax (albeit quite a good quality one) and no problems ;)

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mattRSK

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#554568 6-Dec-2011 16:52

http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/LoadBox-1.html Basically the same thing we did when I was working at a company who made DC power supplies.

Niel

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#554602 6-Dec-2011 17:48

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-gtx-280,1953-25.html
Looks like you will be fine if currently it is stable, your power consumption will drop by about 30W. This is because smaller components use less power so when they shrink the die (of the GPU, RAM, etc.) you use less power and do more/faster.

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b0untypure1

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#554660 6-Dec-2011 19:51

i use this sometimes

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

floydbloke

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#554666 6-Dec-2011 20:09

Thanks for all the tips.

Took the plunge and installed it and have given a bit of thrashing playing GTAIV, on some signifcantly higher settings than what I used to, and seems to be running sweet as (is it still OK to use that phrase, I'm not really keeping up with street jargon these days).

Incidentally, looking at hwcompare.com, the 8800GT sucks about 105 watts, compared to 171 for the GTX260.

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floydbloke

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#554667 6-Dec-2011 20:11

mattRSK: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/LoadBox-1.html Basically the same thing we did when I was working at a company who made DC power supplies.

Indeed the scientific approach, but cheaper just to buy a gruntier PSU I would think.

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mattRSK

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#554701 6-Dec-2011 21:21

floydbloke:
mattRSK: http://www.angelfire.com/electronic/funwithtubes/LoadBox-1.html Basically the same thing we did when I was working at a company who made DC power supplies.

Indeed the scientific approach, but cheaper just to buy a gruntier PSU I would think.

True that :)