New PSU for friend

[Tech Wizard]

Hello, friend of mine wants to buy a new PSU for his build, featuring a 980 (2x 6-pins). Can anyone recommend a good PSU unit, pref from PSU tier list 1? I thought of Corsair's RMx, but that one doesn't have 6 pin PCI-e, only for peripherals. Thanks

[Guest]

Corsair RM x has 6 pin cable, it's a 6+2 pin

 

[79wjd]

The RMx has a 6 pin cable in the form of a 6+2 pin cable.

[Oshino Shinobu]

The RMx series uses 6+2 pin PCIe connectors, so it will work fine with that GPU. 

[Guest]

But if you want an alternative, there is also EVGA G2

PCIE	4x 8pin (6+2)

http://www.evga.com/Products/Product.aspx?pn=220-G2-0750-XR

[Guest]

I always recommend bequiet but there the war begins. Of course the choices are endless, but for a budget build which is still of awesome quality I would buy a Pure Power 9 500W or 600W modular PSU.

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, MrHomes said:

I always recommend bequiet but there the war begins. Of course the choices are endless, but for a budget build which is still of awesome quality I would buy a Pure Power 9 500W or 600W modular PSU.

 To be honest, if they're looking at the RMx series and have a 980 in the system, they're not exactly on a tight budget where the PSU needs to be cheap. 

 

I wouldn't really recommend the bequiet! Pure Power 9 series for much. Better off going with something like a Corsair CXM or Antec HCG for more of a budget option. bequiet!'s Dark Power Pro 10 and 11 series are great but expensive, the Straight Power 10 is decent but the rest of their units are mediocre. 

[JoaoPRSousa]

6 minutes ago, deXxterlab97 said:

Corsair RM x has 6 pin cable, it's a 6+2 pin

 

6 minutes ago, djdwosk97 said:

The RMx has a 6 pin cable in the form of a 6+2 pin cable.

 

6 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

The RMx series uses 6+2 pin PCIe connectors, so it will work fine with that GPU. 

 

The RM550x only has 1 6+2 PCIe connector.

The 650W version has 2 of them tho (and the higher wattage ones might have even more).

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, JoaoPRSousa said:

 

 

 

The RM550x only has 1 6+2 PCIe connector.

The 650W version has 2 of them tho (and the higher wattage ones might have even more).

The RMx 550w has 1 6+2 pin cable, but it has 2x 6+2 pin connectors on it. So it would be fine to power a 980

 

 

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-rm550x-power-supply,4484-2.html

[Guest]

19 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

I wouldn't really recommend the bequiet! Pure Power 9 series for much.

Why that? It has 80+ Silver in comparison to the Corsair, and bequiet PSUs are very silent in my experience.

[Oshino Shinobu]

5 minutes ago, MrHomes said:

Why that? It has 80+ Silver in comparison to the Corsair, and bequiet PSUs are very silent in my experience.

80+ ratings are just for efficiency, not quality. There's plenty of 80+ silver and gold PSUs that are beaten in terms of quality and reliability by 80+ Bronze units. 

 

You can read through some of the reviews for each PSU to get an idea of some of the differences. 

 

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=476

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Story&reid=486

[Guest]

8 minutes ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

There's plenty of 80+ silver and gold PSUs that are beaten in terms of quality and reliability by 80+ Bronze units. 

True that! Did you have bad experience with bequiet PSUs? To be honest I didn't had a Corsair yet...

[Oshino Shinobu]

8 minutes ago, MrHomes said:

True that! Did you have bad experience with bequiet PSUs? To be honest I didn't had a Corsair yet...

I haven't used bequiet! for PSUs myself, but I try to keep up to date on what's what with PSUs. It's an area that a lot of people overlook when building a system. 

 

It's really impossible to judge quality by a brand like bequiet! or Corsair. In the case of bequiet!, they use FSP as the OEM for all of their series, but there's still a wide variety in quality across those series and sometimes among the same series. Corsair uses a wider range of OEMs from CWT and Greatwall to Seasonic and Flextronics, making it even harder to use the brand as any basis for quality. 

 

Corsair have some excellent PSUs in their lineup, like the AXi series made by Flextronics, as well as some pretty bad units like the VS series made by CWT. That doesn't mean CWT is bad, though, some of Corsair's best units like the RMx/i series are made by CWT. 

 

With PSUs you really have to look at the individual unit for the quality. I'm currently using the Corsair AX860 made by Seasonic. 

 

EDIT: A lot of the time with PSUs, it's useless to go off personal experience as it's such a small sample size that it doesn't matter. You can have excellent quality PSUs fail in a day due to an error that was missed in manufacturing or user error, as well as having a bad PSU lasting for a long time because the situations it would fail in (such as power surges) didn't occur.