PSU Wattage

[Random Hobo]

Hey guys,

 

I've got a question that I can't comprehend...

 

 

 

550 watt psu or 650 watt psu for a 400 watt rig...

 

 

 

I was thinking of going to a 650W but.. it might be too much. You can have lots of room of upgrading and you don't even have to bother upgrading the PSU.

But, if you go with a 550W it's only 150W more so you won't have that much room to upgrade. 650W was what I was gonna go with originally, just that do I "NEED" that much wattage for future upgrades?

Edited August 6, 2018 by Random Hobo

[Guest]

Depends on your future upgrades mate.

 

I'd say always go higher if you can, just make sure you don't increase wattage and reduce quality. 

[seon123]

What are you powering? With 400W, I'm assuming it's something like a 7820X and a 1080 Ti?

[STRMfrmXMN]

1 hour ago, Random Hobo said:

Hey guys,

 

I've got a question that I can't comprehend...

 

 

 

550 watt psu or 650 watt psu for a 400 watt rig...

 

 

 

I was thinking of going to a 650W but.. it might be too much. You can have lots of room of upgrading and you don't even have to bother upgrading the PSU.

But, if you go with a 550W it's only 150W more so you won't have that much room to upgrade. 650W was what I was gonna go with originally, just that do I "NEED" that much wattage for future upgrades?

What are your system specs?

[Stefan Payne]

1 hour ago, Random Hobo said:

550 watt psu or 650 watt psu for a 400 watt rig...

 

First I doubt that your PC consumes 400W and more like 200-300W.

Because an i7-3930K with an RX480 (OC, Power Color Red Devil). is around 350W and I've used that with a 400W PSU.

So no, not the 650W. Those are bullshit in 9/10 Cases and only make sense in some corner cases. Like a HEDT LGA20xx or TR4 with a higher end Graphics card.

And then you have the Problem that the 650W might be way better due to a different Plattform. 

 

A normal Desktop Ryzen/LGA115x with a mid range Card like Polaris or GTX 1080 or so is around 200-350W, w/o OC.

 

At worst you could use a 550W PSU with TWO higher end GPUs like Radeon HD7970GHz/280x and a Ryzen 1700x.

 

Quote

I was thinking of going to a 650W but.. it might be too much. You can have lots of room of upgrading and you don't even have to bother upgrading the PSU.

You can have too much watt as it often doesn't give you an advantage at alll.

Because you should always think:
What do you get out of it, besides the obvious. And the Answer here is often: Nothing.

 

A 650W offers you 100W more, nothing more.

IN many cases you even get higher fan RPM - like +50% (Bitfenix Whisper M, from around 450rpm to ~700rpm) and never lower fan speed because its just not really possible to do.

 

So if you want a better PSU, get a better one.

A higher wattage one is not better, its quantity over quality.

 

1 hour ago, Netivity said:

Depends on your future upgrades mate.

 

I'd say always go higher if you can, just make sure you don't increase wattage and reduce quality. 

Nobody knows what the future brings.

And what if you get the 650W and in 4 Years the ATX Standard will be scrapped ant the Motherboard makers switch to +12V Only Systems - including Standby....

 

ATX was introduced in 1996, someting to keep in mind...

[Guest]

Quote

Nobody knows what the future brings.

And what if you get the 650W and in 4 Years the ATX Standard will be scrapped ant the Motherboard makers switch to +12V Only Systems - including Standby....

 

ATX was introduced in 1996, someting to keep in mind...

 

Don't get me wrong, I understand where you're coming from.

 

However, like you said, you don't know what the future might bring.

 

Who knows, he might end up putting two 1080Ti's in SLI for all we know. 

 

An 80+ 650W PSU goes for around $60, so it is not that much of a hassle to buy. Besides, I would find it more convenient to have a higher wattage, install and cable manage my PC and as I upgrade, I don't have to undo all the cable management because my PSU isn't rated for my upgraded components, therefore having to install and do the cable management again. 

 

If it gets scrapped in the next 4 years, like you said, he might not even upgrade for another ~3 years, which at that point he can purchase those components AND a new PSU.

 

All in all, we don't know what the future will bring without the OP having some sort of plan of what he's going to do next.

[Stefan Payne]

57 minutes ago, Netivity said:

However, like you said, you don't know what the future might bring.

Exactly, so it makes no sense on wasting money for the Future...

57 minutes ago, Netivity said:

Who knows, he might end up putting two 1080Ti's in SLI for all we know. 

Well, that is highly unlikely.

In my experience, most people are not really satisfied with SLI and have something like a 1200W PSU because at one point in time they used multiple graphics card. But they've given up on it...

 

57 minutes ago, Netivity said:

An 80+ 650W PSU goes for around $60, so it is not that much of a hassle to buy.

Yes, but that's bullshit.

Because most 80plus white/Bronze units are pretty shit.

and for the same amount of money you could get an 80plus Gold unit with better quality fan, lower fan RPM, better electrical stuff and so on.

 

And exactly that was what I'm arguing against, to get a low quality higher wattage PSU isntead of a lower wattage high Quality PSU.

 

 

You can even expect a longer lifetime out of the higher quality unit...

 

57 minutes ago, Netivity said:

Besides, I would find it more convenient to have a higher wattage, install and cable manage my PC and as I upgrade, I don't have to undo all the cable management because my PSU isn't rated for my upgraded components, therefore having to install and do the cable management again. 

Yeah, but a low quality high wattage PSU doesn't have many connectors either. So that doesn't make much sense

 

57 minutes ago, Netivity said:

If it gets scrapped in the next 4 years, like you said, he might not even upgrade for another ~3 years, which at that point he can purchase those components AND a new PSU.

Normal users usually upgrade in 5-7 Year intervalls with replacing the GPU maybe once in this time so does it really matter at all?

 

57 minutes ago, Netivity said:

All in all, we don't know what the future will bring without the OP having some sort of plan of what he's going to do next.

In my experience, the future won't bring much more as the power consumption of Desktop Components isn't increasing. Only the HEDT Area has increased power consumption but also increased core counts. There the Core counts were trippled or quadrupled in the last 3 years or so.

But in Desktop, its only about doubled (yet)...

 

 

As for the Graphics cards the power consumption/TDP almost halved in the last ~8 years or so. A couple of years ago you cold get a 250W TDP Card for 250€.
Right now you have to pay 500€ or more for something like that....

 

One could argue that the Prices of graphics card drastically increased in the last couple of years because of that. But that is what we are stuck with right now...

So I don't expect this to change...

[Guest]

@Stefan Payne

 

Again, I understand where you're coming from. But the facts that you state are those of your experience.

 

Quote

Yes, but that's bullshit.

Because most 80plus white/Bronze units are pretty shit.

and for the same amount of money you could get an 80plus Gold unit with better quality fan, lower fan RPM, better electrical stuff and so on.

 

I understand if you change out your parts every 5-7 years. But you can't just speak for "normal" users, as you say it. With technology rapidly changing and always continuing to get better, that statement is irrelevant imo. Hell, I ended up changing ALL my parts except for maybe the GPU after 3 years.

 

And I also know that in your country you might be able to pick up a 80+ gold PSU for a different price than the rest of the world. But one could argue that your point of view is linear.

Quote

A normal Desktop Ryzen/LGA115x with a mid range Card like Polaris or GTX 1080 or so is around 200-350W, w/o OC.

Pretty normal set up:

 

 

And here is a "normal Ryzen desktop" as you put it:

Quote

Yeah, but a low quality high wattage PSU doesn't have many connectors either. So that doesn't make much sense

If you had read my first post here:

Quote

I'd say always go higher if you can, just make sure you don't increase wattage and reduce quality. 

 

 

EDIT: Let's just wait until OP replies with what he's planning to do and we can reply from there.

[Benkin]

550W is all you need in this day and age, SLI?X-Fire is pretty much dying. And being  replaced by much newer technologies by Nvidea and AMD.

 

Go with a gold rated psu as it's better at 100% load if you near that much, but you won't.

 

Honestly, I'm tired of the misinformation when it comes to wattages, 550W is more than enough, most users will need 450W.  Unless you have a special workstation and or SLI/X-Fire then bump it up to 750W depending on the card. Whatever outervision spits out is only half the truth the reality is half of that. That 426W is really 213W

[alexhelvetica]

2 hours ago, Netivity said:

I understand if you change out your parts every 5-7 years. But you can't just speak for "normal" users, as you say it. With technology rapidly changing and always continuing to get better, that statement is irrelevant imo. Hell, I ended up changing ALL my parts except for maybe the GPU after 3 years.

Normal users don't upgrade every components every 3 years. You could very easily be rocking an i7 860 for 2009, and still have a great gaming experience. I know so many people who only upgrade when something dies; you know why, because that's really most people. I upgraded because my motherboard died, which is the only reason why I am still not on a FX 6300.

2 hours ago, Netivity said:

And I also know that in your country you might be able to pick up a 80+ gold PSU for a different price than the rest of the world. But one could argue that your point of view is linear.

PCCG seems to have dropped their PSU lineup a lot in the past week, but last week you could get a BeQuiet PurePower 10 400 for around $79AU, and an Earthwatts Pro 550W for around $85AU. There's alot of really nice entry level 80plus goldl PSUs around or below $100AU.

2 hours ago, Netivity said:

Pretty normal set up:

 

https://linustechtips.com/main/profile/112530-strmfrmxmn/?status=182458&type=status&page=2

[Stefan Payne]

3 hours ago, Netivity said:

Again, I understand where you're coming from. But the facts that you state are those of your experience.

Yes, that is what I've seen in my ~20 Years on the Internet...

Its not what I do

I like to replace my Hardware for no reason whatsoever, that is why I ordered another AM4 Bord (in this Case MSI B450I Gaming Plus, wich replaces my ASUS X370-F STRIX)

Quote

I understand if you change out your parts every 5-7 years. But you can't just speak for "normal" users, as you say it. With technology rapidly changing and always continuing to get better, that statement is irrelevant imo. Hell, I ended up changing ALL my parts except for maybe the GPU after 3 years.

I was speaking about the Normal users that comes to the Forum.

And the ones I've seen so far keep most components until they die or they feel it necessary to upgrade.

And that is when some/many games they play don't run well on their hardware, wich doesn't happen that often. More likely is that something causes issues and they replace the components because they have a Problem with them...

While it is true that there was a time where you had to upgrade every couple of years if you want to play games on the PC but that time is no more!

 

 

Just look at how many people are still working with Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge machines.

Right now I'm writing this with a Haswell i3 (MSI H81I with an i3-4150) and that piece of Hardware, although its pretty good for what I want, is already around 5 Years old!

 

And even those machines are still rather good!

And thus the normal user might replace the Graphics card every 3-5 Years (I myself swapped my HD7970s after 4 Years!)

 

Quote

And I also know that in your country you might be able to pick up a 80+ gold PSU for a different price than the rest of the world. But one could argue that your point of view is linear.

That doesn't change my point that you should look for QUALITY not QUANTITY!

A 650W unit might even be cheaper than a 450W gold one, but its also worse as the voltage regulation of your 650W 80plus can go out of spec with normal load because they regulate +5V and +12V as a group and not independently of each other.

So with modern Systems with high load on +12V and low load on 5V and 3,3V (and if they could they would have NONE on +5V/3,3V), the +12V will be rather low, minor rails rather high. And that is not the only problem with these units.

 

The next thing is the fan!

With the 80+ units you mentioned, we are talking about the usual shitty Sleeve Bearing fans that might (or not) last the warranty but will die rather soon.

While the better units have better fans with better bearing, better lubricant that last usually longer than the PSU itself. 

 

Quote

Pretty normal set up:

A Threadripper is not normal. a Ryzen or LGA115x CPU is.

And I have an LGA-2011 System -> i7-3930K with an RX480 OC (Power Color Red Devil) wich consumes far less than 400W (with Prime 95 and Heaven around 350W).

So pls get yourself a powermeter and measure YOUR Power Supply.

I want/need high power hardware but even with _TWO_ HD7970GHz/280X I am not able to overload a 550W PSU without overclocking/overvolting the CPU...

 

So modern components consume far less power in their default configuration than those "Calculators" makes you believe. Only when you measure it yourself you can know...

 

Quote

And here is a "normal Ryzen desktop" as you put it:

Total false/bullshit.
I have a Ryzen 7/1700X myself and normal gaming load is something around 200-300W.

So you really don't need such high power Wattage PSU.

And you'd want a PSU that 

 

Quote

If you had read my first post here:

Yeah, but if you have  the money, why not go for a higher quality PSU?

Or why not improve other Components?

Like getting a better Heatsink, bigger SSD, bigger HDD and so on...

 

Every Watt you don't need doesn't give you any benefit at all. Its just there and does nothing.

[awesomegamer919]

43 minutes ago, Comic_Sans_MS said:

Normal users don't upgrade every components every 3 years. You could very easily be rocking an i7 860 for 2009, and still have a great gaming experience. I know so many people who only upgrade when something dies; you know why, because that's really most people. I upgraded because my motherboard died, which is the only reason why I am still not on a FX 6300.

PCCG seems to have dropped their PSU lineup a lot in the past week, but last week you could get a BeQuiet PurePower 10 400 for around $79AU, and an Earthwatts Pro 550W for around $85AU. There's alot of really nice entry level 80plus goldl PSUs around or below $100AU.

 

https://linustechtips.com/main/profile/112530-strmfrmxmn/?status=182458&type=status&page=2

Pure Power 10 is Silver rated. EAG Pro is no longer on sale but it's commonly available for less than 100AUD (MSY sell it for example)...