Power Supply Calculator

[hellnoire]

So as some people might be aware, I'm in the market for some upgrades. I am buying

PNY NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti
WD Caviar Green 1TB Drive

to add to my computer. And with those, I know I'd need more power then the stock 300 Watt power supply I have.

So to resolve this issue, I had to calculate the power they need. For that, you need a Power Supply calculator.

Thermaltake's Power Supply Calculator is what I used to make sure my estimate was correct. I put in all the values and it reported back what I expected... that my current one is too weak, since it would now be drawing 369 Watts, according to it's calculations.

So you might be wondering which power supply I went with after all? I went with a Seasonic M12II 620W. Way more then what I need, but certainly will be futureproof for a while. Even if I run SLI later, I still have quite a bit to spare (the power consumption jumps to 491 Watts). And at $120 with shipping and taxes, I think that's a rather amazing good deal for Seasonic!

[solin]

Enthusiast Series™ TX650 — 80 PLUS® Certified Power Supply

[Bearcat]

When you ran the calculator, what did it suggest for a minimum PSU? I ask because when I was putting my system together the minimum suggested PSU was 750 watts. The GPU you are looking at draws quite a bit of power by itself, as I was looking at that particular model myself.

[hellnoire]

When you ran the calculator, what did it suggest for a minimum PSU? I ask because when I was putting my system together the minimum suggested PSU was 750 watts. The GPU you are looking at draws quite a bit of power by itself, as I was looking at that particular model myself.

For me, it was telling me that it was going to draw about 369 Watts on idle. This was the one I did buy, linked here. It should be more then enough. Even with bumping everything up to 100% intensity, and have 50% of the capacitors aged (keep it for a long period of time while doing labor intensive things 24/7/365), it still reports a 614 Watt draw. So a 620 Watt is fine according to this calculator.


@ solin, seeing as Seasonic is a great name and is available in Canada, I'm not touching Corsair, because I don't need that much power and around here, is about $100 more then Seasonic.

It's like a few video cards around here are $100 more for the same thing. The PNY is $100 cheaper then one of the other video cards I was going to get (forget it's brand name) and while it's more expensive then the MSI, it resolved the MSI overheating issues.

[Bearcat]

I just ran the Thermaltake calculator with the spec's for my new PC and it recommends 810 watts. I think part of it may be that I am running 4 large 200mm case fans for cooling and my MB is a high end model.

[hellnoire]

My motherboard isn't high end (though I said it was on the calculator) and only have two fans for my case (problems with stock cases...) hence why mine is so much lower, I'd think.

[Bearcat]

With the GTX 560 Ti gpu and the i5 cpu, you should have a pretty decent gaming machine.

[hellnoire]

I'm thinking it will be a nice rig, under Windows or under Linux.

[A Guy]

Minimum suggested power supply for a GTX 560 Ti is 550W. So you should be fime. And Seasonic makes excellent power supplies. My Antec TP550 New is made by Seasonic. A Guy

[hellnoire]

Minimum suggested power supply for a GTX 560 Ti is 550W. So you should be fime. And Seasonic makes excellent power supplies. My Antec TP550 New is made by Seasonic. A Guy

Great to hear, that's exactly what I thought. If I need to upgrade again, I'll get another Seasonic, assuming this one works exceedingly well.