New build - Bewildered build

[Bewildered]

 

That did it!

[amertrash]

Your welcome

[Bewildered]

 

 

[Bewildered]

btw, thanks for all the help ... nice to have a working machine again, even if its on a married-with-a-kid budget.

[amertrash]

Still nicer than my gaming rig, and it does fine, that thing should murder right along.

 

EDIT: Get some zipties on those SATA cables!

Edited December 23, 2012 by amertrash

[lousiest]

very nice rig Bewildered

[Bewildered]

psu seems to be dying. How large of a psu would you pair with this stuff?

[Clueless]

I haven't had any luck with OCZ power supplies, so that's the first thing I would change. Stick with a better brand....a bit more money is well worth it here. Wouldn't make any sense to use anything smaller than 750w, especially since the money difference is so small. Go with the most you can afford, allow yourself room to upgrade.

[boiler]

Corsair, Seasonic or Antec would be my recommendations. I've had several builds with Antecs that never faild, and am rocking a Corsair AX750 in my main system at home. A TX750 would be a good choice, unless you want to go modular and step up to the HX or AX series.

[amertrash]

Your total wattage is less than 300W, my rig at home has similar power requirements and I run on an old PC Power and Cooling Silencer 370W. Your board isn't capable of SLI/CrossfireX, and future wise the general trend is "green". If you wanted to spend the money I'd go with this, it gives you enough headroom for the future and passes HardOCP's torture test(which means running it at 80% load in an ambient tempeture of 113F - brutal). Whatever you order I'd look at HardOCP's PSU reviews first, they are extremely well done.

[boiler]

Your total wattage is less than 300W, my rig at home has similar power requirements and I run on an old PC Power and Cooling Silencer 370W. Your board isn't capable of SLI/CrossfireX, and future wise the general trend is "green". If you wanted to spend the money I'd go with this, it gives you enough headroom for the future and passes HardOCP's torture test(which means running it at 80% load in an ambient tempeture of 113F - brutal). Whatever you order I'd look at HardOCP's PSU reviews first, they are extremely well done.

Holy crap, that's an awesome price for the Seasonic PSU. I'm tempted to buy it and keep it on hand simply out of principle.

[Bewildered]

Stellar advice, as always. I started thinking about calculating the load myself -- and then I figured, someone here already knows

 

The one that failed was an OCZ. Twice now, my mobo has shutdown saying it was receiving unstable power from the PSU and it was shutting down to protect itself. I don't remember the exact verbiage, but thats the gist of it. $80 is a crazy good price; I was expecting to spend much more. I'll just order it and be done with it.

[amertrash]

Holy crap, that's an awesome price for the Seasonic PSU. I'm tempted to buy it and keep it on hand simply out of principle.

Yea, I bought 3 of the PC Power and Cooling Silencer 370W PSUs for $42/piece when OCZ bought them out and replaced them with out-sourced Sirtec designed units.

 

For the future if you want an easy way to calculate TDP here's the gist of it, most power hungry to start with.

GeForce 660 140W (source)

i5-3350P 69W (source)

B75 Chipset 6.9W(source)

CPU VRM 20W

Bit harder to source on this one, the board has to convert 12V to the CPU's Vcore, that's figured at 70% efficiency or so

RAM 20W

Too lazy to source since I can't just wiki it, and even 20W is way high. Those sticks of RAM couldn't even dissipate that without overheating and releasing their magic smoke fairly quickly.

HDD 20W

This I'm too lazy to source as well, last time I did is when I added drives to my home NAS. The 7.2K RPM drives out there eat up 15W-20W but only on spin up and around half or less of that under use. The only time drives really become an issue is if you're using a lot of them in array and the hardware doesn't support staggered spin up or if you're using 10k/15k drives and then it's usually more of a heat issue than a power issue.

Optical 20W

Too lazy to source this but probably way on the overkill side. My old 8x SCSI PlexWriter probably ate a bit more than this as it had a pair of 40mm fans, but I haven't seen modern burners use active cooling in a long time and trying to dissipate more than 20W of heat without active cooling or a decently large passive heatsink isn't going to go over well.

 

So 295.9W, adding 20% to get a safe minimum 355.08W. When it breaks down to it the big consumers are the video card + CPU which are easily source on Wiki, going to something like the highest end Sandy Bridge-E with its 150W TDP means the CPU VRM is gonna suck up a bit too. If in doubt if it doesn't have active cooling or large chunks of finned copper/aluminum it can't be drawing that much power/generating that much heat.

[ZeroDamage]

Keep in mind efficiency of the PSUs when considering Amertrash's list above. You may find that you are only using 400 watts and decide on a 450 watt PSU but most PSUs are around the 80% efficiency mark so you are not getting the full 450 watts for example. When I last did my testing guide back in 2007 or 2008, there were only a few affordable PSU that hit that mark and I think Corsair was one of them.

 

I think a 750 or 850 watt brand name high quality PSU is a safe bet for most people and will give you some headroom for upgrades later.

[amertrash]

Err, power supplies push what they are rated at on the DC side, a 450W PSU will just 450W of DC power. The efficiency loss due to the AC to DC conversion isn't included in the rated power output. That's why when they review power supplies they load them to the rated power as it's what they should put out.

 

See here or even wiki

[ZeroDamage]

Err, power supplies push what they are rated at on the DC side, a 450W PSU will just 450W of DC power. The efficiency loss due to the AC to DC conversion isn't included in the rated power output. That's why when they review power supplies they load them to the rated power as it's what they should put out.

 

See here or even wiki

 

Yes, the key words there are "should put out." A good rule of thumb is to always get a little more than you think you need when it comes to a PSU. And never skimp on the PSU as it is one of the most important parts of the computer.

 

Edit: Let me add that the more load you put on a PSU, the less efficient it becomes. It loses efficiency the warmer it gets. Also, as a PSU ages, the capacitors and the other components age and lose efficiency. These are the reasons I recommend a 150-200 watts more than your components add up to. Over time that 550 watt 80% efficient PSU becomes 75% and 70% and runs warmer and warmer.

Edited January 24, 2013 by ZeroDamage

[amertrash]

Err, PSUs are least efficient at minimum load there bud, usually peaking at peak efficiency at 80% load. That's why the 80 Plus compliance levels rate efficiency at three levels, at 20%, 80%, and 100% load with 20% requiring the lowest efficiency 80% requiring the highest, and 100% in the middle. If you'd read the wiki link you'd know this, or any PSU review site that does 80 Plus compliance testing. Many transistorized loads are most efficient at near peak power loads, like Class AB/B/C power amps. Bewilder's build during gaming I'd bet pulls less than 250W DC on average, mine with a similar CPU/GPU TDPs draws about 395W AC at the wall according to my Kill-A-Watt so at 85% effiency i'm drawing 335W DC, and I have four 15K 73G U160 SCSI disks and a power hungry RAID controller that I'd bet pull 100W on their own. If he ran Furmark in it's burn in mode and ran SuperPi on 4 threads he could probably hit 300W but that isn't exactly average use.

 

EDIT: I'd also say the Seasonic PSU I posted uses all solid caps other than the input stage which uses high quality Nippon electrolytics, those components should stay very close to their specification under load for I'd bet 5 years minimum. The MOSFETs and diodes are typically well within tolerance for a decade, and other passive components like the metal film resistors even longer. It's also all in HardOCP's review.

Edited January 25, 2013 by amertrash

[samurai nightling]

Also for reference, Newegg has a psu calculator right on the website in the computer parts section. Asks basic questions on what specific hardware you're running and gives you and estimate wattage required for your build. Very handy I think.

 

Oh and I have only used Antec psus in my builds and they are rock solid. I trust them very much.

Edited January 26, 2013 by samurai nightling

[ZeroDamage]

I've been doing this for more years than I can remember and can tell you from professional and personal experience that buying a PSU that just gives you as much wattage as you need will come back to bite you in the arse later when you start having problems with your stability and performance. Most people do not buy and build a gaming rig for their minimum load. Also, 50-80% load is the sweet spot on a PSU when you are talking efficiency. At 100% load on the PSU, you will get less and also shorten the life of the PSU. This is why you get a PSU rated higher than what you need by 200 watts or so. Then when your system is at full load in gaming, you are only running the PSU at the 50-80% load and benefiting most from the efficiency of the PSU. At the same time you are not maxing the PSU at 100% which shortens the life of the PSU and also gives a much greater chance for stability problems. It is that simple. This is the advice I've been giving out for PSUs for years and regardless of the efficiency ratings and technical terms, that advice still holds true, even now.

Edited January 26, 2013 by ZeroDamage

[amertrash]

Hrm, didn't really read anything I wrote. Bewilder's PSU will be loaded to 50% under typical gaming, maybe 65% under a heavy burn-in. The math for it is even above.