Will 520W be sufficient?

M

Mercutio

Weaksauce
Joined
May 8, 2006
Messages
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I've recently put together a new build using, and am curious if I would be able to use my trusty and silent Corsair HX520 to power it.

My PC has the following power sucking components:


AMD Phenom II X4 955 - NOT overclocked
GTX 560 Ti - NOT overclocked
OCZ SSD
3x Nexus Fan
LG Optical drive

There is no other HDD, and the optical drive isn't getting much use - will simply leave disconnected in the future.

Would the HX520 be sufficient to power this PC?

Thank you :]
 
Yes it will happily cover it. Corsair PSU's are hugely over engineered and are quite capable of not only supplying they're advertised rating, but usually quite a lot more (though I'm not recommending it).

The 3 12v lines are rated to 18A each to a max of 480W so it would also cope just fine even with overclocking and more peripherals.
 
You have room to spare to overclock on that processor, and also on the graphics card. But your choice whether you want to overclock or not.
 
That PC would probably pull like 300W at absolute worst case max load... and that's probably an over-estimate. I'm sure you could go lower to something like a 400W unit.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
That PC would probably pull like 300W at absolute worst case max load... and that's probably an over-estimate. I'm sure you could go lower to something like a 400W unit.
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There is some truth to it but if you are forking out on a modular unit, it may as well be a future proof unit.

I went for a VX450 a few years back when I was only running a 3400+ Athlon 64, 1gb ram and a Geforce 6800 and that still churns away just fine now with the Phenom II 965, 4gb ram and a 9800 GTX+.

Corsair really overspec their units and what they sell as a 520W unit, a lot of other suppliers would happily class as a 600W+ model.
 
BigYoSpeck said:
Corsair really overspec their units and what they sell as a 520W unit, a lot of other suppliers would happily class as a 600W+ model.
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Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The HX520 is a 520W PSU. It's rated at 520W, designed to supply 520W, and is not meant to be loaded to more than 520W. It may or may not be capable of more on a long-term basis, but that would be outside of its rating and any commentary on that topic would be pure speculation.
 
I don't think it has anything to do with overspec-ing the psu. The power draw is just that much lower than most people think. I just did a dig for articles for about 1 minute and this is what I came up with:

test system:
- Phenom II X4 970
- MSI GeForce GTX 470
- ram, HDD, etc.
not quite like the OP's system but same ballpark

power draw:
- 208W total system power at peak
- 103W at idle

Courtesy of Tom's Hardware. Looks like I even overstated my initial estimate of peak power draw by nearly 100W... So, according to that, it looks like you could even get 300W unit and be safe.
 
Zero82z said:
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The HX520 is a 520W PSU. It's rated at 520W, designed to supply 520W, and is not meant to be loaded to more than 520W. It may or may not be capable of more on a long-term basis, but that would be outside of its rating and any commentary on that topic would be pure speculation.
Click to expand...

Awesome post
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
I don't think it has anything to do with overspec-ing the psu. The power draw is just that much lower than most people think. I just did a dig for articles for about 1 minute and this is what I came up with:

test system:
- Phenom II X4 970
- MSI GeForce GTX 470
- ram, HDD, etc.
not quite like the OP's system but same ballpark

power draw:
- 208W total system power at peak
- 103W at idle

Courtesy of Tom's Hardware. Looks like I even overstated my initial estimate of peak power draw by nearly 100W... So, according to that, it looks like you could even get 300W unit and be safe.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that is under processor load ONLY. Power consumption would be much higher if the 470 was loaded as well.
 
Zero82z said:
Let's not get ahead of ourselves here. The HX520 is a 520W PSU. It's rated at 520W, designed to supply 520W, and is not meant to be loaded to more than 520W. It may or may not be capable of more on a long-term basis, but that would be outside of its rating and any commentary on that topic would be pure speculation.
Click to expand...

No it's not, The specs of the components inside a corsair are higher than it's advertised rating. Like I said I wouldn't recommend running it on a system drawing more, it's just comfortable to know that drawing it's advertised 520W is not a big deal to it.

The VX450 I have for instance is (or was don't know if they are still available) sold by Antec as a 500W unit and both showing running overloaded to a similar ~570W by hardwaresecrets demonstrating that Corsair play it far safer in their own rating.

Like I said I wouldn't recommend using a lower rated PSU for a high power system, it's always better to yourself overspec, but corsair do rate their own systems far lower than many other suppliers would do so.

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Corsair-AX850W-Power-Supply-Review/1081/10
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Corsair-VX450W-Power-Supply-Review/540/8
http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Corsair-HX750W-Power-Supply-Review/775/8
 
Tsumi said:
Keep in mind that is under processor load ONLY. Power consumption would be much higher if the 470 was loaded as well.
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Is it really? Hm I guess I didn't look at it carefully enough... Sometimes these are confusing with what they're loading and what's not under load.

EDIT: oh right, it does say "CPU load" on the graph... lol. Ok good catch. Hm, if the card was loaded too, I'm still thinking it would probably top out at like 300W ish? What do you think?
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
Is it really? Hm I guess I didn't look at it carefully enough... Sometimes these are confusing with what they're loading and what's not under load.

EDIT: oh right, it does say "CPU load" on the graph... lol. Ok good catch. Hm, if the card was loaded too, I'm still thinking it would probably top out at like 300W ish? What do you think?
Click to expand...

No because a 300W PSU can provide at most 300W from a combination of it's different power lines (5V, 12v, 3.3V etc..) not 300W to any line that wants it.

Typically in modern systems the 12V line is the one under load, you have your GPU, CPU, fans, drives all pulling power from it. If your system has need for 300W, most of that is from the 12V line and a PSU capable of supplying that amount of power to that single line is going to be rated for more like 400W+ total.
 
Oh ok. I think you misinterpreted my question a little. I was actually just asking what you guys think the peak power draw would be for that system if both cpu and video card were loaded. Because I didn't realize that those graphs were for cpu loaded only. So what would peak power draw be if load for both cpu and video card was actually measured? Around 300W?

I definitely withdraw my suggestion that a 300W PSU would be safe :)

But I am thinking that a 400W PSU would still be safe, as long as it's a quality one.
 
BigYoSpeck said:
No it's not, The specs of the components inside a corsair are higher than it's advertised rating.
Click to expand...
If you're unable to understand the concept that a piece of hardware should be judged and used based on how it's been rated, you shouldn't be talking. The specs of the components are irrelevant. If Corsair didn't feel comfortable with rating their products at higher power outputs, then they shouldn't be used at higher power outputs.
 
DaRuSsIaMaN said:
Oh ok. I think you misinterpreted my question a little. I was actually just asking what you guys think the peak power draw would be for that system if both cpu and video card were loaded. Because I didn't realize that those graphs were for cpu loaded only. So what would peak power draw be if load for both cpu and video card was actually measured? Around 300W?

I definitely withdraw my suggestion that a 300W PSU would be safe :)

But I am thinking that a 400W PSU would still be safe, as long as it's a quality one.
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Ah gotcha my bad :)

To be honest you wouldn't actually hit that peak because it would need the CPU to be under stress like Prime95, at the same time as the GPU being under the kind of stress Furmark would put it under, with RAM fully occupied and the filesystem also being accessed at full tilt. Of course for safety it's worth speccing your PSU for that exact scenario, and a PSU capable of supplying 30A+ to it's 12V line(s) will cope with anything other than a dual GPU or large RAID setup. But you don't really find anything comfortably within that kind of spec until the 450-500W range.
 
Zero82z said:
If you're unable to understand the concept that a piece of hardware should be judged and used based on how it's been rated, you shouldn't be talking. The specs of the components are irrelevant. If Corsair didn't feel comfortable with rating their products at higher power outputs, then they shouldn't be used at higher power outputs.
Click to expand...

That i7 of yours, what's the stock clock on that?

But again, I'm not suggesting running any PSU beyond it's advertised rating, my point was only ever that the Corsair units are bullet proof when used up to their max rating because of how overspecced they are and that other suppliers quite happily sell them as higher rated units.
 
BigYoSpeck said:
That i7 of yours, what's the stock clock on that?

But again, I'm not suggesting running any PSU beyond it's advertised rating, my point was only ever that the Corsair units are bullet proof when used up to their max rating because of how overspecced they are and that other suppliers quite happily sell them as higher rated units.
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Hence why we give those power supplies a bad rating, because they cannot perform well at those higher loads.

There is a fundamental difference between a processor and a power supply, especially a processor designed for overclocking. An overclocked processor will perform well, as long as it stays cool enough, with minimal risk to its lifespan. However, an overloaded power supply can lead to catastrophic failure, a worse case scenario would be the internals of the power supply catching on fire and burning down your machine, if not your house. Power supplies have a set designed safety limit, and there's a reason why you do not go over that limit. Processors do not have a such limit, they are limited only by how well you can cool them, and how much power the motherboards can safely supply to them.

Also, there is ripple to worry about. As you get to higher than rated specs, you get larger ripples. Ripples outside of ATX spec have a very good chance of damaging your system. Whereas with overclocking a processor, there is nothing to worry about as long as you keep temps under control.

DaRuSsIaMaN said:
Is it really? Hm I guess I didn't look at it carefully enough... Sometimes these are confusing with what they're loading and what's not under load.

EDIT: oh right, it does say "CPU load" on the graph... lol. Ok good catch. Hm, if the card was loaded too, I'm still thinking it would probably top out at like 300W ish? What do you think?
Click to expand...

The 970 not overclocked will have a peak power consumption of approximately 125 watts. The GTX 470 has a peak power consumption of 220 watts. So 350 watts is the bare minimum for those two components alone. Add hard drives, fans, motherboard, and RAM, and you'll need at least a 400 watt power supply. That is why it is recommended to have an at least 500 watt power supply with high-end graphics cards, especially with overclocking.
 
BigYoSpeck said:
That i7 of yours, what's the stock clock on that?
Click to expand...
I don't harbour any illusions about running my CPU outside of its specifications. However, there are some big differences between overclocking a CPU and overloading a PSU, one of which is the fact that overclocked CPUs have proven longevity depending on the degree of the overclock, while there is insufficient information available to be able to make a real assessment of whether or not it is safe to overload PSUs on a long-term basis and by how much. There is also the fact that it is easy to tell if a CPU overclock is stable or not, while doing so for a PSU would require expensive equipment, and the fact that the variety of available PSUs is much larger than the variety of available CPUs, so determining that one PSU is safe to overload doesn't tell you anything about other PSUs.

Basically, there are far too many unknowns to be able to overload even quality PSUs with any degree of certainty, while that issue does not really exist with CPUs.
 
Well lets see
Pci-e slot max 75w
Connectors max 250w

Total 325w

^you'll have to run that gpu way out of its tdp to reach that

Conclusion
It will work. If it doesn't RMA it
 
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