600w psu enough for R9 290?

[_larry]

Well the card has been delivered. I will know in a few hours if it will work or not. My GF is getting me a new PSU for my birthday next week. Hopefully my PSU will last until then.

 

[GreiverBlade]

Well the card has been delivered. I will know in a few hours if it will work or not. My GF is getting me a new PSU for my birthday next week. Hopefully my PSU will last until then.

finger crossed so the PSU will last until your b-day xD

 

[64K]

With a Gold rated PSU running at full load (87% efficiency) you could be drawing up to 643 watts from the wall so that Seasonic X560 is plenty.

 

[_larry]

Ok so it won't even work anyway. My PSU does not have an 8-pin PCIe connector...and the box came with no adapters. Welp, I guess I gotta wait to use this beast..

 

[eidairaman1]

For the best

 

[Schmuckley]

Those units have OCP..
_larry needs a new PSU anyways.

 

[Octopuss]

I am running a 290 (Asus) on 550W PSU and don't have any problems. All the marketing bullshit about high wattage is completely retarded.

 

[DOA]

I am running a 290 (Asus) on 550W PSU and don't have any problems. All the marketing bullshit about high wattage is completely retarded.

Because the rest of the world does not matter?
I am glad you are running well, but just because you are does not mean the manufacturers are wrong.
And, sometimes it is good to be able to expand - like when your friend lets you test out crossfire with his card while he is on vacation.

 

[buildzoid]

I ran an R9 290 + 4.8Ghz FX 6350 of a 620W PSU so if your PSU can still do the 36A on the 12V that it's rated at you'll have ~150W to power everything else in your system. This is very border line and if that PSU dies it can take out EVERYTHING that is connected to it.

 

[TRWOV]

Manufacturers always put up high power requirements because they don't know what you have installed and what kind of PSU are you using. If they say that a 350w PSU is fine and then you fry yours trying to power an FX9590 + 290X they could be held liable for false marketing etc, etc, etc, Better to say that you need a 750w PSU for a 280X.

 

[Jeffredo]

With a Gold rated PSU running at full load (87% efficiency) you could be drawing up to 643 watts from the wall so that Seasonic X560 is plenty.

Have that power supply with an XFX R9 290 like the OP's - its running fine.

 

[AsRock]

If it can be helped you should not take a PSU over 50%, if you ever ran some thing like OCCT and only having 450 -500w on the 12v you be putting it under so much stress.

When i have ran OCCT my system can hit as high as 493w. How ever while gaming it be more like 170w-350w depending on game with a very rare times hitting 390w.

I see you went for a 750w unit which is good to see.

I am running a 290 (Asus) on 550W PSU and don't have any problems. All the marketing bullshit about high wattage is completely retarded.

Foolish people do foolish shit.

 

[EarthDog]

If it can be helped you should not take a PSU over 50%

You are just hurting your wallet if that is your mentality. A quality PSU is designed to run at its capacity for the length of its warranty. I wouldn't want to do that either, but at the opposite end of the spectrum 50% is a very low value. 75% is fine and leaves plenty of headroom for incremental upgrades (HDDs/SSD/fans/water loops etc). It is how I have done things forever with good PSUs. Due to ignorance and and taking GPU PSU requirements literally without understanding they are building in a lot of headroom already because people buy cheap units, we get opinions like this. While not wrong per say, you are leaving a lot on the table and this takes a chunk out of your wallet that isn't needed.

For exmaple, I ran a Seasonic X560 on an overclocked 4930K and everything from a GTX 580/680/690/7970/780/780ti/R9 290X while having the 4930K overclocked to around 4.5GHz (obviously, I had a different CPU in there for some of these cards).

Now, for headroom for a multi GPU upgrade... with you there. But to say 'if it can be helped not to run a PSU over 50%' at minimum isn't fiscally responsible, and at worst just wrong I hate to say. Most will be fine with a 65-80% use.

Foolish people do foolish shit.

Seriously?

I am glad you are running well, but just because you are does not mean the manufacturers are wrong.
And, sometimes it is good to be able to expand - like when your friend lets you test out crossfire with his card while he is on vacation.

As was said in here, they overestimate by quite a bit in order to account for crap PSUs.

Planning for expansion is one thing. Running at 50% of its rated amperage/wattage is another.

Look at the TDP/board power of the cards/CPU/add in a bit for mobo/ram/hdd/ssd/fans and do the math. People are usually incredibly surprised at how little things actually draw.



There is A LOT of misinformation and paranoia in this thread...

 

[TheMailMan78]

15$ Get a cheap wall wattmeter. Run Furmark. Quit philosophy.

I have seen max running slightly overlclocked pair of 7970 650W during Valley Bench...

It will work... my five cents... excesive heat for such old unit - okay, that's the other thing, it may be dried up already and other things.

Who is to say its philosophy?

 

[Jetster]

Again with many of these questions. Its not the Wattage its the quality of the power. It will probably run it but your going to have problems. Buy a quality power supply

And there is nothing wrong with running a quality unit at 90% all the time. Its just that the efficiency goes down

 

[Octopuss]

Foolish people do foolish shit.

Care to elaborate?
My PC is stable even when running both Furmark and Prime95 with that PSU, so I am most happy with my foolish shit purchase.

 

[vega22]

people see watts and think it is all that matters....

all about the amps on the 12v and has been for a number of years.

 

[AsRock]

Care to elaborate?
My PC is stable even when running both Furmark and Prime95 with that PSU, so I am most happy with my foolish shit purchase.

You are just hurting your wallet if that is your mentality. A quality PSU is designed to run at its capacity for the length of its warranty. I wouldn't want to do that either, but at the opposite end of the spectrum 50% is a very low value. 75% is fine and leaves plenty of headroom for incremental upgrades (HDDs/SSD/fans/water loops etc). It is how I have done things forever with good PSUs. Due to ignorance and and taking GPU PSU requirements literally without understanding they are building in a lot of headroom already because people buy cheap units, we get opinions like this. While not wrong per say, you are leaving a lot on the table and this takes a chunk out of your wallet that isn't needed.

For exmaple, I ran a Seasonic X560 on an overclocked 4930K and everything from a GTX 580/680/690/7970/780/780ti/R9 290X while having the 4930K overclocked to around 4.5GHz (obviously, I had a different CPU in there for some of these cards).

Now, for headroom for a multi GPU upgrade... with you there. But to say 'if it can be helped not to run a PSU over 50%' at minimum isn't fiscally responsible, and at worst just wrong I hate to say. Most will be fine with a 65-80% use.

Seriously?

As was said in here, they overestimate by quite a bit in order to account for crap PSUs.

Planning for expansion is one thing. Running at 50% of its rated amperage/wattage is another.

Look at the TDP/board power of the cards/CPU/add in a bit for mobo/ram/hdd/ssd/fans and do the math. People are usually incredibly surprised at how little things actually draw.



There is A LOT of misinformation and paranoia in this thread...

Yes seriously lol, if just gaming it's a none issue really but some people like running furmark ( not tried that for years now though ) OCCT and such there fore running a system 400w or in my case with OCCT upto 493w would be pushing the PSU pretty dam hard how ever well made it is.

If the PSU can handle it don't mean it's a good idea and always a good idea to over size too as efficiency is normally best about 50% typically.

If your just gaming with the odd benchmark should be good but PSU's do all so degrade over time to and faster the more they are stressed.

 

[EarthDog]

Id run your 3770k/290x rig with a quality 550W PSU using furmark and occt. wait, I did that, and more.

Drawing 493W from a 550W PSU is nothing... and likely that 493W number was from the wall in the first place, so you were actually drawing around 445W from the PSU... 100W less than its rating. Easy. Breezy.

Peak efficiency is around the 50-70% range, sure... but that is efficiency. If saving money is your key, you could have saved more money buying a properly sized PSU than you can with running one in the 50% range just a mere 1% away from it running at 75-80% range.

With your theory of significant degredation, my over 5 year old Seasnoic PSU should have exploded running the GTX 690 (mild overclock) and 4930K (4.2-4.5Ghz depending) I had on it... or the bios and volt modded 780ti and 290x Lightning...or....... I can go on. What I didn't do was put the 295x2 on it, LOL!

But yeah, running a PSU at 50% load for the reasons you listed is a waste of money to me.

 

[Octopuss]

I don't even understand all the numbers and terminology behind all this, but if a PSU doesn't kick the bucket in those 2 (or 3) years covered by warranty, it likely won't until I buy new one 5 years later. That's as much thought as I am willing to give it. I really don't give a shit about about some highly theoretical degradation (in fact, are there any real world tests on this subject?).

 

[yogurt_21]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/80_Plus

80 plus = no difference in efficiency at load
bronze = 3% variance
silver = 3% variance
Gold = 3% variance
Platinum = 2-3% variance
Titanium = up to 4% variance

So the 50% number is correct for best efficiency, it's just not all that significant. 30 watts out of a 1000 watt load is nothing.

Now add to that the fact that you're pc idles at much lower wattage and it doesn't instantly jump to 100% load on every task and I just find that line of thinking silly. Buy a big psu is you're expecting to suddenly double your load down the line with crossfire or sli, don't buy a large psu just to hit some magic efficiency number. The extra money you spent is wasted, instantly putting you in a hole and the efficiency simply won't pay that money back due to the low yields.

if you buy a 1kw psu for a 500w load you are saving 15 watts max compared with a 500w (100% load) or even less at 650w (77% load) If you game 40 hours a week (work and play the same amount of time) you've saved 600w a week, 31,200watts a year.
US average energy is .12 per kwh so .12 * 31.2kwh = 3.74$ per year.

As an example a Corsair RM 550W is 110$ on newegg right now. A RM 1000W is 160$. So you paid 50$ more to save 3.74$ per year. You would need to run that unit for 13 years, 19 weeks, 1 day, 6 hours, and 15 minutes to break even. Efficiency at 50% is a terrible reason to buy a larger psu. Now if you were to suddenly upgrade your rig to need 600w then sure the 1000w was better, but I say go for the 650 RM for 120$ (currently 110$ on sale) and you'd be fine.

Also speaking from experience with buying for a more power hungry system down the road...beware what you wish for. I bought my psu when I only had a 500w load so I could get bigger badder hw later. I later upgraded to a 950w (peak OC) load and was a happy benchmark junkie for a while. Only to realize later that I would have been just fine on a 600w load at 1080p. (480sli, took a card out and didn't even notice) So essentially for 3.5 years I ran my rig with an extra 350w peak load that was completely unncecesary. For the curious I cost myself an extra 300$ for the card initially plus the energy use of 2.5 megawatt hours which was another 305.76$. 605.76$ down the benchmark whore tubes. Gaming experience at 1080p was identical.

just a cautionary tale for those wanting to go down that route.

 

[EarthDog]

Good info!

That table is the spec for 80+ yup! But seeing as how each PSU will peak in different areas, it would be different for each PSU. Perhaps my range was too large though..

Also power consumption is remaining the same or going DOWN these days for the most part.

Excellent job on those numbers!!! 40 hours a week gaming.. I wish! If that was me, I would get around 37 cents savings per year... but if I subscribed to his theory, I would have bought a 750W PSU instead of a 500W PSU costing what $20-$40 more so I would never make up those savings.

 

[AsRock]

I don't leave my comp sitting at idle to begin and i am not just on about efficiency and all PSU's degrade over time how much is the theory and not taking it for granted that a PSU will last as long used 80-90% of it's possible output will last as long as one running 50%.

All electronics degrade faster the harder you push them.

 

[EarthDog]

I got the 5 years (their warranty period) and more out of the Seasonic X560... and have $50 more in my pocket than I would have going 750W or so if I followed that "50%" advice...

 

[yogurt_21]

I don't leave my comp sitting at idle to begin and i am not just on about efficiency and all PSU's degrade over time how much is the theory and not taking it for granted that a PSU will last as long used 80-90% of it's possible output will last as long as one running 50%.

All electronics degrade faster the harder you push them.

read my post again.
1. the numbers did not factor idle time, though it should be considered.
2. My psu was 4 years old when I went from 50% peak load to a 95% peak load it not only lasted an additional 3.5 years at 95%, but it is still running right now! Any significant degradation should have put me over.
3. Your argument fails by lack of proper research and testing. You've presented a theory with no evidence to support it. Bring in that evidence and I will review it, or don't and stop spewing random theories without support.