Hello everyone, I'm looking to upgrade my current rig to one of these gpus, however, I'm running into some obstacles that make this decision not just about performance but size and power requirements as well. My first problem is that I only have 10.5" of space for the card in my case, without sacrificing a hard drive day or two to dremeling. I know that the 470 and 6870 should fit, but I've heard varying numbers on the length of a 5870. I've read that most of the cards are 11", but I've heard that there are shorter 10.5" versions like Sapphire's VaporX ones that may fit. Has anyone had any luck finding shorter 5870s?
Also my biggest concern, is my power supply. I currently use around 350-400 watts while gaming including my LCD (measured via a Kill-a-watt) but when I run cpu-burn in and furmark the total goes up to 470w and I'm worried that an upgrade will kill my nearly 5 year old psu. Using TPU's power usage it looks like during normal gaming the 6870 and 5870 will actually use less power than my 4870, but the 470 will use 20w more. Should I rely on these numbers to say that the 6870 and 5870 are safe psu upgrades and the 470 may be pushing it?
Thank for your input!
Core i5 750 @ 3.5ghz (stock voltage)
G.Skill 2x2gb 1866 DDR3 Ram
AMD 4870 512mb
Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
Thermaltake 500w TR2
2 x 1gb Seagate 7200.12
Samsung DVD burner and Lite-on Blu-ray drive
Linksys PCI Wireless Card
3 x Cold Cathodes
Also my biggest concern, is my power supply. I currently use around 350-400 watts while gaming including my LCD (measured via a Kill-a-watt) but when I run cpu-burn in and furmark the total goes up to 470w and I'm worried that an upgrade will kill my nearly 5 year old psu. Using TPU's power usage it looks like during normal gaming the 6870 and 5870 will actually use less power than my 4870, but the 470 will use 20w more. Should I rely on these numbers to say that the 6870 and 5870 are safe psu upgrades and the 470 may be pushing it?
Thank for your input!
Core i5 750 @ 3.5ghz (stock voltage)
G.Skill 2x2gb 1866 DDR3 Ram
AMD 4870 512mb
Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
Thermaltake 500w TR2
2 x 1gb Seagate 7200.12
Samsung DVD burner and Lite-on Blu-ray drive
Linksys PCI Wireless Card
3 x Cold Cathodes