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#2902771 - 11/17/09 09:48 AM Need Power Supply Advice!!!!
Plainsman Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 04/03/02
Posts: 2793
What's the right level of power supply? Please help, cause I'm waiting by the phone for a call back from Digital Storm. I'm trying to order this bad boy but now I'm vacillating about the power supply. Should I get 750 watt or 1000 watt, that's basically my issue.

Here's the machine I'm ordering today:

Case: Cooler Master Storm Scout (Black Ops edition)
CPU: Intel Core i7 920, 2.66GHz, overclocked by builder to 3.6GHz
MOBO: EVGA X58 LE SLI (supports SLI or Crossfire)
RAM: 6GB DDR3 1600MHz Digital Storm/Mushkin
Power: 750 watt Digital Storm (Dual SLI compatible) or 1000 watt Digital Storm (Silent Edition-Dual/Triple/Quad SLI Compatible) ????
Storage: 1.5 terrabyte, 32MB cache, Seagate Barracuda (Extreme Speed) HDD
1st media drive: DVD-R/RW+CD-R/RW(DVD Writer 20x/CD Writer 48x)
2nd media drive: Blue Ray Player/DVD Writer
Video: Nvidia Geforce GTX 285 1GB (with PhysX technology)
Audio: Creative Labs X-Fi Titanium Fata1ty Professional
Cooling: Noctua High Performance Cooler
Mouse: Razer Death Adder Gaming Mouse
OPS: Windows 7, Home Premium

I want to save a few bucks, if possible, on either the power supply or maybe give up the Blue Ray player (why do I need a blue ray player?). But why 1000 watts? Will I need it for Fermi in a year? I don't want to pay for a 1,000 watts if 750 is plenty. I will likely never go SLI, much less dual or triple or Quad SLI. But will Fermi require 1000 watts? And maybe I won't be able to afford Fermi for two years. Sigh! I don't know what to do. frown


Edited by Plainsman (11/17/09 09:58 AM)
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#2902789 - 11/17/09 10:02 AM Re: Need Power Supply Advice!!!! [Re: Plainsman]
kramer Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 04/02/02
Posts: 4591
Loc: Ohio,USA.
in my opinion 750 watts is plenty of power!

i have a new Intel Core i7-950 based computer. right now, just surfing the internet, it is only using about 150 watts.

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#2902792 - 11/17/09 10:04 AM Re: Need Power Supply Advice!!!! [Re: Plainsman]
speedbump Offline
Hotshot

Registered: 11/23/05
Posts: 6265
Loc: Edgewood TX
750 should be plenty, unless you go SLI. Two of those 285 GTXs would pull a lot of power. Forget the Blue-ray till the price drops. Then just buy one on the egg. You could forget the audio card too as they don't work that well with Vista or 7.
_________________________
MSI P55-GD65 with i5-750 @ 4.0Ghz vcore 1.370
Xigmatek Balder HS/2 120mm fans, Antec EW PSU EA750 750W
GSKILL Ripjaws 2x4Gb DDR3 1333
One 1Tb Seagate 12 32Mb, two 1.5Tb LP Seagates
Gigabyte GTX 460 1Gb OC to within an inch of it's life
Lite-On 24X DVD burner, LG 12X Blu-Ray burner
COOLER MASTER Storm Scout
Win 7 Pro 64
Lots of fans spinning with little LED lights blinking

www.razzledazzleart.com

http://texascbx.blogspot.com/





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#2902822 - 11/17/09 10:46 AM Re: Need Power Supply Advice!!!! [Re: speedbump]
Plainsman Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 04/03/02
Posts: 2793
Thanks guys! My order is in! I scrapped the Blue-Ray drive, upgraded the optical drive to a Lightscribe Edition (only 10 bucks more), and went with the 750 watt Power Supply. I also upgraded Windows 7 Home Premium to Ultimate. I had no idea before today that with Win 7 Professional or Ultimate you could download virtual XP for free from the Microsoft Website, and have two operating systems (One for those old legacy games) without having to partition your hard drive or dual boot (which i don't know how to do anyway).

Anyway, I got my new machine for only $2517. No taxes because I live in Pennsylvania, and free shipping.


Edited by Plainsman (11/17/09 10:46 AM)
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#2902833 - 11/17/09 11:17 AM Re: Need Power Supply Advice!!!! [Re: Plainsman]
speedbump Offline
Hotshot

Registered: 11/23/05
Posts: 6265
Loc: Edgewood TX
The virtual XP you talk about will not support legacy games since the vid card won't be available for hardware accelerated graphics. I have Win 7 Pro and can tell you that with my system which is no slouch, Win XP mode is slower than a frog in molasses. It installs with a default of 256Mb RAM and I changed it to 512 and it was still kind of like one of those dreams you have where you are running but it's like your up to your knees in water. Now it might be really nice on a i7 with four cores and hyper-threading and all that, but I doubt it's much faster. That's why I have XP installed on the C drive and 7 on the D drive. So don't buy Ultimate for the XP gaming cause it is not going to work, unless you are prepared to run those old games in software mode.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/virtual-xp-virtualbox,2418-2.html

Once you have XP installed, it's easy to install 7 on a dual boot setup since it basically does it for you. Especially with multiple hard drives like I have. Not too sure about installing XP after 7 though. I guess it can be done.
_________________________
MSI P55-GD65 with i5-750 @ 4.0Ghz vcore 1.370
Xigmatek Balder HS/2 120mm fans, Antec EW PSU EA750 750W
GSKILL Ripjaws 2x4Gb DDR3 1333
One 1Tb Seagate 12 32Mb, two 1.5Tb LP Seagates
Gigabyte GTX 460 1Gb OC to within an inch of it's life
Lite-On 24X DVD burner, LG 12X Blu-Ray burner
COOLER MASTER Storm Scout
Win 7 Pro 64
Lots of fans spinning with little LED lights blinking

www.razzledazzleart.com

http://texascbx.blogspot.com/





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#2902835 - 11/17/09 11:21 AM Re: Need Power Supply Advice!!!! [Re: speedbump]
Plainsman Offline
Senior Member

Registered: 04/03/02
Posts: 2793
Originally Posted By: speedbump
The virtual XP you talk about will not support legacy games since the vid card won't be available for hardware accelerated graphics. I have Win 7 Pro and can tell you that with my system which is no slouch, Win XP mode is slower than a frog in molasses. It installs with a default of 256Mb RAM and I changed it to 512 and it was still kind of like one of those dreams you have where you are running but it's like your up to your knees in water. Now it might be really nice on a i7 with four cores and hyper-threading and all that, but I doubt it's much faster. That's why I have XP installed on the C drive and 7 on the D drive. So don't buy Ultimate for the XP gaming cause it is not going to work, unless you are prepared to run those old games in software mode.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/virtual-xp-virtualbox,2418-2.html

Once you have XP installed, it's easy to install 7 on a dual boot setup since it basically does it for you. Especially with multiple hard drives like I have. Not too sure about installing XP after 7 though. I guess it can be done.


Oh crap. Now you tell me. frown I better call those guys back.

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