Ordering final parts right now, approve?

[Lemmiwink]

I agree with you Toffie. Never take bare minimum, always add a few % to the PSU incase you want more/new stuff. Buying TWO PSU's will be more expensive than buying 1. If he gets a beefy gpu and a new hard drive and some USB peripherals etc he'll fry that PSU or damage parts.

My point being: Don't skimp on absolutely everything. You might regret it.

[Lapetos]

Problem was I was biting into my food for the month budget as it was! Where as in a couple of months time money wont be as much of an issue, so I can grab a new higher powered PSU along with possibly even going SLI and grabbing anger GTX 660!

But for the mean time there won't be any overclocks, or upgrades until that point.
Thank you for the concern and I fully understand what you guys are saying and I fully agree. But the PSU is just to get me started and will defnately not be for overclocking.

[n0cturnal]

I agree with you Toffie. Never take bare minimum, always add a few % to the PSU incase you want more/new stuff. Buying TWO PSU's will be more expensive than buying 1. If he gets a beefy gpu and a new hard drive and some USB peripherals etc he'll fry that PSU or damage parts.

My point being: Don't skimp on absolutely everything. You might regret it.

He already has about 30-35% of overhead.

[Lemmiwink]

At those wattages, 30% will not make up for twice as much power consumption on a gpu. I haven't seen the specs on that particular PSU but I doubt it's able to give say 450W over the 12v rail.

[n0cturnal]

At those wattages, 30% will not make up for twice as much power consumption on a gpu. I haven't seen the specs on that particular PSU but I doubt it's able to give say 450W over the 12v rail.

How would he add twice the power consumption to the GPU? It isn't like he is going to add a 7970 and overclock it like crazy.

His system will be below 300W during load, are you saying a 450W quality PSU isn't enough for that?

[Lemmiwink]

How would he add twice the power consumption to the GPU? It isn't like he is going to add a 7970 and overclock it like crazy.

His system will be below 300W during load, are you saying a 450W quality PSU isn't enough for that?

More than enough for that, I'm talking about future upgrades. If he comes over some money he would be able to get a top card with ease should he want to. It would pay off to have the XFX550 in that case. The XFX550 would also be well able to CF two 7850's should he want that. A PSU lasts for like 5 years, buying for here and now needs is often a waste of money since you end up buying a new one when upgrading stuff.

[Deleted]

Buying for potential upgrades when you don't upgrade is also a waste of money.

There is nothing wrong with planning ahead however if the cost isn't significant, but in this case it was and given the OP's RL statement, sticking with the 450W was a wise decision.

Looking at the benchmarks, the Gigabyte 660 OC is a plenty powerful card @1080p and can happily push 60fps with some quality setting reduced. Most high quality graphical settings could still be kept. In short, AAA titles will look gorgeous when running the Gigabyte 660 OC and will play fluidly.

If he wanted extra performance, he could try overclocking the card a little, which is quite easy to do using the appropriate software. Can his PSU handle this OC? Ofcourse it can. The Anandtech power consumption benchmark of 300W was with an overclocked system which was completely stressed in a GPU bound scenario. His system will on average consume far less power than 300W and will rarely ever peak to 300W. Even in some GPU bound scenarios he will definitely see less than 300W power consumption.

Lastly, I'm personally getting a little tired of the argument for purchasing high power rated PSUs 'just incase you want to xfire/sli'. Its as if this option is as viable as simply buying a more powerful GPU. SLI/xfire are complicated things to mess around with and sometimes the software support for games can be abysmal. Unless you're into messing around with profiles and willing to play around with different drivers and updates (which will take hours), then I would seriously warn against it.

My personal advice for those who aren't into multi-gpu setups/overclocking and are new to system building is try and get the most out of your budget now without sacrificing quality where it matters.

[Lapetos]

All parts have arrived, and I have just finished building it and installed Windows... Thank you so much for all those that helped me along the way to my first build!
Now downloading WoW + BF3 to test out the new rig
Already loving Windows 8 loading up from power switch on PSU off, to on then button pressed to usable interface, all within about 10 secs

They were right, once you go SSD you never go back!