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These recommendations INCLUDE headroom and overclocking room. On a system with typical overclocks, you won't be pulling more than 80-90% load on the recommended PSU during STRESS TEST conditions (LinX+Furmark+HDTune), and only 60-75% load during heavy gaming (Crysis, BF:BC2, Metro2033, etc.), and only 10-30% load during idle/light usage situations. This is plenty of headroom. Your PSU will not wear out. It's not a tire. However, I do *strongly* recommend sticking to power supplies listed in OCN's Official Recommended PSU list.
Clampy Edit: I removed the non neccesary things, if anyone else is interested, go to the link above
Start here:
Dual graphics card systems (Crossfire/SLI)
If you have only one graphics card, scroll back up.
What graphics cards you have is the main determinant of what wattage power supply you'll need. This is the
BASE WATTAGE, and everything after the graphics card section modifies it.
Class 3
GTX560T =
400W
GPU overclocking
Moderate GPU/VRAM overclocking is already accounted for above. Moderate overclocking means the highest overclock possible with
stock cooling and
no voltage tweaking.
If voltage tweaking, +25W per GPU
If Power Cap +20%, (HD6900 series only) then +50W per GPU
CPU
This modifies the base wattage you got in the graphics card section.
NOTE: -**W means SUBTRACT the number, while + means ADD the number. Huh, you say? Subtract? Yes. My base wattage comes from the assumption that the graphics cards will be installed in an LGA1155 system with an Intel Core i7 Core i7 2600k (overclocked), 8GB of DDR3, etc, as that's the current high-end system.
THIS ASSUMES OVERCLOCKING UP TO 50% (ie, 2GHz CPU overclocked 50% would be 3GHz)
Sandy Bridge i7 =
+0W
Sandy Bridge i5 =
-25W
Hexacore Nehalems i7 =
+75W
Quad core Nehalems i7 =
+25W
Quad core Nehalems i5 =
-25W
Dual core i5/i3 =
-50W
Core 2 Quad =
-25W
Core 2 Duo 45nm =
-50W
Core 2 Duo 65nm =
-25W
Pentium Dual Core =
-50W
Pentium D =
+25W
Pentium 4 HT =
+0W
Quad core Llano =
-25W
Dual core Llano =
-50W
Hexacore Phenom II =
+50W
Quad core Phenom/Athlon II =
+0W
Tri core Phenom/Athlon II =
-25W
Dual core Phenom/Athlon II =
-50W
Quad core Phenom I =
+0W
Tri core Phenom I =
-25W
Dual core Athlon I =
-50W
Athlon64 x2 =
-25W
Athlon 64 =
-50W
Older CPU? Ultra-low-wattage CPU? Make a thread.
Overclocking >50%? +50W (Note: usually takes watercooling or ridiculous air coolers)
Other stuff
More modifiers
XXGB of RAM! = +0W, unless it's ECC RAM or like 36GB or something. Typical consumer RAM sticks pull 3-6W each at peak.
LOTS OF FANS = +0W, I assume these in the base estimate at the beginning.
SSD = +0W, SSDs draw negligible power
Cold cathodes/LEDs = +0W
DVD/Blu-ray drives = +0W
Sound card = +0W unless it cost more than $200, then make a thread
Other PCI/PCIe cards = +0W unless you have a lot of them, then make a thread
USB devices = +0W