# Picking and Building my First System



## Panzer91 (Jan 25, 2012)

Hi, 

I'm looking to build a new system up for using engineering software and a little bit of gaming and I'd like for it to last me a few years until I graduate and have more money to spend. I'm currently on a Dell which I'll be selling, but basically I wanted to upgrade the graphics card on it- bought a GTX 560 ti, and an XFX Pro 650W PSU, and the motherboard kind of rejected it (The CPU fan speed stopped adjusting automatically, and just went on full power : / ).

So since I bought these items off the internet and there's a no returns policy on opened goods I thought I might as well sell my current OEM system and build a custom rig. So here's what I'm planning and would like to hear the opinion of people with more experience than me.

PSU: XFX Pro 650W
Video Card: Asus GTX 560 ti
CPU: Intel i5 2500k Sandybridge 1155 Socket (Want to overclock to 4-4.5GHz)
Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3P Intel Z68
Cooler: Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO
Case: NZXT Phantom Full Tower
HDD: ? I have an external one, but with the prices they're going at right now I really don't want to spend too much for one.
Drive: DVD-RW Drive, Not fussed

I can get the CPU, Mobo and Cooler for £279 inc. VAT as a parts bundle which is cheaper than buying them separately, and with OC'ing capabilities, it looks pretty nice. What do you think?

Cheers


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## brandonwh64 (Jan 25, 2012)

I see no ram on there, You would benefit from 2x4gb DDR3 1600 Gskills. As for a hard drive, I would find a 250-500GB and use your external for storage. 

The combo you have picked out looks very good!


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## JrRacinFan (Jan 25, 2012)

Regarding hard drives; if you got the budget get a 120gb ssd.


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## Panzer91 (Jan 25, 2012)

I knew I missed something, meant to add 2x4GB DDR3, those Gskills ones sound decent and the price is quite nice too. 250-500 would do the job, atleast for now until the prices drop again.

I've been looking at SSD's and they look like they work amazingly for boot up and application launching. However this system currently rests on me selling what I have at the moment , I'll be looking into an SSD, but not just yet.


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## brandonwh64 (Jan 25, 2012)

I love my Gskills! Sandy Bridge has a great IMC and OCs well up to around 2000mhz but after that it gets bumpy. 1600Mhz is plenty for most tasks.


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## JrRacinFan (Jan 25, 2012)

Ok cool next best thing could get a Seagate Momentus XT. Pretty fast and decent size.


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## boomstik360 (Jan 25, 2012)

Yeah hard drive prices are ridiculous! Last year when I bought a WD 640GB Black Sata III it was $59 with a promo code! 1TB Blacks were $80-90 on sales at newegg! SHeesh


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## Panzer91 (Jan 26, 2012)

brandonwh64 said:


> I love my Gskills! Sandy Bridge has a great IMC and OCs well up to around 2000mhz but after that it gets bumpy. 1600Mhz is plenty for most tasks.



2000MHz is plenty for me, I was just going to go to 1800 - I'll be sticking those sticks on the shopping list now. 



JrRacinFan said:


> Ok cool next best thing could get a Seagate Momentus XT. Pretty fast and decent size.



I was looking at this, 

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...rnal+Hard+Drive+[ST500DM002]+?productId=46054

Those momentus ones are pricey - just realised they're ssd/hdd hybrids and I can get this one for about £10 more, I'm more inclined to get this one, I'll just cut back a bit on the crap I eat at uni  

http://www.amazon.co_uk/dp/B002JIMYIC/?tag=tec053-21



boomstik360 said:


> Yeah hard drive prices are ridiculous! Last year when I bought a WD 640GB Black Sata III it was $59 with a promo code! 1TB Blacks were $80-90 on sales at newegg! SHeesh



Yeah they're ridiculous, I would of thought they'd have factories in mainland China or in another place, just in case something does happen to factories in Thailand - and for some reason (cheap running costs?) most companies have set their parts/hdd's to be made there. Can't do much about it now though, and with prices looking to sit high for pretty much the rest of the year, I'll bite the bullet.


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## JrRacinFan (Jan 26, 2012)

http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Comp...rpm+16MB+Cache+-+RECERTIFIED+?productId=47708

Don't let the word recertified scare you, it comes with a 1year warranty. Most drives if they are bound to fail, would be within first 3 months.


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## Panzer91 (Jan 26, 2012)

Wow that's a nice price, and with 1 year warranty. That'll work nicely in my budget


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## Panzer91 (Feb 4, 2012)

Well I couldn't shift my PC for what I wanted, so I'm going to have to buy a few parts a month, rather than buying them all in one go - I managed to find the mobo for £30 less, but everything else is pretty much the same price everywhere. So, do you think that when the ivybridge cpu's drop (April?) the sandybridge ones will see a decrease in retail price?


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## Yo_Wattup (Feb 4, 2012)

4 sho'


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## JrRacinFan (Feb 4, 2012)

I don't see them dropping in price, if they do won't be much.


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## Yo_Wattup (Feb 4, 2012)

JrRacinFan said:


> I don't see them dropping in price, if they do won't be much.



Why wouldn't they?


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## white phantom (Feb 4, 2012)

can officially say the asus 560ti is a beast of a card i just built my system over crimbo n got the 560ti TOP card yesterday runs everything great and is very very quiet max temp in a phantom case was 46 degrees! average 28..


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## JrRacinFan (Feb 4, 2012)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Why wouldn't they?



Because Intel is a money hoarder. Why should they drop prices to compete with themselves?


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## Athlon2K15 (Feb 4, 2012)

Dont bottleneck your system with anything less than a Sata6 SSD or hard drive,all of the time an effort your putting into this will go to waste with anything inferior


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## Yo_Wattup (Feb 4, 2012)

JrRacinFan said:


> Because Intel is a money hoarder. Why should they drop prices to compete with themselves?



Well that's exactly what they have been doing. Why is the i3 2100 cheaper than the A8 3850?Why is the 2500k less $ than bulldozer? They could've set the 2500k and 2600k up $100 each but they didn't. Money hoarder my ass...


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## Panzer91 (Feb 4, 2012)

I see, well I'll leave the CPU as the last component to purchase and see what happens. Cheers Guys


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## Yo_Wattup (Feb 5, 2012)

AthlonX2 said:


> Dont bottleneck your system with anything less than a Sata6 SSD or hard drive,all of the time an effort your putting into this will go to waste with anything inferior



Hey athlon since when were you a mod?


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## Athlon2K15 (Feb 5, 2012)

since inception


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## Panzer91 (Mar 1, 2012)

Finally got all the parts and built it. Used my old HDD since I was running out of disposable cash and I'm not sure if it's SATA 6, but it's doing the job fairly quickly and I'll buy an SSD in the future I guess. 

So a strange thing happened, and it worked first time without having to reinstall windows. Before moving onto the serious business of OC'ing, is there anyway to determine my system is running fine? According to HWmonitor, my CPU temp is 40C whilst typing on this page (only thing I have open).


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## Athlon2K15 (Mar 1, 2012)

40c is fine and sorta normal. you could run 10 passes of IBT to confirm


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## Panzer91 (Mar 1, 2012)

Ibt?


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## theeldest (Mar 1, 2012)

Intel Burn Test

http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4965-intelburntest.html

It's a good stress testing / benchmark program. Similar in scope to Prime95 but gives performance data too.


Also,
Update your system specs! 

Go to User CP on the top and the first or second link on the left is System Details (IIRC). Fill it out so everyone will see what you have under the hood.


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## NdMk2o1o (Mar 1, 2012)

AthlonX2 said:


> Dont bottleneck your system with anything less than a Sata6 SSD or hard drive,all of the time an effort your putting into this will go to waste with anything inferior



Absolute tish tosh, a SATAIII (not 6!) HDD has little-no benefit over a SATAII HDD, SSD I will agree as SSD are moving closer to SATAIII than HDD's are and benefit from the increased read/write speeds. 

BTW to the OP, I have the same CPU/mobo combo and it rocks, 4.6ghz with no trouble, anything more will require me to not drink on a weekend to tweak the shit out of it and get the best vcore/temp trade offs I can to find my max overclock.. though me not drinking on a weekend ain't going to happen so 4.6ghz it is


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## Panzer91 (Mar 1, 2012)

@ theeldest - Aha, well I've run it and it states that the system is stable. Although what does the results box mean, is it an estimation in error or flucuation in results 






Updated my system specs profile 

@NdMk2o1o - haha, 4.6 is plenty, looking forward to OC'ing it. 

One strange occurrence that happened was during some game testing, tried out Saint's Row 3 and it ran fine in the highest settings for a while until a windows message appeared saying 'performance has slowed down, change to a non-aero theme?' which I declined and a few minutes later my system shut down and wouldn't boot up for a good five minutes, any ideas what that could've been because of? had 5 case fans running on medium speed settings and the cooler is PWM controlled. I thought it might be the PSU but 650W should be enough for my setup surely?


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## theeldest (Mar 2, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> @ theeldest - Aha, well I've run it and it states that the system is stable. Although what does the results box mean, is it an estimation in error or flucuation in results
> http://i448.photobucket.com/albums/qq202/panesar/IBTTest.jpg
> 
> Updated my system specs profile



I think the result is showing that it gets the 'right' answer to whatever it's computing. The GFLOPS field is your level of performance. 

If you check out this thread you can see what other people are getting. With my old dual core Opteron I was getting around 4 Gflops. With the i5-2500k OC'd to 4.6GHz I'm around 117 GFLOPS.

(Gflops are how many billions of floating point operations your system can do per second).

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94721


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## Panzer91 (Mar 3, 2012)

I see, seems about  3 GFlops less than another person running stock. Not sure if that's good or not 


So I tried a go at over clocking today, and these are the settings I have used 


45x
ENABLED 4 energy saving features (C1E, C3/C6, EIST and Intel Thermal Monitor)
ENABLED Multi Load Line Calibration at Level 5
1.300 Vcore
1.150 QPI/VTT
1.100 Graphic Core
1.815 CPU PLL
1.510 DRAM

From this link:
http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=682932

It seems to be working however before doing stress tests to ensure stability, I'm a bit worried with the temps. Lowest core temp is 41C and the highest is 45C on idle. I ran one IBT test on high and the temps shot up to 80C. Is that safe or normal temps for an overclock?


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## Aquinus (Mar 3, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking to build a new system up for using engineering software and a little bit of gaming and I'd like for it to last me a few years until I graduate and have more money to spend. I'm currently on a Dell which I'll be selling, but basically I wanted to upgrade the graphics card on it- bought a GTX 560 ti, and an XFX Pro 650W PSU, and the motherboard kind of rejected it (The CPU fan speed stopped adjusting automatically, and just went on full power : / ).
> 
> ...



That PSU might be too small if you start over-clocking, you'll be stressing it out pretty bad with that hardware alone stock. Keep a close eye on your PSU temperature and your voltages under load. I would recommend 700-watt or higher if you're going to be overclocking with nVidia hardware as well. Keep in mind that unless the PSU is really efficient (like 80 plus gold or better running on 230-volt,) you might find your system becoming unstable due to lack of power which could be a sign an underpowered PSU and people who have done this know that substituting voltage for current (which is what the PSU does if you load it up too much,) will fry your hardware.


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## Aquinus (Mar 3, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> I see, seems about  3 GFlops less than another person running stock. Not sure if that's good or not
> 
> 
> So I tried a go at over clocking today, and these are the settings I have used
> ...



80*C can kill your CPU.


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## Panzer91 (Mar 3, 2012)

The PSU is 80+ Bronze and a single rail. I did some searching on power consumption of each component and I'm not sure if I'm stressing the PSU at stock clock speeds. 

221W  i5 2500k@ 4.9Mhz (Max Load, not going this high) 
263W Asus gtx560 ti (out of box overclock, not going to go any further than this)
10W RAM? 
40W Mobo? 
25W 5W per Fan

Total: 569W

The lowest power of the PSU is 85% so 552.5W... 
How big of a difference is there in power consumption for the i5 for say at 4Mhz or 4.5Mhz. Although I'm not building this system for gaming, it's going to be used mainly for CAD, FEA and Fluid Analysis software, bit of 3D Graphics but any other application shouldn't be too stressful.

Yeah I killed the test when it hit 80 - I think I'll buy some Artic Cooling Thermal Paste instead of the stock stuff that came with the 212 + - I suspect I used a tad much first time round.


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## Aquinus (Mar 3, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> The PSU is 80+ Bronze and a single rail. I did some searching on power consumption of each component and I'm not sure if I'm stressing the PSU at stock clock speeds.
> 
> 221W  i5 2500k@ 4.9Mhz (Max Load, not going this high)
> 263W Asus gtx560 ti (out of box overclock, not going to go any further than this)
> ...



That is full load on your PSU, I would get a bigger one before you really do have to start replacing components. I'm warning you because I don't want that to happen to you. I've seen this happen to too many computers because people get what is "just good enough." Keep using a 650-watt at your own risk but you're looking at some nasty problems long term.


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## Panzer91 (Mar 3, 2012)

It's a fair point, thank you for your advice, I'll save up for a 750W or try and get a trade through forums.


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## Yo_Wattup (Mar 3, 2012)

What? People are saying 750W minimum for a 560ti? What rubbish. 750W could just about power two. 650W is heaps.


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2012)

Yo_Wattup said:


> What? People are saying 750W minimum for a 560ti? What rubbish. 750W could just about power two. 650W is heaps.



You don't know what you're talking about. I have hardware that draws less stock that eats 450-watts stock at full power and PSUs aren't 100% efficient. If you actually knew what you were talking about you would never say such a thing.

Plus he is over-clocking which eats even more and you don't want to run the risk when you're stressing your hardware like that. Don't criticizes unless you know what you're talking about. I'm trying to help him out, stop feeding him misinformation...


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## Yo_Wattup (Mar 4, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> You don't know what you're talking about. I have hardware that draws less stock that eats 450-watts stock at full power and PSUs aren't 100% efficient. If you actually knew what you were talking about you would never say such a thing.
> 
> Plus he is over-clocking which eats even more and you don't want to run the risk when you're stressing your hardware like that. Don't criticizes unless you know what you're talking about. I'm trying to help him out, stop feeding him misinformation...



Cool story bro, needs more dragons and shit. If you are going to insult someone, at least provide links/proof. Keep going the way you are going and see what happens, you are obviously new to online forums. OP can read these comments and go with what he thinks is best, either way, a good quality 650w or a 750w psu will be fine. I'll provide links later... On mobile right now. (By the way, you might wanna do some more research before you embarrass yourself)


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2012)

Yo_Wattup said:


> Cool story bro, needs more dragons and shit. If you are going to insult someone, at least provide links/proof. Keep going the way you are going and see what happens, you are obviously new to online forums. OP can read these comments and go with what he thinks is best, either way, a good quality 650w or a 750w psu will be fine. I'll provide links later... On mobile right now. (By the way, you might wanna do some more research before you embarrass yourself)



Let me just take a picture of my UPS showing the power load on my machine when I start over-clocking. I don't need links because I have real world experience and I've only been building computers for the last 10 years, but that doesn't mean anything to you, neither does the fact that I'm a system admin and I work on computers for a living.

Anyone who knows what they're doing knows that stressing your PSU 100% is a VERY bad idea. If you're asking me to show links to show that at higher loads that the system doesn't become more unstable, get hotter, and is more likely to have problems is just insane because any other system builder here who knows what they're talking about would agree that it is a very good idea to have too much than too little in a PSU when overclocking.


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## JrRacinFan (Mar 4, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> Let me just take a picture of my UPS showing the power load on my machine when I start over-clocking



You're probly pulling close to 375W with your setup in full load.


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2012)

JrRacinFan said:


> You're probly pulling close to 375W with your setup in full load.



When I'm not overclocking. A bit of an overclock will get me to 500-watts full load easy... and with a PSU at 85% efficiency (assume a 650-watt PSU because that is what the user is using,) gives you a 550-watts to work with. I had a 550-watt PSU and it wouldn't even boot. Just keep in mind that each rail can only provide so much power and that the rating on the PSU is *overall total output*.

Edit: Most PSUs will have a power rating chart on the side and will describe how many rails are on your PSU as well as the power rating for each part of the PSU, such as CPU power, 12v rails, 5v rails, 3.3v, etc and you will see that the total power output of the PSU is the max power it can chug out not total power for every component.


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## Panzer91 (Mar 4, 2012)

Right, well now I'm thoroughly confused so I asked on some other forums for other opinions, and they all suggest that the 650W is more than enough for OC'd GPU/CPU since it's not so much power consumption but whether the PSU can supply stable continuous current, which, the XFX can.


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> Right, well now I'm thoroughly confused so I asked on some other forums for other opinions, and they all suggest that the 650W is more than enough for OC'd GPU/CPU since it's not so much power consumption but whether the PSU can supply stable continuous current, which, the XFX can.



The problem you run into is how long will your PSU live if you're stressing it that hard. Any component you put more stress on will be more prone to failure and if your PSU can't keep up some *very* bad things can happen and you might find yourself with more than just a dead PSU. In the end it is your choice, I just personally wouldn't recommend it.


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## Panzer91 (Mar 4, 2012)

I don't think I'll be running anything at max load, I think (apart from games) the max load I'll use is from a complex CAD model, and it won't be much more complex than previous work which I ran on a first gen i3 and GeForce 310. Only that the CAD app was slow, which is why I built this, for speed whilst working, a little bit of gaming, but well what program exactly loads my computer up to max? 

Also found this review, and the xfx will go to 720w before switching off.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/power-supplies/zardon/xfx-pro-series-650w-power-supply-review/5/


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## Aquinus (Mar 4, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> I don't think I'll be running anything at max load, I think (apart from games) the max load I'll use is from a complex CAD model, and it won't be much more complex than previous work which I ran on a first gen i3 and GeForce 310. Only that the CAD app was slow, which is why I built this, for speed whilst working, a little bit of gaming, but well what program exactly loads my computer up to max?
> 
> Also found this review, and the xfx will go to 720w before switching off.
> 
> http://www.kitguru.net/components/power-supplies/zardon/xfx-pro-series-650w-power-supply-review/5/



That doesn't mean that you're not harming the PSU or your computer if you exceed the maximum after calculating efficiency. Like I said, it is your choice since it appears you already made the choice to use a 650-watt, but I personally wouldn't take the risk.

Best of luck.


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## Panzer91 (Mar 8, 2012)

After some thorough searching, and a few calculators, I've found my setup will use 450W max. I'll stick with this PSU and see. 

Out of one problem and into another :shadedshu

I replaced the thermal paste with some MX-4 (previously I used some cooler master stuff and put it three 'rice grains' along the copper pipes and well I thought this might be too much), I put a pea sized dot in the centre and spread it out with the pressure of the cooler. 

However, I am not seeing any difference in idle temps, still around 35-40C on a stock clock. It says on the thermal paste packet that there is no curing time so any reason I'm still seeing these temps. 

Also now when I go into IBT, my temps do not hit 70-80C but 60C max, which I think is reasonable, however my GFlops is all over the place. A max of 80, and the lowest at 56... 

Any ideas?

EDIT - nvm, found out my wd eHDD had some hidden process going on. Getting 87GFlops average now


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## Aquinus (Mar 8, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> After some thorough searching, and a few calculators, I've found my setup will use 450W max. I'll stick with this PSU and see.
> 
> Out of one problem and into another :shadedshu
> 
> ...



Want to give us some specifics on your over-clock? Do you have turbo enabled? What voltages do you have configured across the board and what kind of voltages does your BIOS report for each power domain? Also do these voltages fluctuate much under load vs idle? What tool are you using to calculate your CPU's FLOPS and what are your power options in Windows 7 configured as? (Power Saving/Balanced might fluctuate a bit if Intel SpeedStep is enabled.)

Edit: I see you figured it out, never mind then. Grats.


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 8, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> When I'm not overclocking. A bit of an overclock will get me to 500-watts full load easy... and with a PSU at 85% efficiency (assume a 650-watt PSU because that is what the user is using,) gives you a 550-watts to work with. I had a 550-watt PSU and it wouldn't even boot. Just keep in mind that each rail can only provide so much power and that the rating on the PSU is *overall total output*.



This is because your CPU is 130W stock. OCed this CPU would be 250W+ according on what voltage you used. Just one 6850 uses 229W full load so you have two I would double that. One thing you have to realize is that he has a 2500K which is 95W stock and the 560TI take 285W full load. 650W for him would be fine unless he added another GPU.


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## Aquinus (Mar 8, 2012)

brandonwh64 said:


> This is because your CPU is 130W stock. OCed this CPU would be 250W+ according on what voltage you used. Just one 6850 uses 229W full load so you have two I would double that. One thing you have to realize is that he has a 2500K which is 95W stock and the 560TI take 285W full load. 650W for him would be fine unless he added another GPU.



I posted that when I was talking about my Phenom II 940, which had a 125-watt TDP (by AMD's definition is maximum power consumption at stock speeds). I just got my 3820, which actually idles lower and under load only exceeds my last system because I have two 6870s instead of 1. Also keep in mind that 95-watt TDP by Intel's definition is *average cpu power consumption at stock speeds*, over-clocking can easily make that usage go up exponentially. Also keep in mind for the 2500k to reach similar multi-threaded performance of my 3820, you're going to easily hit 130-watt usage. 

I discussed my upgrade with others prior to that post: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=161604


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## Panzer91 (Mar 8, 2012)

I've started doing some OC tests, and Its stable in IBT, idle temp 34C, max load n IBT 75C. Using Prime 95, load temp is 70C. The CPU seems to be stable, so I might try and notch the vcore down a bit. I've read that as long as there's 20C difference between max load temp and Tj max I should be fine?

Also max power consumption at 4.5GHz is 108W according to core temp.


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## Aquinus (Mar 8, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> I've started doing some OC tests, and Its stable in IBT, idle temp 34C, max load n IBT 75C. Using Prime 95, load temp is 70C. The CPU seems to be stable, so I might try and notch the vcore down a bit. I've read that as long as there's 20C difference between max load temp and Tj max I should be fine?
> 
> Also max power consumption at 4.5GHz is 108W according to core temp.



I would trust a Kill-a-watt or some other power meter and use the difference between stock and your overclock, using the 95-watt TDP as a 'baseline' usage at stock speeds.

So to calculate approximate CPU consumption you would want:
(Total Over-clocked usage - Total stock usage) + 95-watt TDP

Which is basically the over-clocked difference plus what Intel claims is the i5 2500k's average usage. It's hard to get a real calculation of how much draw there is. Does CoreTemp actually change the consumption amount as voltage fluctuates because mine never did which would make it inaccurate.


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## Panzer91 (Mar 8, 2012)

Yeah I might get a kill-a-watt for seeing up how much of the electricitiy bill is of the computer, but yeah the wattage is changing in core temp during these burn tests, so I assume it's working, how accurate it is I don't know.


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## Aquinus (Mar 8, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> Yeah I might get a kill-a-watt for seeing up how much of the electricitiy bill is of the computer, but yeah the wattage is changing in core temp during these burn tests, so I assume it's working, how accurate it is I don't know.



Yeah, it says my usage is ~96 watts @ 4ghz.


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## cadaveca (Mar 8, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> So to calculate approximate CPU consumption you would want:
> (Total Over-clocked usage - Total stock usage)   95-watt TDP



I measure CPU power consumption using an in-line meter on the CPU EPS 8-pin, to eliminate the PSU efficiency side of things, and to isolate the CPU VRM power draw.

That said, here is a graph showing power consumption numbers using that method while running IBT with 3072 MB of ram:







Note that even with inefficiencies of the VRM, several boards managed stock clocks at under 75 W total. 

As you can see with the X79 numbers, SB-E sucks twice the power of SB. Over the 30-something 2600k chips I've tested(through building rigs for people over the past 16 months or so, plus my own chips), not one drew over 150W @ 4.5 GHz, measured in the same way, whereas at stock, it is defintely possible to pull 150W through the 8-pin on X79(155 W @ stock on X79-UD5).

According to my own testing, Coretemp is wildly incorrect for CPU power consumption. No software is correct, to be honest. They all read far more than what is delivered by the 8-pin CPU EPS connector. The CPU's System Agent domain(commonly powered via 24-pin) cannot account for the differences(based on load testing with differnt PCIe configs).


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## Aquinus (Mar 8, 2012)

Thanks, Dave. Great post.


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## Admiral Breaker (Mar 12, 2012)

Panzer91 said:


> I've been looking at SSD's and they look like they work amazingly for boot up and application launching. However this system currently rests on me selling what I have at the moment , I'll be looking into an SSD, but not just yet.


Have you seen Coraisr's new Accelorator Series? They are small in size, between 30 and 60gbs and they are made for Intel's SRT. I think the 60gb is like 124 USD or £79.92. but that is waht Corsair says on their website. http://www.corsair.com/ssd/accelerator-series-ssd-cache-drives.html


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## Bambooz (Mar 12, 2012)

Aquinus said:


> and with a PSU at 85% efficiency (assume a 650-watt PSU because that is what the user is using,) gives you a 550-watts to work with.



That makes it sound like the PSUs are labelled with the input wattage, which is total BS.
A 650W PSU will give you 650W worth of total (combined) output power to work with. Not 85% (efficiency) of 650W, which would be ~552W.

This only works out if it's a _good_ PSU, not a Hongkong Flyapart LLC with a 650W label and maybe 250W real output power, like for example this junk right here. Or that one. Or a slightly "better", but still crappy as f*ck overrated noname junker like this Coolmax.

You either have no clue about how powersupplies work in general, or at least no clue about how to choose between a proper good quality unit and a bling bling mediocre to crappy one that isn't able to power a system reliably, despite having the same specs on the label as another PSU that does work.

Just because it has a big brand name on it like Asus, Antec or whatever doesn't mean the insides are any good / up to the job. The two examples I just listed don't manufacture anything themselves (edit: in terms of PSUs). They just choose whatever OEM they want and modify it to their needs (custom casings, PSU insides manufactured to their specs, which can also mean cheaping out on parts and/or overspec'ing others etc.)

An Antec EA-500D is Delta Electronics OEM, and Antec HCG-520 is Seasonic OEM, an Antec BP500U is Fortron Source OEM, and Asus uses whatever they can get their hands on, which is usually mediocre at best. Same goes for other manufacturers. Just because manufacturer ABC's PSU #1 was epic doesn't mean PSU #2, 3 or 4 are anywhere near that quality.
[/rant]


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## Panzer91 (Mar 12, 2012)

So it's safe to conclude my PSU will be fine? 


@Admiral - No I haven't, although I just read up on it and it sounds great, automatically sets up and everything. Will definitely be looking into this later on when the price goes down a bit. 

Also to the person who stated my hdd would bottleneck my system - I now know exactly what you mean =p 

Thanks for all the help guys!


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## Aquinus (Mar 12, 2012)

Bambooz said:


> That makes it sound like the PSUs are labelled with the input wattage, which is total BS.
> A 650W PSU will give you 650W worth of total (combined) output power to work with. Not 85% (efficiency) of 650W, which would be ~552W.
> 
> This only works out if it's a _good_ PSU, not a Hongkong Flyapart LLC with a 650W label and maybe 250W real output power, like for example this junk right here. Or that one. Or a slightly "better", but still crappy as f*ck overrated noname junker like this Coolmax.
> ...



Then go load a PSU to the max and watch what happens. I talk about what I've experienced. I'm a systems admin and have a degree in computer science and work on computers every day for work, what do you do?

I don't appreciate you insulting me because you disagree with what I have to say. I also never said that crappy PSU manufacturers don't over-rate their PSUs. Don't be an ass.


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