i hope this is going to work out for me for the next couple of years! i no longer spend money on "bleeding edge" but my of P4 AGP 1.5Gb system if now fail. need something else. so for $1270 less $70 in mail in rebates i chose this: Item Number: Item Description: Quantity: Price: N82E16811119194 CASE CM|SGC-6000-KKN1-GP BK RT 1 159.99 N82E16817159072 PSU COOLMAX|CUG-950B 950W RT 1 109.99 N82E16819115202 CPU INTEL|CORE I7 920 2.66G 45N R 1 279.99 N82E16813131386 MB ASUS P6T SE 1366 X58 RTL 1 209.99 N82E16822145241 HD 160G|HITACHI 7K 8M 0A38005 % 2 39.99 N82E16820227401 MEM 6X2G|OCZ OCZ3P1333LV12GS RT 1 171.99 N82E16814133268 VGA PNY | VCGGTX275XPB GF GTX 275 R 1 244.99 keep my old keyboard, mouse, dvd burner, monitor (20" dell ultrasharp 1600x1200) comments?
Like Jay said, thats a huge PSU for that system. Im running a 580W PSU with a Q6600, 8800GT, 3 HDDs and 1x SATA and it works fine so you could get away with alot less if you're not planning to expand soon.
that psu costs no more than a similar 650W that only has 1 12v rail. and this psu has 4 independent 12 v rails. and, what i like best, is that the cables are modular so you only plug in the ones you use. makes cable management much more efficient. and the price is right! also ig got a very good rating the CPU magazines power supply buyer's guide. better than most other 800W+ PSUs. so... that and having experienced the demise of good hardward several times over the years (20 or so) because of bad PSUs i thought, wtf, why not?
yeah, as long as you have good power management, going big doesn't really hurt you. according to a "green power center" from my motherboard, it is taking in 120-150W before i start up wow (it drops to like 20 when i turn on the max settings). there's lots of lower power thinking in recent hardware for global warming etc, power consumption can be lessened without hurting performance as architecture of the hardware improves.
yeah, on the green front, this psu is (suppossedly) 86% efficient. so it should just not suck any "extra" if not required.
if you want your computer to be good I would go with at least a 700w, 500w would be too low, 950w is a strong psu a bit more than you need, but just make sure its a good one. I have never heard of coolmax so I cannot comment on how good it is. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130492(min psu requirement is 550) for a better graphics card look at this. TBH mid-level graphics cards suck. You might as well go down to the 260 and pickup one for a similar price or you can upgrade to a 280, the fact there are not many 275's should tell you something. For ram i7 works better with 1600 rather than 1333 so I recommend upgrading that as well. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=40000147%20105243158%201052429371&name=DDR3%201600%20%28PC3%2012800%29&SpeTabStoreType=0
275 much better than the 260 for barely more $ and in some ways better than the 280. see http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/nvidia_gtx_275/ review. note it mostly outperformed the ATI HD 4890 also. and just underperformed the 280. guess you could argue for the new lower priced ($265) boards that i should have jumped on the 280 but the 275 is no dog since it has the guts of the 285 but the memory bus off the 260. what i really wanted (and couldn't afford) was the new 295. yeah, i should have ordered the 1600 ddr3. missed that for only $4 more per 12GB. geez.