Mid upgrade advice

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GreyBush

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Hi I am at a half way point in my upgrade, waiting for more cash and my case to come into stock, and I'm looking for some input... First custom build btw.

Current setup :
P7P55D-E Pro
i5 760
MSI Radeon HD4850 (3 years old)
2x2 GB ddr3 1600 OCZ Reaper
450W PSU (3 years old)
2 x 7200 rpm hard drives and a DVD writer (3 years old)

Can I overclock the above system with the 450W supply? What happens if I use more power than my PSU can handle? Is there anyway of monitoring how much power is being used?

Next stage is a new GFX card..or 2,1000W PSU and Corsair H70 cooler... all in a Silverstone Raven Case.

Also open to suggestions on cases, don't like the HAF-X/Antec DF series styling... only expecting stock of the Raven case next year and I'm getting impatient.

Thanks.
 
If you draw more power than what the PSU can give you'll get random restarts or weird stuff happening on screen. No need for a 1000W PSU unless you want to do serious OC with two top end (ie GTX480 or HD5970) cards. We'll need to know exactly what GPUs you have your eye on to advise what PSU would suit you
 
We'll need to know exactly what PSU you currently have.

A decent 450W should be OK for running a Core i5 760 + GTX 460 / HD 6870 and still allow you to overclock both the CPU & GPU,
but I would recommend that you get at a 650W PSU, because the PSU will otherwise run very hot and noisy near full load.
Going bigger than 650W is just silly, unless you really go mad with overclocking and SLI/CrossFire.
Like my i7 940 @ 4GHz + 2x GTX 460 @ 878MHz Core/4460MHz MEM consumed a maximum of 530W, measured at the AC input, so you have to take my PSU's efficiency (90%) in consideration too.

Your HD 4850 consumes less power than the GTX 460 / HD 6870.
 
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My current PSU is 3 yr old Gigabyte 450W, think its pretty generic so probably pretty unefficient, might leave the tweaking alone for now.

Well the next stage of my build is uncertain, waiting to see if there are any significant price drops on the current series ATI/nVidia cards by the time stock of my case comes in.
But looking at 3 choices at the moment :

2 x GTX 460 Hawks
2 x HD 6870's (saw a nice review on OC3D)
1 x HD 5870 twin Frozr II with another one to follow when my cash reserves build up again.

Will perhaps go with an 850W supply if i go for anything in the 2 x 5870 range or 650W if I go 460/6870 route
 
2x 6870's will kick 2x 5870's butt by a massive margin! 750W would be enough for 2x 6870 in CF. I have the Corsair AX850W purely because there was no stock of the AX750W at the time.

If you have a Gigabyte Odin 450W, then you should forget about overclocking, unless you're only going to be overclocking slightly - without increasing the voltages.
 
Pada said:
2x 6870's will kick 2x 5870's butt by a massive margin! 750W would be enough for 2x 6870 in CF.
Click to expand...

I think from what I've read they will be pretty close due to the scaling on the 6870's, 6870's win cos of their price/efficiency though.
 
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