Which Power Supply?

Z

Zachary

New Member
Hi,

I'm building a computer for Photoshop and some gaming. Here it is:

- Fractal Design Define R4 Enthusiast Case
- 1TB Seagate HDD
- Crucial MX100 256GB SSD
- MSI N760 Gaming Geforce GTX760, 2GB Graphics Card
- Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO CPU Cooler
- Intel Core i5-4690 Proccessor
- Asus Z97-A Mobo
- Kingston 16GB HyperX Fury CL10, 1600Mhz
- Windows 8.1

How much Watts of power do I need my Power Supply to be? 650W? 800W? 500W? I'm pretty much just guessing and would love some help!

I know to get a well known brand, like cosair, evga, etc and at least a bronze certified power supply, but don't know how many Watts would be ideal to optimize performance. I've heard too much Watts can cause problems and of course too few could too.

Also, feel free to comment/critique my build as to whether my choices are good.

Thanks!

I was looking at:
http://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX44968
 
Corsair CX600M

Thanks, ya, I'll go with the Corsair CX600M then.

Why i5 4690K? I don't think I really want to overclock.. it sounds like too much work. Is the performance increase significantly noticeable?
 
The K has an unlocked multiplier so you can overclock if desired. The performance is small but noticeable depending on your goals. Even with the stock HSF you can get a few hundred MHz extra.
 
Zachary said:
Thanks, ya, I'll go with the Corsair CX600M then.

Why i5 4690K? I don't think I really want to overclock.. it sounds like too much work. Is the performance increase significantly noticeable?
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In almost all real life applications, no the increase is not significant. I personally, have never seen any significant real life gains from overclocking the processor. Only in a case where the processor was a significant bottle neck to the system, but yours wont be at all.

I have overclocked my 970 past 4GHz and saw almost no change in performance across the board. Iv also overclocked many other processors with the same results. The only time I saw any increase in performance was with my Pentium 4, and that took almost a 1GHz overclock to get a couple more FPS in games as I was running an X1650 pro card which I guess my processor couldnt keep up with. But it certainly wasnt worth the extra power consumption and heat output, especially when your talking about the Prescott...turning your room into a sauna isnt worth a few extra FPS haha.
 
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DW bout the k, just stick with the 4690 xD, you won't get anything big from overcloxking unless your experienced and even those kinds of overclocks are kind of hard to justify the cost if you spent a lot of money on cooling or strain in the CPU if its one of those over clocks (I've almost killed 2 cpus like this, now I just run em at stock).

600w is more then enough power, you picked a fine psu, your best off basing your choice of PSU by warranty, the ones with 5-10 year warranties usually have really good quality components in them.
 
lemon07r said:
DW bout the k, just stick with the 4690 xD, you won't get anything big from overcloxking unless your experienced and even those kinds of overclocks are kind of hard to justify the cost if you spent a lot of money on cooling or strain in the CPU if its one of those over clocks (I've almost killed 2 cpus like this, now I just run em at stock).

600w is more then enough power, you picked a fine psu, your best off basing your choice of PSU by warranty, the ones with 5-10 year warranties usually have really good quality components in them.
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Yea. To overclock a processor today to the point where you would see a significant diference would certainly require a good water cooling system and a bigger power supply along with a higher electric bill. Not worth it to me. I think most people just overclock for benching purposes, thats the only reason i do anymore.

I dont think cpu strain is really there though to the point where it would matter, even running a pretty high overclock chances are the processor will still outlive its purpose before its time to upgrade again.
 
G80FTW said:
Yea. To overclock a processor today to the point where you would see a significant diference would certainly require a good water cooling system and a bigger power supply along with a higher electric bill. Not worth it to me. I think most people just overclock for benching purposes, thats the only reason i do anymore..
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Really? I can see the difference between my i5 2500K at the stock 3.3GHz and the 4.3GHz I have it at now when rendering video or doing anything like that. It is quite a bit faster.

If you are doing CPU heavy stuff then overclocking is definitely worth it and you will see the difference without having to spend a lot of money on water cooling and the rest of it. I'm just using a cheap air cooler and it's working fine. :good:
 
spirit said:
Really? I can see the difference between my i5 2500K at the stock 3.3GHz and the 4.3GHz I have it at now when rendering video or doing anything like that. It is quite a bit faster.

If you are doing CPU heavy stuff then overclocking is definitely worth it and you will see the difference without having to spend a lot of money on water cooling and the rest of it. I'm just using a cheap air cooler and it's working fine. :good:
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A 1GHz overclock is significant if you ask me. And on air, I bet it gets mighty warm.

A 1GHz overclock for me, would be 4.46GHz and I dont think I can achieve that on air. So while I might see a difference with a 1GHz overclock on my current processor, I may never know. But at 4.125GHz, there isnt any significant difference to me. In fact, theres only been one processor where I have been able to achieve a 1GHz overclock on air and that was the P4 Prescott, but I might have actually been short 100-200mhz of a full 1GHz overclock on that one. Think I got it up a little past 3.9GHz.
 
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G80FTW said:
Various shenanigans
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Not having a laugh but it sounds like you either aren't hugely experienced in computing environments or don't have a demanding workload.

Agreed for web browsing you won't notice a difference, but for anything compute intensive even a couple hundred MHz makes a noticeable improvement. Per your previous mentions of setups and games it sounds like you had other bottlenecks in your system for that particular application such as GPU.

Also, the argument for increased power consumption is incomplete if your system is idling the majority of the time.
 
beers said:
Not having a laugh but it sounds like you either aren't hugely experienced in computing environments or don't have a demanding workload.

Agreed for web browsing you won't notice a difference, but for anything compute intensive even a couple hundred MHz makes a noticeable improvement. Per your previous mentions of setups and games it sounds like you had other bottlenecks in your system for that particular application such as GPU.

Also, the argument for increased power consumption is incomplete if your system is idling the majority of the time.
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Nanoseconds, to me, are not significant.

As for my workload...aside from gaming, i mainly work alot in photoshop. I used to do 3D design in high school as well along with alot of video editing.

But you must be correct, for the past 13 years i just spend $1,000 or so on building computers every few years just for web browsing.

EDIT:

Experience tells me this:

Every processor will overclock differently. And on no processor, will the increase in performance always be linear to the overclock. Thats not how it works. While there of course will be performance increases with overclocking (assuming its a stable overclock) we are talking about the significance of those increases.

Its not about the workload, its about how the processor performance scales with overclocking. And it usually never scales the way you want it to, and it certainly never scales linearly.

Then we have to define "significant". To me, a couple of seconds are insignificant for a 500+mhz overclock considering the extra heat ouput and power consumption. Now, if you are able to knock a few minutes off of your workload processing time (whatever workload you want that to be), then I would consider that significant.
 
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G80FTW said:
A 1GHz overclock is significant if you ask me. And on air, I bet it gets mighty warm.
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It's not really much hotter than stock at 4.3GHz at 100% load for me. Maybe 65-70C at load? That's about what it was at stock too.

A 1GHz overclock for me, would be 4.46GHz and I dont think I can achieve that on air.
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You probably could do it but overclocking those older CPUs is not as easy as the newer ones and will require more cooling.

So while I might see a difference with a 1GHz overclock on my current processor, I may never know.
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It will be quite a bit faster.

In fact, theres only been one processor where I have been able to achieve a 1GHz overclock on air and that was the P4 Prescott
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You can overclock pretty much any modern Intel K series or AMD FX CPU well beyond 1GHz of it's stock clock on air - even a cheap cooler like mine.

Get the 4690K. :good:
 
spirit said:
It's not really much hotter than stock at 4.3GHz at 100% load for me. Maybe 65-70C at load? That's about what it was at stock too.


You probably could do it but overclocking those older CPUs is not as easy as the newer ones and will require more cooling.


It will be quite a bit faster.


You can overclock pretty much any modern Intel K series or AMD FX CPU well beyond 1GHz of it's stock clock on air - even a cheap cooler like mine.

Get the 4690K. :good:
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I have a pretty amazing cooler for my cpu i think. I forget the exact model, but its massive. I think the 970 just runs hot. Because at stock my temps get onto the upper 60s under load and at 4.125Ghz i was seeing 80c under load which is why i dont run it at that speed anymore.

I think i had to crank up the voltage alot to get it stable at that speed too. I run under 1v at stock i think, and i think i was running something like 1.4v to get it stable at 4.1ghz
 
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