550w for a r9 290

M

Matthew12106

Member
So up until this point i was convinced I needed a new power supply if I was to upgrade to a new r9 290. So I currently have a
XFX PRO550W P1-550S-XXB9 Power Supply (PSU) Core Edition
So I made a post about if that was enough for an r9 290 (It's going to be a non-reference so it will be OC most likely an Asus or MSI one IDK)
I got some pretty upseting comments that convinced me that I needed a new psu like the following

550w imho is pushing it as well. Stock speeds/voltages and no synthetic benchmarking yeah it may be hovering about the 400w'ish mark but run 3dmark.... yeah its gonna be high. Now add any oc at all and you'll be exceeding that figure for sure. I would look at a eg. xfx750w (or more) that way you'll have a bit of headroom after overclocking shenanigans. Stick with xfx - price point and seasonic as the oem you cant go wrong.

The issue is not that it can't but when it can't. When pushing a psu 90% plus the power is no longer efficient. Lack of power kills hardware. May have issues in the future or you may not. That's why a lot of veterans purchase over kill psu. When it comes to efficient power don't cut corners. Better to sell you psu purchase a 750 bronze psu at the very least imo.

Although I got some comments that made me think I was fine like the following

550W should basicly be fine, for a single gpu setup.
The powercolor 290 pcs+ cannot draw more power then 300W, it will probably draw arround 250W / 275W max, in the worst case scenario.

I use an MSI 290X gaming on a 500w coolermaster bronze psu. The card doesn't draw enough to turn it off, and it runs at 1040mhz with no issues or throttling. I use it with a 4 core 95 watt tdp processor, 4 hard drives, 2 1600mhz ram sticks, and 5 case fans.

I mean I don't know any more if I should get the new card or not I mean I do and will benchmark if I get the card just really unigine valley and heaven 4.0 but still ... Just searching around people seem to say it's ok
I mean look at the power cumstion on anandtech I don't know what system they have but they don't even hit 400
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7481/the-amd-radeon-r9-290-review/16
and just searching '550w for r9 290' the majority seem to say yes it's ok. If I have to buy a new psu I might as well wait for the new gtx 800 series card which will be more power efficient
List of my full specs: http://uk.pcpartpick...06/saved/4XFbt6
 
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mantadog

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
Another reason to add to your list of negatives, over time PSU's loose capacity. Out of the box they may be 750w, but over time that can drop but that factor is lessened by getting a reputable PSU brand.

Reading between the lines in your posts you seem to be pushing your rig to the absolute maximum without wanting to spend the money. That will bite you sooner rather than later IMO. If you want to run a high end rig you have to pony up for it.

And on another slightly sour note, (your link isn't working) but I suspect this isn't a PCS rig so we really cant offer too much in the way of guidance. We can do a bit of tech support and pointing in the right direction but nothing too in depth.
 
mantadog

mantadog

Superhero Level Poster
Matthew12106 said:
First of all it's only a year old
Second here is the working link
https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/user/Matthew12106/saved/4XFbt6
Third I don't know you seem the be the minority look at what people are saying here
http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/201578-550w-for-a-r9-290/
https://teksyndicate.com/forum/gpu/xfx-550w-my-r9-290/184185
Click to expand...

Not sure what you think I said in my post but I made no comment regarding if you could run the card or not. You have copied my post making a general point and posted it on another forum as if I said you somehow couldn't run it. You seem to have taken my post as a damming indictment of your ability to run a r9 290. All I did was make a comment indicating one more factor you might want to add into your thinking.

The very reason I made no comment on if 550w would be enough was I did not have your spec, the link in your OP was not working so it would have ben irresponsible of me to say, yeah go for it, it will be fine when I had no information to work from. no?
 
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