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A few questions!, thinking of building my next pc
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11-10-2010 11:44pm#1Im considering building my next pc, maybe over a period of two or three months, ive never done a self build before but im willing to give it a try !
thinking of making a start with something like the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R ( i haven't a clue about motherboards !),Cooler master haf x case and a Intel core i7 950,and a fairly high wattage psu, following on with the rest as cash becomes available. any advice for a newbie to this !
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You can blow your own money all you want, but please don't try to trick others into wasting their hard-earned cash on out-of-proportion parts - its a serious no-no on this forum.
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PSU recommendations are generally keyed to intended and near-future hardware needs; generally what you're looking for is a good-quality PSU that will only be loaded by 50-60% of its maximum 12V rating when your system is running fully loaded; for gaming systems this is only achieved when your system is running a game that fully loads both CPU and GPU(s). Not neccesarily 100% each, as that's unrealistic too; very few games completely maxes out CPU and GPU simultaneously and its not a huge issue if one game makes your system draw 40% of the PSU's maximum, and another pull 65%; so long as the average is close to 50% its all good. 100% load isn't the same as peak load either - sometimes a program/game can make the CPU and/or GPU power usage spike tremendously high for an instant; this is not a normal condition and is measured against the maximum safe PSU load; so long as its under 100% and average use is closer to 50% then you're fine.
If you underspec your PSU then obviously you'll be running your PSU at over 60% which reduces efficiency and increases costs. This gets more serious when the figure exceeds 80%; at 90% you'll be significantly reducing your PSUs reliability and lifespan as well as costing yourself more for electricity. On the other hand, overspeccing your PSU isn't clever either. Modern switch-mode PSUs are actually most efficient around 50% load and least efficient above 90% and below 30% of their rated capacity; they are at their very worst as load tends towards zero. Aside from the direct cost of overspeccing, you'll use more power (thus bigger ESB bill) with an overspecced unit compared to a "sweet-spot" unit. This is even more obvious with gaming rigs, as the 100% load condition is so far beyond the idle condition and actually accounts for fewer hours of use compared to a workstation where the CPU will account for 80% of the loading and will be running heavily loaded most of the time. Much of the time a gaming rig will have its GPU(s) idling and pulling negligible power and its CPU often idling too unless its folding in its spare time
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