Running a 5870 on a 450 Watt PSU?

[legitnick]

Can this be done?

[SaintDevil]

It would be based on how much power the rest of the system consumes. But otherwise it could be done.

[AndrewBUD]

Yeah no problem... ^ If you're mining only with a single 5870... Also depends on the PSU..

[Gomeler]

Agreed. Single 5870 pulls around 150w-200w at stock while mining.

[MrTeal]

I've run a 5970, 5770 and a modminer quad off a Corsair vx400w, so I'm sure you'll be fine.

[legitnick]

Ok sweet it's a Rhino Panther 450W ATX Power Supply I plan on upgrading it soon though. Thanks

[ssateneth]

Ok sweet it's a Rhino Panther 450W ATX Power Supply I plan on upgrading it soon though. Thanks

Ehm, I wouldnt go with that. It only has 20 amps on the single 12v rail (thats only 240 watts!). The 12v rail is really the only important thing. 5v and 3.3v is generally used to power small stuff like SSD, hard drives, a couple circuits here and there...

If you want a 450W to be proud of, go for the rosewill capstone 450W @ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182066

I have 2; 1 modular, the other not. They both power 2 radeon 5870 at stock clocks under full load 24/7 without breaking a sweat. The full amount of capacity can be drawn from 12v, and they are 80PLUS GOLD so they  have very little exhaust heat, and you'll save money on your electrical bill. A typical budget power suplpy may only be 70% efficient, which means if you're drawing 300 watts of DC, you're drawing 430 watts at the wall (300/0.7 or 70% = 430). The other 130 watts gets converted into waste heat inside the power supply. An 80PLUS GOLD power supply may be about 90% efficient at 300 watts DC, which means you're drawing 333 watts at the wall and only have 33 watts of waste heat to vent out.

[legitnick]

Ok sweet it's a Rhino Panther 450W ATX Power Supply I plan on upgrading it soon though. Thanks

Ehm, I wouldnt go with that. It only has 20 amps on the single 12v rail (thats only 240 watts!). The 12v rail is really the only important thing. 5v and 3.3v is generally used to power small stuff like SSD, hard drives, a couple circuits here and there...

If you want a 450W to be proud of, go for the rosewill capstone 450W @ http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182066

I have 2; 1 modular, the other not. They both power 2 radeon 5870 at stock clocks under full load 24/7 without breaking a sweat. The full amount of capacity can be drawn from 12v, and they are 80PLUS GOLD so they  have very little exhaust heat, and you'll save money on your electrical bill. A typical budget power suplpy may only be 70% efficient, which means if you're drawing 300 watts of DC, you're drawing 430 watts at the wall (300/0.7 or 70% = 430). The other 130 watts gets converted into waste heat inside the power supply. An 80PLUS GOLD power supply may be about 90% efficient at 300 watts DC, which means you're drawing 333 watts at the wall and only have 33 watts of waste heat to vent out.

Yeah I know it's a shitty PSU, when I bought it I wasn't thinking about mining but I have an extra 250 watt PSU lying around that I can plug in if I don't get enough juice from the first PSU.

[bcpokey]

Raidmax is a pile of dogcrap. I wouldn't even trust it to do 20A on 12V, it has more A on the 5V than 12V, I would expect it to go out of ATX spec at full 12V load and deliver dirty whacked up power. Were it me I wouldn't trust expensive equipment to such an inferior product, but to each their own.

[legitnick]

Raidmax is a pile of dogcrap. I wouldn't even trust it to do 20A on 12V, it has more A on the 5V than 12V, I would expect it to go out of ATX spec at full 12V load and deliver dirty whacked up power. Were it me I wouldn't trust expensive equipment to such an inferior product, but to each their own.

I mostly just want to play games with it, I probably wouldn't mine with it until I got a proper PSU.

[bcpokey]

Raidmax is a pile of dogcrap. I wouldn't even trust it to do 20A on 12V, it has more A on the 5V than 12V, I would expect it to go out of ATX spec at full 12V load and deliver dirty whacked up power. Were it me I wouldn't trust expensive equipment to such an inferior product, but to each their own.

I mostly just want to play games with it, I probably wouldn't mine with it until I got a proper PSU.

I understand, but in some ways games can be as bad or worse, as they tax the CPU as well as the GPU, which are both on the 12V rail. If you play a game that doesn't really push your GPU (though a 5870 is fairly old and likely to be taxed by most modern games) and/or your CPU. you might be ok for a lil while.

[superfastkyle]

but even if you don't end up mining buy a better power supply, you will thank yourself. I remember my first build with a quality power supply. I couldn't believe how much more stable a system operated. Corsair and rosewill or both great choices, also seasonic, pc power and cooling as well. You will likely max out that 20 amp rail easily when gaming. As cheap power supplies reach their limit your 12v will likely drop to 11.5v or lower causing your system to crash.

[crazyates]

Raidmax is a pile of dogcrap. I wouldn't even trust it to do 20A on 12V, it has more A on the 5V than 12V, I would expect it to go out of ATX spec at full 12V load and deliver dirty whacked up power. Were it me I wouldn't trust expensive equipment to such an inferior product, but to each their own.

I mostly just want to play games with it, I probably wouldn't mine with it until I got a proper PSU.

I understand, but in some ways games can be as bad or worse, as they tax the CPU as well as the GPU, which are both on the 12V rail. If you play a game that doesn't really push your GPU (though a 5870 is fairly old and likely to be taxed by most modern games) and/or your CPU. you might be ok for a lil while.

When I mine, I'm using about 250W. When I game, it's closer to 350W. The CPU is in use, the GPU mem clocks are higher, and it's using more of the GPU.

[legitnick]

o.O so for the time being do you think I can get away with running one of the 6-pin connectors from the shitty 450 W PSU and the other from a 250 W PSU? I plan on buying this when I have the money: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005

[AndrewBUD]

you could try.

[legitnick]

I don't want to break anything.. looks like I'll just wait

[eroxors]

It will run, but you should undervolt.

[svirus]

I have 350W PSU (Modecom) running witch 5850 overclocked to 950MHz.
Rest of hardware is:
1GB ram DDR2
2GB USB-FlashDrive
Wifi usb dongle
Motherboard Foxconn witch chipset fan
CPU P4 @ 3GHz

It's run stable about 3 weeks.