PSU for PC with one ATI 7970

[ilpirata79]

I would like to put one ati card 7970 on a pc where there is already an hard disk and a cdrom. The pc is a pentium 4 3.2Ghz.
What is the minimun power PSU I have to buy?

Regards,
ilpirata79

[squall1066]

A good 750w with single rail and at least 80+ rated, But in my opinion its not worth it on a P4, It will bottle neck performance and you will not get full use out of the GPU. But if you plan on upgrading the rest of the system at a later date then rock on.

EDIT - Some people say that 750w is too much, I have had alot of bad issues with running too close to rated so I always over power and it has yet to let me down. Just thought I would get that in before anyone else, You can go less, But in my experience not worth it.

[sprint347]

I'm pushing the friendship but I'm running a Gigabyte HD7970 @ 720khash (LTC) with a Core 2 Duo 2.67GHz with a Thermaltake 500w psu 

[zvs]

500 gold certified sounds fine to me

or a 550 silver or 600 bronze

if you dont have many other peripherals, (no fancy sound card or anything, eh?)

[BlazinBeaches]

Agreed that 550-650 is enough.  Though a 750 will breath nice and easy.

For reference I used to have an antec 520 powering two of my overclocked 7970s running full throttle 24/7.  It handled it just fine.   I wouldn't plan to max out a psu for an extended period of time though.

[crazyates]

The AMD web site says 500W or more, so theoretically any 500W PSU should work. However, this doesn't really work that well in practice.

A single 7970 should use close to 20A on a 12V rail, and so try and find one that can do at least that much. Translation: Buy a Single Rail PSU

This PSU is a 550W, but it has 2 rails that can only do 16A each. One rail will be for your system, and one rail for the GPU. 16A is not enough to power a GPU for more than 200W, which the 7970 is ~225-250W.

This PSU is only 500W, but it was 1 rail that can do 34A. That's plenty of juice for a 7970 to pull from, esp since the rest of your computer will be sitting idle most of the time.

[ilpirata79]

What if I use a single 400W PSU only for the graphic card and attach the rest to a different PSU?
I have a spare PSU...

[ilpirata79]

The AMD web site says 500W or more, so theoretically any 500W PSU should work. However, this doesn't really work that well in practice.

A single 7970 should use close to 20A on a 12V rail, and so try and find one that can do at least that much. Translation: Buy a Single Rail PSU

This PSU is a 550W, but it has 2 rails that can only do 16A each. One rail will be for your system, and one rail for the GPU. 16A is not enough to power a GPU for more than 200W, which the 7970 is ~225-250W.

This PSU is only 500W, but it was 1 rail that can do 34A. That's plenty of juice for a 7970 to pull from, esp since the rest of your computer will be sitting idle most of the time.

Wow, the second one is  really cheap! Does it have six connectors though?
Regards,
ilpirata79

[crazyates]

The AMD web site says 500W or more, so theoretically any 500W PSU should work. However, this doesn't really work that well in practice.

A single 7970 should use close to 20A on a 12V rail, and so try and find one that can do at least that much. Translation: Buy a Single Rail PSU

This PSU is a 550W, but it has 2 rails that can only do 16A each. One rail will be for your system, and one rail for the GPU. 16A is not enough to power a GPU for more than 200W, which the 7970 is ~225-250W.

This PSU is only 500W, but it was 1 rail that can do 34A. That's plenty of juice for a 7970 to pull from, esp since the rest of your computer will be sitting idle most of the time.

Wow, the second one is  really cheap! Does it have six connectors though?
Regards,
ilpirata79

PCI-Express Connector: 1 x 6-Pin, 1 x 6+2-Pin

That's enough for a 7970.

[BlazinBeaches]

Just keep in mind the 7970 is a dual 8pin, so you'll need one of those molex adapters.  I'd just grab a quality psu that had a dual 8pin on it.

[ssateneth]

My testbed is a dual core athlon, hard drive, etc. It uses a 450 watt rosewill capstone with a kill-a-watt. with radeon 7970 20% powertune on OCCT:GPU:3D (this uses a LOT of gpu electricity), the entire rig pull about 330-380 watts at the wall. It's not uncommon for the GPU to approach 90C on auto fan while being burned in with occt (this is like furmark, but better)

[crazyates]

Just keep in mind the 7970 is a dual 8pin, so you'll need one of those molex adapters.  I'd just grab a quality psu that had a dual 8pin on it.

Uhh, not it's not. 7970 and 7970GHz Edition are both a 6+8, which the PSU I linked has.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/2847/2/amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition

[BlazinBeaches]

Just keep in mind the 7970 is a dual 8pin, so you'll need one of those molex adapters.  I'd just grab a quality psu that had a dual 8pin on it.

Uhh, not it's not. 7970 and 7970GHz Edition are both a 6+8, which the PSU I linked has.

http://us.hardware.info/reviews/2847/2/amd-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition-review-radeon-hd-7970-ghz-edition

I guess it depends on the card, the Sapphire I have are all dual 8s

[ilpirata79]

What about a PSU with 450W ?

What can happen if it is not sufficient?

Regards,
ilpirata79

[BlazinBeaches]

If a psu is not sufficient the computer will randomly reboot when you start taxing the system, or in some cases not start up at all.

[ilpirata79]

If a psu is not sufficient the computer will randomly reboot when you start taxing the system, or in some cases not start up at all.

Could it burn from the ground up? I think so...

[crazyates]

If a psu is not sufficient the computer will randomly reboot when you start taxing the system, or in some cases not start up at all.

Could it burn from the ground up? I think so...

An underpowered PSU will not burn or destroy anything. However, a cheap nasty one, will. There's a difference.

I actually think a 450W one will work for a single 7970, but same as what I said before, it has to be a single rail, and it can't be from a cheap manufacturer. Only use trusted brands.

Edit: I would trust This PSU to power a 7970, even tho it's only a 450W. However, it's actually more expensive than the 500W I mentioned earlier, so idk why you'd want to do that.

[BlazinBeaches]

Here's a corsair you could grab, on the middle of the page with rebate.

http://www.newegg.com/DailyDeal.aspx?name=DailyDeal&cm_sp=Dailydeal-_-adlink-_-06192013&Page=2

[ilpirata79]

The PSU is this one... not even 450W

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wmkz3rz85tzrzxf/foto.JPG

Do you see the image?

Now I am mining. I am getting this kind of output:


[2013-06-19 17:20:41] Started cgminer 3.2.1                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:41] ADL found less devices than opencl!                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:41] There is possibly more than one display attached to a GPU                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:41] Use the gpu map feature to reliably map OpenCL to ADL                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:41] WARNING: Number of OpenCL and ADL devices did not match!                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:41] Hardware monitoring may NOT match up with devices!                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:41] Probing for an alive pool                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:46] Disabling extra threads due to dynamic mode.                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:46] Tune dynamic intensity with --gpu-dyninterval                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:46] Network diff set to 19.3M                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:47] Thread 1 being disabled                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:47] Accepted 89b09b1f Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:47] Accepted bf4c5bca Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:20:51] Accepted e9393ace Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:03] Accepted 120d6aa9 Diff 14/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:12] Accepted 6d427b75 Diff 2/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:14] Accepted 2b3a7eaf Diff 5/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:19] Accepted 16a57197 Diff 11/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:28] Accepted cffb12ca Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:35] Accepted 33fe23c3 Diff 4/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:42] Accepted 3ef7e995 Diff 4/1 GPU 0                    
(5s):514.9M (avg):515.9Mh/s | A:10  R:0  HW:0  U:10.0/m  WU:10.0/m          
 [2013-06-19 17:21:48] Accepted 9d5a32b8 Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:21:56] Accepted 8508d7e3 Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:22:00] Accepted 0c5e8bc3 Diff 20/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:22:11] Accepted 16e65470 Diff 11/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:22:28] Accepted 4be54530 Diff 3/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:22:34] Accepted 8c55d389 Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:23:19] Accepted 76f45afe Diff 2/1 GPU 0                    
 [2013-06-19 17:23:28] Stratum from pool 0 requested work restart                    
 [2013-06-19 17:23:30] Accepted f3cbf634 Diff 1/1 GPU 0                    


Can the PSU continue in your opinion?

Regards,
ilpirata79  

[zackclark70]

go on ebay and buy a used hx750 for £50-60 and you will be ok for 2 7970s standard or 3 7950s