HH and MSI Lazy Days Of Summer Sweepstakes!

Yeah sackyhack I would be more comfortable with 800+ especially for oc'ing. If you are gonna buy one though look around PSU's are something someone always seems to have a deal on. You can often find a solid unit somewhere over 600 to 1100 right in the same price ranges, just make sure you get one from a good OEM.

Yeah; I am in Arkansas (Bentonville birth place of wally world, right now), We roll out on 2 pilot locations Sunday and Monday. Then I will receive my route we will start pulling outta here starting Tuesday in UPS Sprint trucks (looks like a European delivery truck long and thin). We are doing the entire United states (our Alaska and Hawaii reps are natives though), so I have no idea where I will be, that is other than all over the map for 1.5-2 months.

rapid1:

I would be more comfortable with 800+ especially for oc'ing.

I wouldn't be,.........any extra power that you have hooked up in that box is wasted if the computer doesn't actually use it or need it, but the power supply is cranking it out anyway.  Also, remember that all of the wasted power that you pull is gonna effect your power bill.

I have a Tri SLI bridge for my Evga board... its impressive to say the least 

Der Meister:

I have a Tri SLI bridge for my Evga board

It would be nice to try out, wouldn't it?

Checking in again. I will be going to Milwaukee in the morning to pick up more trucks then back to Arkansas for final load out. I got my full route state wise today. I will be going to Utah, Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado and hitting single stores all over the place. Oh and realneil on the higher watt psu's some of that is true. On the newer power units though they manage there power in and out much more efficiently. This is especially true on the green power units ( http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153132 ), they may be a little more, but the psu in a system is actually one of the most important parts period really.

rapid1:

realneil on the higher watt psu's some of that is true. On the newer power units though they manage there power in and out much more efficiently.

Use a Killowatt meter on a pair of new PSU's to measure their power draw.  (both plugged one at a time into the same Mainboard on a bench) A good 400 will be using less of it than a good 600 or an good 850. If they're rated at a higher wattage then they draw more juice from your wall socket. Period.

I know that newer PSU's are more efficient and my SeaSonic PSU's are all 80 Plus Bronze Certified. This means that they WASTE less of their power generating heat. Heat generation is unnecessary, wasteful, bad for your PC components and you are footing the bill for it. PSU's without the 80+ certification cost more to run and develop much more heat while straining to provide your system with the proper amount of clean power it needs to operate properly.

I used to demand that my power supplies be way oversize in an effort to 'hedge my bet' and provide lots of power for a system, but that's unnecessary and too expensive in these days of everything sucking away at your wallet.

I regard the 80+ bronze certification as mandatory in a PSU these days. The Silver, Gold, and Platinum Units (even MORE efficient) are still priced too high for us normal folks.

rapid1:

the psu in a system is actually one of the most important parts

It's the very most important part as far as I'm concerned.

Drive safely Rapid,......

________________________________

Efficiency level certifications

The reviews on the Cyclone look sweet. But for a 1366 with 2 full 16 lanes is even better!!

I learned a lot of PSU's when I bought my 9800 Gt a while back. Luckily for me my 400 Watt power supply puts out a consistent 400, so I can run the GPU on there. 

Marius Malek:

Hey Neil just a quick check, I got an XtremeGear 700 watt power supply with my new computer purchase, would you approve of such a purchase?

700 is usually overkill unless you're going to use dual GTX480's or burn down City blocks with an inner Plasma-Ray. A good 500 or 550 will power most reasonably configured high end computers as long as you get a high quality PSU to start with. Quality is paramount.

I had an 850 in one of these things and replaced it with a 400 without any issues.

My i7-870 came with a 800w PSU and it's going to be replaced next.

Come on guys!! I'm not even trying to win this and i'm running away with the highest post count!

POST UP GUYS! Let's get some activity going in this place :-D

not for long you wont have highest post count *cuts acarzt brake line*.

Posting all over the place that you have the highest posts.

Does not make you have the highest posts.  SO post some more posts about those who don't have the posts, Just to get some more posts

Posting about posts, add additional posts to the Posts. Yet Additional posting to the posts, don't always post proper post counts of the posts. SO posting posts about posting is preposterous posting poised to predispose post partisan posting!

"Hi, I'm Charlie Brown!"

Sign me up Dave and Marco I have been down with computer problems but hopefully I got things back on track.

As always thanks again for the opportunity I missed all you guys, feels good to be back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lol... I don't want to win this, because it will collect dust since I can't afford the other parts needs to make this a full system right now lol

So I need other people to post up and beat me lol

I'm not even trying, i'm just doing my typical browsing and commenting lol

Don't worry, I'm broke as well at this point. I guess it's time to finally start working for my uncle again. 

anyone know how a GTX460 stacks up against an ATI HD5850?

Sweet, I'm in the market for a new video card.

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/NVIDIA-GeForce-GTX-460-Debut-ZOTAC-EVGA/

The 5850 is one of the cards it is compared to in one of HH's own reviews.

Check it out and form your own opinion :-)

In my opinion... the 460 ROCKS!

Nice, they look to be pretty even, though probably have a little more overclocking headroom with the 5850. Seems like I have been seeing the 460 all over the place lately, and it looks like a great card. I especially like the water version HH did a reveiw on not too long ago.

EDIT: Nevermind, that was the GTX480

http://hothardware.com/Reviews/EVGA-GTX-480-Hydro-Copper-FTW-Review/

Just a tip to whoever wins this. Be sure to leave at least 1 slot spacing between the two Cyclones. I have the Cyclone in SLI now and the top card reaches 90C while playing Metro 2033 because my motherboard doesn't have an extra slot between the two cards and the Cyclone doesn't exhaust the hot air outside the case. The Big Bang-XPower has 6 pci-e slots which makes it perfect for the Cyclone SLI setup since you can put them as far apart as possible with an extra long bridge.

lifeskills:

Nice, they look to be pretty even,

The 5850 is a solid performer, I have one of them. (XSF OC Black Edition) But the GTX card has support for PhysX and CUDA. And that could be relevant in the future of gaming, we just don't know for sure yet. I would go for the added features set that the NVIDIA cards offer just to 'hedge my bet' for the future.

I'd like to see some Fart-Smeller (uh, Smart Feller) release a tweak for Radeon cards to allow for genuine PhysX and CUDA support. Then we could compare them in a level environment.

I've decided to go for a pair of 1GB GTX460's in my next build.

I got an xfx 5850 as well, but not the black edition.  Reason I asked is because I wanted to know which system I will be gaming more on once those puppies are in my house!  =)

What are the advantages of the black edition?  Im looking at another 5850 for crossfire, and The XFX BE is one of the top contenders.  Also the Asus 5850 that we saw here recently in the Eyefinity contest.  Problem is, I don't know if my current 5850 will match those other two in performance.

lifeskills:

What are the advantages of the black edition?

It's an Eyefinity (3 screens) capable card,....and it's overclocked from the factory. I personally don't like screwing around with OC'ing when I don't have to. The fact that so many products offered these days have such stellar performance 'right out of the box' is a big plus for me.

lifeskills:

I don't know if my current 5850 will match those other two in performance.

I don't know the answer to that either. I assume that CrossFire works best with identical cards.

Although I'm gonna end up with a GTX-460 SLI setup in one of these boxes, I'll be hanging on to this 5850 card too.

thats realy high, are you able to change to H2O on these cards.