Meh manufacturer always makes requirements overkill so that even the cheapest ping pong fail PSU of 500w can handle the GTX 260. GTX 260 works nicely on Corsair CX400W... As long as its decent quality PSU. I wouldn't personally put a HX520W to run HD 4870 X2 and PII overclocked to aircooling max, but that works too. Gives you some idea how overkill these requirements often are and crazy marketing bs from PSU manufacturers saying you need 1500W PSUs lol. These are wall plug figures, the GTX 260 C216 system really used less than 250w under load (efficiency!).
Regarding efficiency it may be interesting to note that most PSUs regarding the efficiency graphs at 80plus.org seem to have the highest efficiency when driven at ~half of its maximum rated wattage. So using a 500W PSu at 250W will be more efficient then a 850W PSU running at 250W in theory.
I use the xfx gtx260 216, with athlon 64 x2 6000+ 4GB ram 2 hdds 1 dvdrw and three fans with a be quiet 450 watts psu!!! Ive stress tested for hours and everything was fine, no bsod or anything like that!!! But before I bought the be quiet psu I used a noname 500watss device, whos gave up even with a 8800gt so the quality of the psu is important -> AMPS!!!!
Got the card. I ran 3d mark vantage, no crash or shut down. And i was really surprised at the performance gain. my 9600gt gave me something around the 3700 mark and the 260 got me 9963. I also ran crysis for 30 minutes no problems but i am not convinced that im 100%. Whats the most stressful thing i can use on a video card so it uses its peak wattage?
im not gonna jump in on anyones side but i will say i nabbed this bfg 550watt psu,im well overclocked on the cpu as well as both videocards and it runs without a hiccup,so i think a good 500 to 550 psu should work out just fine
Look at the end of page (Specifications) --> http://www.nvidia.com/object/product_geforce_gtx_260_us.html --> there you'll see all you need
I would...if my pc didn't freeze...twice.... First time it happened, i had opened my case and was messin with the fan because it was hitting a molex connector. I moved stuff around (while my pc was still on) and when i sat back down, there was no power to my g15 and my pc had frozen (no black screens or anything, just nothing would move). Second time i overclocked my cpu some more and set the pci-e bus to 104 (had to to get at least 426 fsb) and i ran teh crysis benchmark and about 30 seconds into that, my pc froze. Not sure if its a coincidence or just my psu showing some signs.... I am trying to sell my 9600gt and the money from the evga mail in rebate should get me a nice psu....but i have no clue how long it will take to get the rebate money/sell my 9600gt. But i should mention that the performance increase made me go :3eyes::wanker::banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:
Ok, just almost **** myself. I tried sleep mode. And when i tried to wake it up, my pc SHUT DOWN. So i tried to turn it back on and i got fans spinning (not as loud as they should have been) , the blue light in the front of my case wouldn't light up and i got no signal. Same problem over and over. So i tried swapping out the card with mt 9600gt and had the same problem. Then i took out the cmos battery and put it back in and here i am...and my question is...WHAT THE **** HAPPENED? I almost lost it..
So the problem i just had was def the power supply right? And yeah if that's why i think i will take this card out until i can afford a new power supply.
No offense but it sounds to me like you trying to OC your system and you don't know WTF you are doing. No reason at all to mess with the PCI-E bus speed unless you're trying to set a benchmark record. If you put unstable settings in your BIOS that is what happens. You're lucky you didn't corrupt your BIOS or brick a drive. Nothing to do with your PSU unless it is faulty. Likely this falls into the category of operator error.
Whoa whoa whoa, im not arguing with you or disagreeing with you but i did my research on what upping the pci clock will do. I read that anything below 115 will not corrupt anything and i only had it set to 104. I had it set to 104 before i installed my 260 and set it back to 100 when i put it in. I wasnt trying to rbeak a record, just get to 3ghz and that was the only thing that would allow me to do so. P43 boards have an fsb limit but i guess upping the pci bus increases how far you can go on it. But the last problem i just posted was with pretty much default settings...
Half knowledge is always dangerous... By the way I too don't know much about OC (like PCI bus, memory timings) so I keep mine @ stock..not interested in extra 10fps =,=
