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Is this a decent AMD build?


DnaAngel

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The reason I suggested the self contained liquid cooling unit was not that it can cool better than air, the reason was you wanted something that is less hassle to install. The H60 is a very simple install and makes it a ton easier to work around inside the PC. It cools very well within it's price point plus is quieter traditional coolers.

 

The reason they say overkill on the PSU is that there is no need for that much juice. A 1100T with a typical overclock setting at 4 Ghz (What I mean is the settings 4Ghz is a NICE overclock), fully populated RAM slots, a 6970, a RAID 0 of traditiona HDs, Optical drive, a Soundblaster for sound with the case fan layout of a Level 10 GT will under full load only pull about 675 watts. Now that rating off a PSU calculator is under MAX load 24/7. The truth is I have never seen a computer hit that max rating. My current system of general use (i5 @ 4.1 and a 6850) is rated at 500 watts under full load. I have never seen it pull more than around 420 and even that was a peak with the average numbers being lower.

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I think PSU wattage has become my pet-cause around here. It seems that most of my advice can be boiled down to "No, get an SSD, and you don't need a PSU that powerful."

 

The PSU wattage issue has been exhaustively discussed here as well as here. To save you some time, it pretty much comes down to this: Most PSU calculators overestimate, no machine ever hits 100% load where everything is running at max at the same time, PSUs have different efficiencies at different loads and they tend to be the most efficient from 40-60% of their load (this varies, but near the middle), having a PSU that is far more powerful than what you need does ensure that you can upgrade or add a 2nd video card later, however, it also means running at a lower efficiency and wasting power on your electric bill (albeit not a terribly significant amount depending on how you feel about that sort of thing, personally I can't stand waste at all) not to mention that it costs more up front. Furthermore, energy that is wasted is dissipated as heat. They sell these things called kill-a-watts that can meassure wattage used from the wall socket.

 

As stated, this is what I am using and even with a TON of other stuff plugged in (monitors, router, modem, sound, various chargers), my comparable system is pulling only about 275 watts. (I also think that the trend seems to be toward building "greener" components these days, so I don't entirely buy the future proofing arguement except where someone intends to have 2+ video cards). The choice is yours of course, but I think the motherboard and PSU are great places to save some money and hopefully you can find enough to buy an SSD for the OS drive because the difference is noticeable in the extreme. You can upgrade processors, memory, and never notice the magnificent boost in speed that an SSD provides.

 

Bruce

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