Seasonic M12 700W for SLI 8800GTX?

[Hurin]

Hi All,

It's a bit premature since the G80 is still under NDA. However, I'm considering the Seasonic M12 700W (as reviewed on this very site (http://www.jonnyguru.com/PSU/M12-700/)) to power my new rig. Now, despite being willing to cough up approximately $1300 for video cards, I'm still on a budget and want to avoid a $500 PCP&C 1KW supply if a quality alternative is available. I'd like to have four "stock" PCI-E power connectors (no adpaters!) and modular cables. So, I suspect the Seasonic M12 700W is the best choice available given those criteria.

Reading the review (linked above), I noted that the PSU doesn't actually have four 12v rails as advertised. Instead, it has only two rails. Though, at some points in the review, Jonny seems to say that there is only one large single rail.

If there are two rails, do the PCI-E connectors all draw from the same rail? Or are they "split up" between the two rails (if there are two rails). If split, I assume that one of the sets (of two) PCI-E connectors will be sharing with the CPU/motherboard.

I'm no wiz with electricity/power (obviously). But I'm thinking this power supply will be more than adequate (no other fancy things, only one hard drive, a new C2D or my existing AMD X2 4400+). But, there are some complexities that I'm not qualified to evaluate.

Any clarification on how the rails on the M12 700W work and whether they should be able to handle two G80s would be greatly appreciated!

Best,

H

[jonnyGURU]

It would be enough.

And the rails don't matter as it's only one big rail, split into two, split into several connectors.

[Hurin]

Thank you! I should have said this in my original post: Wonderful review! Thanks again!

H

[MrWicked1968]

Now, despite being willing to cough up approximately $1300 for video cards, I'm still on a budget

:wtf:

I know yours is a question about a PSU. but what does the rest of your future uber rig look like?

unless you're going to be gaming at insanely high resolutions, SLI'd 8800GTX's would be massive, MASSIVE overkill.

[Hurin]

:wtf:

I know yours is a question about a PSU. but what does the rest of your future uber rig look like?

unless you're going to be gaming at insanely high resolutions, SLI'd 8800GTX's would be massive, MASSIVE overkill.
See, this I just don't get. There are all sorts of people over on [H] as well who keep posting in the G80 threads: "You don't need that much performance! I can play things just fine on my xyz video card."

Yet, I can't think of a single game I play that couldn't use more eye candy and/or higher resolutions. I have a 24" widescreen CRT (rare, but they exist, it's the Sony GDM-FW900) so I can go as high as 2304 x 1440. But most gaming will probably be at 1920x1200.

I'm pretty certain that even with SLI 8800GTXs, Call of Duty 2 will still bog down at 1920x1200 with everything turned on. And there are always the games of tomorrow.

Now, of course, if I'm wrong and I can play every single game out there (unlikely) at 1920x1200 with all eye candy turned on and never get bogged down, I won't shed a tear, I'll be thrilled. . . since that's the goal! ;)

But to answer your direct question more directly. . . :D

My current rig is an AMD X2 4400+ that is OCed on air to 2.5GHz. But, I intend to upgrade to Core 2 Duo next week (most likely an X6600 and see how fast I can get it to go) because I do anticipate being somewhat CPU-limited with that much video card horsepower. 2GB RAM.

Best,

H

[MrWicked1968]

sounds like it's going to be a sweet gaming setup. are you leaning toward nvidia as a matter of preference, or because there is little known about the R600.

Tom's Hardware's interactive gpu chart has X1950XTX's in crossfire soundly thrashing 7950GX2's in SLI in nearly every benchmark and resolution. while it's not an indicator of future gpu performance, ATI has a track record of releasing faster and cheaper high end cards.