There are tons of different ways you can grade a power supply. Rail setup,
overall wattage, efficiency, quality, components, etc. Today, we'll be doing
it this as a thought experiment on the overabundance of wattage, and will it
help you overclock, and if so, by how much? Stay subscribed to Linus Tech Tips
to see a future episode on how to do cable lacing, which will make your PC
look pretty amazing.
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more. To perform said thought experiment, we will be using IDA 64's
stress test functionality to push the CPU and Firmark to push the GPU. These
programs should ensure that we have quite a bit of power generation from the
various parts on our test bench. We use these programs to push our components as
much as we can using each power supply in order to try to find that power
supplies limit in a sense and to see if having more wattage will directly result
in higher overclocks or if the spacing between power supplies is high enough
that getting a power supply that can support your system will also just
naturally support an overclock. For the test bench itself, we have an ASUS X99
Deluxe with a 5960X sitting comfortably in its socket. The 5960X will run in a
range of 3, 3.1, 4, 4.1 GHz, and stock
at stock voltages, and then 4.5 GHz at
1.35 volts. For graphics cards, I will be using an HD770,
an R7265, an R927X, a GTX 770, a GTX
Titan X, and dual GTX Titan X's. These cards will be running at varying stock
speeds and varying overclock speeds. And
we'll be discussing how each power supply performed with them, but you can
see their overclock speeds in the dock down below just in case. They're maxed
overclock speeds. We're going to start off with a really low wattage power
supply. A 300 W SFX power supply from Silverstone. As far as I'm concerned,
this is the little power supply that could. The first setup we tried on it
was maxing out our HD 7770 and our 5960X, which it was somehow able to do.
Seriously, this thing is rated at 300 watts, but was somehow comfortably
pulling 375 watts from the wall. It even
took an R7265 in stride, maxing it out,
but starting to fail when we clocked the CPU above 4 GHz. With the GPU maxed out
and the CPU at 4 GHz, it was pulling about 360 W from the wall again
comfortably. With the 270X, it was able to hit 1245 core clock, which isn't
quite our max overclock, but it did do this while pulling 320 watts from the
wall as well for the card. When we when
we tried to increase clock speeds on the CPU above stock, the kind of crashed,
which was kind of unfortunate, which ends the epic run of this power supply
as it didn't manage to boot a 770 or Titan, which is fine. Next up, we have
the bigger, older brother to our previous legendary SFX power supply, the
Silverstone 450 watt SFX 80 Plus Gold.
Fine up till 270X, which it did manage to boot with and was able to get a max
overclock from the 270X, but I was unable to get anything stable from the
CPU other than just stock. Just for fun, we have 450 W power supply from my
Scrapyard Wars machine. Uh, with the HD770, we were able to max out the GPU
and overclock the CPU to 3.1 GHz without any crashes. This resulted in a pull of
295 watts from the wall. Also, something to note is that this power supply
started to stink quite badly when we pushed it. Concerning at the least, but
as the band Suicide Silence, or even Drake would like to say, yolo. I was
able to max out the R seven265 and yet again was only able to get the CPU to
3.1 GHz which totaled a total of 320
watts from the wall. This is where things went downhill for the poor little
power supply. However, it refused to boot with the 270X installed and
actually never booted again on any setup, including ones that I had
previously tested verified working after that. RIP, you crappy little power
supply. RIP. Jumping up 100 watts, we
have the B Quiet 550 watt 80 plus gold
power supply. This guy was able to max out everything until the Titan X setups,
which it was able to do quite well, actually. It was able to support a
maximum overclock on the Titan X, but only 3.1 GHz on the CPU while pulling a
total of 560 watts from the wall. Another 100 watts more brings us to the
650 W Cooler Master power supply. This
guy was totally happy to run everything maxed out and up to and including a
single GTX Titan X, which it did while pulling 580 W from the wall. It was able
to boot a stock GPU settings dual Titan
X setup and it was kind of fine until we
put it under load where it unfortunately but expectedly crashed after a minute or
two while pulling 680 watts from the wall for a few minutes. The Corsair AX
850 W power supply is up next with an additional 200 watts of power. This
power supply is able to crank every setup to the max, but just barely
throttle back on the max settings for dual Titan setup, resulting in a pretty
solid clock, but not as high as I might have hoped. At a little itty bittsy step
up, we have the Anttech High Current Gamer 900 watt power supply, which was
able to run everything at full without much trouble, but hit 875 watts from the
wall while running dual Titan X's fully overclocked and while running the 5960X
fully overclocked as well. Cutting it a little close on that one, but being okay
overall. Last but not least, we have our ludicrous level power supply, the 1200
watt Corsair AX1200i 80 plus platinum, which as you probably
guessed it, ran everything totally fine. And as everything was already maxed out,
it didn't have any overclocking benefits to give. Now, that was a lot of testing,
and in conclusion, we have, I think, a fairly expected answer. More wattage
will help you get a higher overclock if your system is throttling or crashing
due to a lack of wattage. But a massive
overabundance of wattage won't actually have an effect on what potential clock
speeds you're able to obtain if you're
already hitting your maximum overclocks. Anyways, is this any more to this
discussion of what power supply to buy? Definitely. Efficiency is a big one. And
while this video was interesting, running your power supply at full tilt
all the time is probably not the best idea ever. But that will have to wait
for another time. Speaking of settings, I'm excited to announce a very special
drop on Massdrop today. They're featuring the Vortex Poker 3, a keyboard
that I think is absolutely gorgeous. It
still has the Cherry MX switches and PBT key caps that we saw on the previous
Poker 2, but Vortex has stepped their game up pretty significantly on the
Poker 3 by utilizing a much higher quality metal case and including more
programming capabilities than we saw on the Poker 2. The drop has already
unlocked its lowest price possible on Massdrop because of how ridiculously
awesome it is in my opinion and is currently available for $15,
a pretty significant discount off of the MSRP. The drop will be live at the drop
link in the video description for about 11 more days. But if you want to pick up
one for free, we're actually hosting a giveaway on the forum for this unit that
we have in the office right here for the next 7 days. for details. They'll be
available in the link in the description, which is the Lionus Tech Tips link. Are there any other thought
experiment videos you guys would like me to try out? Let me know in the comments
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