Choosing the right power supply?

[philon]

Hi,

I'm wondering if the CORSAIR 650W Power Supply is more power-hungry than necessary for this spec?

I don't want it to overheat, but also want to avoid using more power than necessary.

Initially I forgot to mention:

I already have a fairly new 1TB HDD I'm intending to transfer from my old Dell PC (and I might add another I'm currently using in an external hard drive case).

Any other comments or suggested improvements welcome.


Case
COOLERMASTER 120 ADVANCED CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Quad Core Processor i5-4690T (2.5GHz) 6MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® H97I-PLUS: Mini-ITX, LG1150, USB 3.0, SATA 6GBs
Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON DUAL-DDR3 1600MHz (1 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
2GB NVIDIA GEFORCE GTX 750 Ti - DVI, mHDMI, VGA - 3D Vision Ready
1st Hard Disk
250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 540MB/sR | 520MB/sW)
1st DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
24x DUAL LAYER DVD WRITER ±R/±RW/RAM
Power Supply
CORSAIR 650W VS SERIES™ VS-650 POWER SUPPLY
Sound Card
ONBOARD 8 CHANNEL (7.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Wireless/Wired Networking
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT - AS STANDARD ON ALL PCs
USB Options
2 x USB 3.0 PORTS + 4 x USB 2.0 PORTS AS STANDARD
Operating System
Genuine Windows 8.1 Professional 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence

 

[TheGeeza]

I'm wondering if the CORSAIR 650W Power Supply is more power-hungry than necessary for this spec?

When you press proceed in the configurator does it say that the PSU is overkill? If so you can drop it to a lower wattage to save money on the build.
It does not matter if the PSU is overkill for the spec as it will only ever draw the power it needs to run the components in the system. You could run a 1000w psu in a low end system and it would still only draw a small amount of power under load whereas a quad sli system would actually utilize the extra wattage.

I don't want it to overheat, but also want to avoid using more power than necessary.

The only time the PSU will overheat is if it is faulty or is reaching it's maximum output which would only happen under very heavy load in a system with very powerful hardware.
The chances of overheating are actually reduced when using a higher watt psu as it is less likely to reach it's peak output.
This system is not likely to draw 650w even under very heavy loads so no need to worry about electricity bills.

 

[A314159]

What is your intended use for the computer? I'd like to know, that spec looks unusual.

 

[philon]

When you press proceed in the configurator does it say that the PSU is overkill? If so you can drop it to a lower wattage to save money on the build.
It does not matter if the PSU is overkill for the spec as it will only ever draw the power it needs to run the components in the system. You could run a 1000w psu in a low end system and it would still only draw a small amount of power under load whereas a quad sli system would actually utilize the extra wattage.

The only time the PSU will overheat is if it is faulty or is reaching it's maximum output which would only happen under very heavy load in a system with very powerful hardware.
The chances of overheating are actually reduced when using a higher watt psu as it is less likely to reach it's peak output.
This system is not likely to draw 650w even under very heavy loads so no need to worry about electricity bills.

Thanks for your reply. The configurator didn't say that the PSU is overkill.
I was hoping that it would only ever draw the power it needs.

 

[philon]

What is your intended use for the computer? I'd like to know, that spec looks unusual.

Yes it probably looks unusual because I forgot to mention I already have a fairly new 1TB HDD I'm intending to transfer from my old Dell PC (and I might add another I'm currently using in an external hard drive case).

I now store most of my files on Google Drive so I'll have this Mini PC turned on for most of the time keeping local copies in sync, also doing nightly backups of other files to a NAS drive (with RAID 1). I'll also be using it as an iTunes server and editing music & some video. If I get around to playing some games it would be good if it could cope, but it's not the main use.

If there's anything you'd recommend changing in the spec - please let me know.

 

[A314159]

If you plan to play games I would try and get a r9 270. Apart from that looks good.

 

[mantadog]

Thanks for your reply. The configurator didn't say that the PSU is overkill.
I was hoping that it would only ever draw the power it needs.

Yes the PSU will only ever draw the power it needs to run the system, you will not be drawing 650w from the wall at all times.

Modern system runes sub 100w on low usage. Your system will draw much less than that at idle as the CPU is optimised for low power consumption.

The system you have will never draw 650w, you are probably looking at about 300w maximum. Does the configurator not offer the cheaper, less powerful corsair PSU's?