I'm looking for a new power supply, but I've heard about changes concerning the new generation of video cards.

1. How widespread will the 8-pin PCIe connector be?
2. Some power supplies are switching back to single +12V rails, how is this good or bad?
3. Power supplies are reaching 800W - 1000+W ranges, how much would we really need for the next 2 years?
4. I'm using a economic 600W Ultra V-Series power supply with 4-pin CPU connector on a MSI P6N SLI Platinum with a 8-pin CPU connector, would this limit my ability to overclock my E6420?

Thanks to anyone who answers.

Quote: Originally Posted by Hibiki I'm looking for a new power supply, but I've heard about changes concerning the new generation of video cards. 1. How widespread will the 8-pin PCIe connector be? 2. Some power supplies are switching back to single +12V rails, how is this good or bad? 3. Power supplies are reaching 800W - 1000+W ranges, how much would we really need for the next 2 years? 4. I'm using a economic 600W Ultra V-Series power supply with 4-pin CPU connector on a MSI P6N SLI Platinum with a 8-pin CPU connector, would this limit my ability to overclock my E6420? Thanks to anyone who answers.

1. Pretty much standard on the high end cards.
2. Yes. That is assuming it is a quality PSU to begin with.
3. I just bought a PC Power and Cooling 750 and plan on it being my primary PSU for my gaming rig for a while. I think that unless you are going to do something crazy 750 is a good place to be. Now, not all 750s are the same. I would use the PCP&C 750 instead of many ohter companies 1000w PSU. So it all depends.
4. I have no clue.

I think the new ATI cards are the only ones to use the 8pin PCI-E connector right now. I imagine however that the next series of cards will use them rather than the dual 6pin connectors.

The idea with having one massive rail is that it prevents single rails from becoming overloaded. I.E If you had a 750w PSU with 4 18amp rails to power dual 8800GTX's the GTX's would each overload the rail. With a single 12v rail rated at 80amps you wouldn't have that problem. That's about the best explanation I can give right now so I hope you can make sense of it. (It's 630 right now).
I think right now the majority of the high powered PSU's operate using a single 12v rail.


Depends mainly on what you want to put in your system. If you want to go with dual graphics cards, a quad core, and multiple hard drives than you'll probably want a 800w or higher. If you plan on going with a midrange system 600-700w is probably just fine.


I don't think you'll have any problems with day to day running but overclocking will probably not be as stable. I was under the impression that the 8pin connector was for servers but I'm not familiar with Intel motherboards.

silverstone 650w is probably the way to go if your looking towards the future
comes with a very large amount of amps on 1 rail
1x 8pin PCI-e
2x 6pin PCI-e

Here's a linky for you to read about power supply myths......

Power Supply Myths Exposed!

Any silverstone single rail PSU will work fine. PCP&C and OCZ make good PSU's as well.

650w-850w is all you should need for two years. The 650 Silverstone, 750 and 850w models all are single rail PSU, but still double check just in case.

Anything by Seasonic is well worth a shot. They make PSUs for Power PC & Cooling, Corsair and Antec, as well as several others.