More PSU Torture Tuning with the Thermaltake DPS App
Last month I did a little experiment to see just how much power certain systems were pulling. To do this you could use a device like a kill-a-watt or the power consumption log on a high-end UPS but those register current draw to the PSU and don’t take into account efficiently ratings of the PSU. The only “true” way to know exactly how much power is being used is from the source and the Digital Toughpower DPS from Thermaltake can do just that.
When sizing a PSU your goal is to buy a PSU that is large enough to power your gear with enough headroom to operate in the most efficient manner. Given that most PSUs are 80Plus certified that means you need to take your estimated power draw and add 20%. I have already determined that you can Core i7 5960X @ 4Ghz and two GTX 780Ti video cards in SLI with an 850w PSU. The question now is, can you also run two AMD Radeon 7970’s in Crossfire on the same Core i7 5960X and stay below 80% of 850w??
Lets find out.
The System as it was Tested
The system is an EVGA X99 Classified running a Core i7 5960X @ 4.0Ghz with 16GB of DDR4 ram. 128GB Micron SSD and HP DVD Burner. The processor is being cooled by a dual fan AIO watercooler and I have Two Radeon 7970 graphics cards running in Crossfire. One is a reference design while the other is the famed MSI R7970 Lighting Boost Edition. My power supply is the Thermaltake Toughpower DSP G 850w.
After playing Borderlands 2 at 2560x1600 with high settings I discovered the following.
Yes you are reading that correctly, the whole system was pulling a little over 600w?!? Efficiency during this run was around 90% and PSU temp topped out at 42c using the silent fan profile. If you followed my post from last month and compare the results you will notice that the 7970’s in Crossfire pulled, on average, 100w more power than the GTX 780Ti which translated into more heat at the PSU. This did impact efficiency but, not enough to really notice. I’m still rather impressed since we are still operating just below 80% of 850w.
Stay tuned for more torture tuning using the Thermaltake DPS App
