The TDP for the card is 250W, so a 500W PSU is fine... depending on the other components...
Got a pricey gaming desktop from PC World for Xmas? Check the graphics specs
Dixons Carphone retailers Currys and PC World are flogging a high-end ready-made gaming desktop complete with Nvidia's flagship Geforce GTX 980 Ti processor. Unfortunately, the listed power supply unit on the HP ENVY Phoenix won't do the job for that card. According to the specs listed on the Currys and PC World websites, as …
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Wednesday 6th January 2016 19:48 GMT Zmodem
depends if the PSU is single rail and a platinum or gold rated PSU, a bronze PSU probably won`t do the job, your only getting 400watts -the 20% for efficiency, so as soon as your heat sink and card needs more power, + any other system fan you have plugged into the board, the box will shutdown
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Thursday 31st December 2015 15:13 GMT Steven Raith
Rails
500w/600w is pretty useless as a guideline; what you need to know is whether the rails assigned to power the GPU (12v GPU/AUX, IIRC) can deliver the current the card requires.
If so, it's not a problem. If not, you can call it a 1000w PSU; if it's supplying 1000w on the 5v rails, it still won't power that GPU.
(yes, not a perfect explanation, but I'm sure all the seasoned system builders will know what I'm getting at)
Steven R
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Thursday 31st December 2015 19:26 GMT Roq D. Kasba
Re: A place where fools and their money
Crap to Idiots is a little harsh. They sell mass-market devices to people who want to see them before they part with their cash for actually pretty slim margins in these days of internet price checking.
If I want a thing, and want it now, they're there to sell it. Yes I'll pay more than direct from China or even Amazon online, but I can have it in my hands, test it, doing the job I need in 30 minutes, and as a bonus I'm not hanging around for a package to arrive and if the goods are faulty it's not an extra 48h to sort out. When I can plan ahead, I will. When I can't, I'm glad they're there.
Let's face it, if it was all about cost and convenience I'd take a nescaff in a mug instead of an espresso from Nero, or whatever. People have differing needs and will pay differing prices for convenience.
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Friday 1st January 2016 17:04 GMT Steven Raith
Re: A place where fools and their money
This; a thousand times this; there is a place for stores like PCWC, even if they aren't the finest for bleeding edge tech.
I had a Logitech Quickcam 9000 Pro for years, and it's not great on Linux (limited framerate, square aspect ratio unless you use the Windows software, which, er, no); I popped in, had a deek at what they had in stock cam wise, asked nicely if I could use the display iMac to do a bit of research (no problem), and picked up a C920 that had a decent discount on it making it comparable to online prices.
Picked it up, it's got warranty, if it shits itself I can take it back, etc. Might have paid a fiver more for it than I paid on Amazon, but I don't mind that to have it in my hands, and have some reasonable consumer protection in a local store, rather than email etc.
And for reference, yes, I did check my local computer shop (where I used to work, actually) and they didn't have anything in stock at the time.
Interestingly, I've also worked in PC World before, too. But we don't talk about that.
Steven "Put your management* hat on" R.
*was never management...
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Sunday 3rd January 2016 09:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A place where fools and their money
"Picked it up, it's got warranty, if it shits itself I can take it back, etc."
Ah, no you see this is where you run into PC World's protection racket. Somewhat like the PPI scam, they always try to coerce you into paying extra for their own warranty, claiming that the manufacturer warranty isn't worth having, and always try to get you onto one on an ongoing subcription basis.
(Was forced to sign up for one a while back when buying an emergency replacement TV, to facilitate the sales advisor 'being able to find' the mysteriously missing package containing the remote control and SCART adaptor I needed)
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Monday 4th January 2016 09:56 GMT Archaon
Re: A place where fools and their money
There is no such thing as an emergency TV replacement, nor is there such a thing as being forced to buy a warranty. Can't be bothered or don't want to argue and cancelling it in the cooling off period, sure, but forced - not so much. Saying no really isn't hard.
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Thursday 7th January 2016 18:40 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A place where fools and their money
"There is no such thing as an emergency TV replacement, nor is there such a thing as being forced to buy a warranty. Can't be bothered or don't want to argue and cancelling it in the cooling off period, sure, but forced - not so much. Saying no really isn't hard."
You what? There is if your old CRT tv has just shit itself and you're about to receive guests from overseas who are going to want to sit of the sofa and relax in front of the box for a bit to recover from a period of gruelling travelling.
And yes, I could have simply said 'no' but that would just have made my life a whole lot harder at that point in time - I went the easy route, signed on the dotted line, and cancelled the policy a month later.
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Monday 4th January 2016 07:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: A place where fools and their money
Roq D. Kasba>> and if the goods are faulty it's not an extra 48h to sort out.
It depends how many iterations it takes to sort out, as the shop is under no obligation to provide an immediate replacement, just to engage in a resolution process. When you buy a machine like this by mail order in the UK you can send it back whether it is faulty or not, which is especially useful for dealing with intermittent faults or the situation where the purchaser is likely to have a better understanding of problems than the company's first line support.
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Monday 4th January 2016 08:35 GMT goldcd
Their prices aren't actually that bad any more.
Currently typing this on the lovely mechanical keyboard they sold me. They had the cheapest price out there, and picked it up as I walked by the store the next day saving me any delivery costs.
Bought the missus a shiney-shiney new laptop, again cheaper than anybody else out there and had it in my mits within 30 minutes of online price research being concluded.
Of course if you're just wandering in to grab a generic lead, they're going to bleed you dry, but they're pretty competitive on the expensive stuff (both in range and price).
If you want to find a target for you bile, Maplin.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 21:45 GMT the spectacularly refined chap
Re: Maybe have a word with HP?
But the Curry's site does state it has the Ti variant. It isn't beyond the realms of possibility there's a custom spin made for a large retailer.
However, like many others here I really don't see the issue. An HP specced PSU is going to have a relatively honest power rating, 500W will mean 500W or thereabouts as opposed to 600W meaning 450W or so for many far eastern no-name supplies.
But even that isn't the issue: to give some idea, just before Christmas I was looking at the OEM integrator's guide for a hard drive. It was over 100 pages long - that's a level of detail the typical end user doesn't have access to and probably wouldn't know what to do with even if they did. It also means you can go through the requirements and tick them off one by one. Against the real requirements, not a headline summary for end users to get their heads around in a world of inflated specs.
If there's a requirement in the equivalent guide for the GPU that isn't being met then that is grounds for criticism. Taking a gross simplification of those specs aimed at end users and applying them to one of the biggest computer manufacturers in the world is simply complaining about something you know nothing about.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 15:58 GMT Minimaul
This article is utter bollocks.
The recommended power requirements on NVIDIA's site account for all manner of shitty power supplies. The 600W rating is a "Minimum system power requirement" - you can build a system with a 980Ti and use far less than 600W peak.
A decent 500W power supply is perfectly sensible.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 16:11 GMT BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
I know it's NYE and you all want to go home, but really..
First, as already mentioned the HP site says it's a 980 as an option for that product code, not a 980Ti. NVidia deliberately overstate requirements to deal with underspeced supplies.
Try checking out the Extreme power supply calculator http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator
With the configuration given, it comes out at 491W - which is a little close to 500W, but still within boundaries. You'd hope it's a decent 500W supply, rather than something substandard.
With it configured as a 980 rather than a 980Ti (HP's listed configuration, so I'd be more inclined to believe them), it resolves to 407W/25A on the 12V rail. That's with the processor and GPU at 100% utilisation, so in reality it's unlikely to reach that limit very often.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 16:25 GMT DryBones
Re: I know it's NYE and you all want to go home, but really..
If it's that close, it would prompt me to bump to 750. The closer you run to max load on a PSU, the more likely it is to sag on surge demand. It's a question of if the wattages things are listed for are absolute possible maximum, or normal average? If when gaming your loads spike to 650W for brief periods, you'll have a fun time.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 16:49 GMT BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
Re: I know it's NYE and you all want to go home, but really..
The extreme PSU calculator is supposed to cope for maximums, and add a bit of capacitor aging into the mix. Plus, if it's a decent PSU, it won't actually be 500W - it'll be able to cope with 500W continuous load, and spikes above that.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 17:13 GMT DryBones
Re: I know it's NYE and you all want to go home, but really..
Fair enough. Can't say if it's a mental adjustment to not have to shoot for a "really good" PSU and so keep my pricing options open, but I like having at least 20% excess capacity. And oops, I should have typed speccing a 650W supply, before. Oh well, here comes the new year.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 22:47 GMT PNGuinn
Re: I know it's NYE and you all want to go home, but really..
"it comes out at 491W - which is a little close to 500W, but still within boundaries."
That, assuming the tolerances in the calculations are ok, doesn't leave enough room to upgrade the dust on the fans let alone the system.
Even for a top notch 500 watt psu I'd not want to gulp more than 400 watts worst case peak. Even then I'd be looking at 650 watts to be on the safe side. After all, the system will almost certainly need to be upgraded or repaired at some point.
In any case, these are switchmode units, so there should be virtually no extra power draw, and the cost of the extra 150 watt margin is nowhere near pro rata.
There's something else to bear in mind. I'm sitting next to a box with a quality 650 watt unit. the computer ticks over at just over 100 watts. Or did until I upgraded the graphics card a while ago. It probably sips a bit more now. The point is that psu fan is just about turning and effectively inaudible.
Ok the box takes some more when all 4 cores and the graphics card are going flat out, but still nowhere near the 650 watt limit, and is still very quiet and cool. Which is what I built it to be.
The point here is that the machine described in the article is a volume unit, built down to a price. It'd be very interesting to know exactly what is fitted (brand) and who makes it. Also what the chances are of the next batch having a different unit of the same claimed rating.
Personally, I'd need to be sure that HP hadn't commissioned a reduced cost special which might be sourced from anywhere. Might have a known brand stuck on it or be own branded. FCC numbers might tell us something.
Off topic slightly, but I've got an old Compac hand-me-down here with an ASUS mobo. With a specially borked bios. Why? I wonder what else ASUS have done to it for them? Not actually looked at the psu. Form, as they say.
There seem to be an army of psu brands out there, but relatively few manufacturers. And even fewer decent ones.
There's a well known electronics wholesaler offering a named (never heard of it) brand 500w psu for under 12 quid +vat at the moment for 1 off. At that price would YOU want to risk your mobo, memory, hard disk, data?
Icon seemed appropriate for a cheap psu.
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Friday 1st January 2016 17:13 GMT Steven Raith
Re: I know it's NYE and you all want to go home, but really..
Re that PSU, that sounds like it'd be just over wholesale price, and at that price, I'll put that £12 on it not having GPU aux rails dedicated on the PSU.
It'll be fine for an office machine without dedicated graphics - something running an APU or a anything up to a midrange I5 by itself.
But not, I'd not put it in my machine (2xHDD, 1xSSD, R9 280, A8-3870, 16gb RAM). I'd probably trust it in my secondary box used for VMs (Phenom II 920, 8gb RAM, 1xHDD, no dedicated graphics, just onboard Nvidia 7600 or similar).
In all honesty though, if I had the spare wonga, a decent Seasonic or similar decent brand PSU (current is a 550w BeQuiet one in the A8-3870 box - this one) would be preferred, primarily because I like modular wiring and dedicated rails, even if I'm not using them - makes swapping out dead PSUs much less stressful. You know, providing you can find the modular cables five years down the line...
Steven R
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Saturday 2nd January 2016 00:01 GMT BinkyTheMagicPaperclip
Re: I know it's NYE and you all want to go home, but really..
HP are quite a large manufacturer, they'll have a consistent supplier for the PSUs made by a reputable OEM, to meet their requirements. More importantly it'll be tested under those configurations to have a low failure rate, as a high return rate will cost HP serious amounts of money.
What it won't have is much leeway beyond their list of supported configurations, as that costs HP money.
12 quid for a PSU from someone like Scan is not the same as the PSUs HP has specified, also because the buyers purchase a PSU with the expectation they might upgrade components in the future. Having a quick glance round, the lowest I'd spend is 26 quid on an Aerocool integrator (some of their PSUs are ok, and deliver the rated specification), and I'd rather buy at least a 500W EVGA (35 quid).
Course what I'm actually running at the moment is a high end ThermalTake unit, as my main system is stuffed to the gills with cards and hard drives.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 17:23 GMT Anonymous Coward
When Nvidia make a recommnedation on the PSU for a system that uses their cards they have no idea what is in the rest of the system so I'd expect they are very conservative .... i.e. to cope with the erson whose using a AMD 9xxxx processor (basically overclocked 8350's with their TDP set at 220W!). My main PC has an AMD 8350 CPU + an AMD 280 gfx card neither of which is known for being low power (!) but when I've attached a power monitor on the mains supply I don't see system power much above 250W.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 18:31 GMT Naughtyhorse
Probably never be an issue...
Given that modern GTX cards automatically limit the clock & therefore consumption based on heat. If you run the psu hot, the inside of the box gets hot, this hot air is drawn into the card and the gpu throttles back.
My vishera does not like the heat, so the gpu (a 970) is limited, by me, to 60C - just to keep the overall heat in the system down. Under load the gpu runs flat out until the temp reaches 60, then eases off. I use it for cuda rendering, and that loads the thing more than any game (well crysys with all the knobs turned up to 11 is a breeze compared to a large render)
dunno about PSU limits... mine is 850w and.... sufficient. But i do have a 3d printer with slurps about 30amps at 12v and a (500w? 650w?) PC psu simply couldn't drive it. didn't overheat just maxed out at 25A and ran happy for hours on end, just didnt drive the bed heat up enough. so the protection on modern psu's is pretty good.
Then again anyone looking for a serious game rig is not going to start at pc world, and definitely not end up there.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 19:07 GMT adnim
Quality Vs quantity.
I expect a pre-built off the shelf PC to be equipped with the cheapest components possible that will survive a heavy use situation, in order to keep prices competitive. Who makes the PSU?.
I been building PC's for 20+ years, when I skimped on cost, I regretted it... I bought a Jetway mobo once. :-(
All I can say is wait and see, until PC World get a shit load of returns this is a non story.
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Friday 1st January 2016 10:14 GMT Soruk
Re: Quality Vs quantity.
The ultimate worst motherboards had to be those PCchips ones. Hardware incompatibilities abounded in various bizarre ways and performance isn't a word I would associate with them.
I used to work for a local Scottish box-builder and they would use those boards unless the customer requested something better.
Says it all when I was building my own box, when I went to buy my motherboard the first thing they said was 'I take it you don't want a TXpro-100 [PCchips] board?'.
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Friday 1st January 2016 21:49 GMT Alistair
Re: Quality Vs quantity.
Simply mentioning that horrid brand of motherboards puts you on notice for a downvote. That you agree about the state of that crap alleviates the vote itself.
I have an associate that puts cheap systems together for folks he knows. I had to threaten him with physical harm if he ever used that brand again for a system. Or that I would never look at another one for him.
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Thursday 31st December 2015 19:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
And here I am
Building a new PC and being forced to buy a power supply that delivers far more than I need in my mini-ITX build. A CPU with 65w TDP, using the built in graphics, no overclocking, two DDR4 DIMMs, 2 SSDs and 2 2.5" 1TB drives. I'm not sure it could possibly exceed 100 watts, but since they don't make high efficiency 150 watt or even 300 watt modular power supplies I had to get one that's more than 4x larger than I really need! At least going that big I was able to get one that's fanless and at my load will probably last forever...
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Friday 1st January 2016 06:09 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Low-wattage efficient power supplies
The 400 (or was it 460) watt fanless full modular PS I bought was platinum rated, and the efficiency curve showed it maintaining nearly 90% efficiency down to 100 watts. So I might have paid more but if I save 20 watts from inefficiency (typical bronze PS that's only 60-70% efficient at my very low draw versus mine which is 85-90%) that's about $15/year so there's a chance it could make up the difference in price.
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Friday 1st January 2016 00:31 GMT Spaceman Spiff
Unfortunately, the power supply is one area where system builders cut corners, resulting in a much reduced lifespan for the system. I will NEVER purchase a workstation/gaming system with less than a 750-1000 watt power supply! And look at the power requirements at all voltages! Want to overclock that CPU? You need more power. Want to add RAM? More power please! Need to add cooling? More power please... I'm in the market for a workstation/server. One that I am considering has dual (redundant) 925 watt power supplies. I could up that for another $500, but I think it's not necessary for my use. Total system cost for dual 6 core Intel i7 preocessors (up to 3.2GHz), 16GB RAM, 500GB system drive (I have plenty of spares for more storage), nVidia GTX 750Ti (marginally slower than the 980 card - the 980 is another $600) graphics, Sound Blaster audio, 3 year warranty - about $3500 USD.
FWIW, I am an electrical and senior systems engineer. I do this stuff for a living. Read the fine print... Personally, though we at my place of work have a lot of HP gear, I really don't like it much. HP doesn't build stuff the way it used to - dead-bang reliable. It is a consumer equipment manufacturer any longer. One of my best friends was their VP of engineering back in the 1980's. HP has only gone downhill since Ernie Bertram retired. :-(
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Friday 1st January 2016 19:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Ah, you're a *senior* systems engineer? In my experience that just means you've spent a long time in your job or field, or are just old.
I'm surprised you don't mention the timings (or indeed color) of your RAM, given your engineering background.
Oh, and you have a 3 year warranty? Christ on a bike, they saw you coming!
Biting the hand that feeds IT
