Power supply and 2 cards

[acc24ex]

If you have enough space you can always buy another power supply and turn it on via the sophisticated paperclip technique :

http://aphnetworks.com/lounge/turn_on_p ... clip_trick

Or get those specialised switches (which do the same thing)

I did mine with the paperclip, and I got a 950W corsair, along with the 750w corsair PSU, two GPU card on 750W unit and two on 950W unit (on asus workstation motherboard with 7 PCIE-s).. heats up like hell, placed a few large fans all around the cards and the temps don't go above 80-90C, it's loud but it works

And check out this app http://www.ozone3d.net/gpu_caps_viewer/ , has everything to cheack out the GPU, GPU load, TDP power on each card so you can calculate the total wattage I guess..

[treddie]

Thanks for those links! Those are cool. I would definitely have to do it that way if I really expected to put a third card in. But come to think of it...my only other slot is a PCIe-x8, so either that would cut my bandwidth in half for the second PCIe-x16 slot, or it wouldn't work at all. I'll definitely have to upgrade to a bigger motherboard sometime in the future.

[smicha]

My specs: look at my signature.
My observations: (all measured)
Power consumption:
1. At idle approx. 150W
2. Rendering with one GTX 580 (watercooled) - add approx 200W.
3. Rendering with two GTX 580 (watercooled) - add another 200W.

Total power consumption never exceeds 650W. I have 1350W PSU - for further 2xGTX580 This should not exceed approx 1100W.

All work at 30C - idle, 45-60C while rendering. Silent.

[treddie]

That's some major cooling going on there. I could use that stack of fans for ceiling fans!

Really nice setup.

A question comes to mind. What percentage of max wattage should a power supply never exceed during normal operation (not including spikes)?