3 questions involving 4-way sli, PSU, and 2560x1600 resolution.

[PopeAK49]

I saw this rig that had quad-sli (Geforce GTX 580) and a 1500 watt power supply. The main reason for such a monster creation was to run games like crysis and metro at 2560x1600 resolution. Each GTX 580 consumes about 600-watts, so my 3 questions are:



How can a 1500-watt PSU handle or provide 2400+ (600-watts x 4 + other components) wattage?
Is it a fire hazard or electrical hazard? Wouldn't it sky rocket your electrical bill?
I know that 2560x1600 has more DPI compared to 1920x1024, but is it really that noticeable and is it worth it?

[Cortexian]

The GTX 580 doesn't officially support 4-way SLI so what you saw was most likely a hoax. Also, each GTX 580 only consumes about 365 Watts at load (150~ idle). That said, your PSU's would still be eating up 1460 Watts of that 1500 Watt PSU, and 40 Watts isn't enough to power the rest of the system by itself. Are you sure there wasn't a separate PSU for the rest of the system? I know a lot of people running triple and quadruple SLI run two PSU's in their system since one can't cut it most of the time.

Quad-SLI is a huge amount of overkill for only 2560x1600 resolution. My SLI GTX 285's handle most games just fine at 5760x1200, so unless you're going multi-monitor I'd say that two GTX 580's is more than enough power for that low of a resolution.

[=sw=warlord]

According to the actual manufacturers website the Nvidia 580 actually consumes 244W not the 600W you thought.
The 600W you thought is more to do with making sure the entire system has enough power to run it as well as the card it self.
Now assuming the rest of the components aren't all that juicy in terms of power draw, 1500W's should be more than enough.

[Phopojijo]

1) Each 580 doesn't consume 600 watts of power... they recommend a minimum of a 600W power supply assuming a standard system build. It uses 244W according to nVidia (which is just shy of 21 Amps on the 12V rail)
2a) No. 2b) Not really. Under load it would be somewhat up there in consumption... but nowhere near an Oven or something. When you're not under load, computer components downclock.
3) Depends on what you're doing... but on the whole yes. Especially if you're going for 27-30" monitors (you probably won't find any consumer monitors smaller than 27" that's 1440p)

We're soon going to have 4K monitors and TVs (resolutions around 4096 wide and however tall the aspect ratio requires) and they do look beautiful.

But yeah like Freelancer said, even those 4x580's would be overkill for that. Even one 580 would be good enough.

[PopeAK49]

Well thanks for the input guys. I was looking at the specs on Tiger direct for the Watt specification. I didn't even think about the card + other components when I saw that number, just the card itself. Maybe I should start looking at the manufacture site for more "correct" specifications compared to Tigerdirect or NewEgg. But yeah, I think the guy was running two PSU's in his machine.

But damn Freelancer, you can run two gtx 285 at that resolution? Three 1920x1200 monitors? That's pretty impressive.

And again. Thanks a lot for the responses.

[annihilation]

Is it a fire hazard or electrical hazard? Wouldn't it sky rocket your electrical bill?


Not really, you'll most likely be using about 600-800w on average. Your TV is probably more of an energy hog.

[Cortexian]

But damn Freelancer, you can run two gtx 285 at that resolution? Three 1920x1200 monitors? That's pretty impressive.
Crysis and really GPU intensive games suffer at anything over low-medium settings at triple-monitor resolution but most games work pretty well. Been playing some Just Cause 2 lately at max settings in triple-monitor mode and I get about 30-40 FPS.