Anyway, if you upgrade, then you might have to restabilize your overclock. Presently, your computer never pulls any more than about 60-65% of your PSU's total capacity. If you upgrade to either a 290, 290X, or a 7970, then your power consumption would easily reach 80-85% of your PSU's total capacity. That's actually a huge change (some people might not think so), especially with an overclocked CPU (overclocked by 1 GHz).
I highly doubt I'll have a problem.
I can't find the article but a website a cppl years ago used an overclocked Sandy Bridge cpu, multiple platter hard drives and the highest end Nvidia gfx cards in SLI, with a 550watt psu. they then ran software to stress the hdd's, the cpu and the gfx's cards all at the same time and left it rolling for days until they decided it wasn't going to have a problem. I wish I could find that article and will look for it after this.
I think it was the Register or Fudzilla, but can't find it.
I'm not saying that you will; I'm just saying that it's a possibility due to the fact that a huge change to the power consumption is about to be made. I've seen it before many times, including my own computer (a lesson learned...). A simple change to the power consumption can change the stability of the power that the PSU is delivering to your computer (particularly the ripple and the voltage regulation), and this change can easily destabilize an otherwise stable overclocked system (the quality of a PSU's power output varies depending on how much power it's delivering). It can also destabilize a system that's at stock in slightly more extreme cases, and/or in cases where the PSU is just that crappy. This is also why coil whine can either disappear or reappear when changing the power consumption either with increased or decreased load, or with the change of a major component like a video card. With the exception of coil whine because it's highly unpredictable (it's due to one simple design "flaw" that even the best PSUs can have), some people never experience these things due to having a PSU that is so well-designed that it has extremely low ripple and extremely tight voltage regulation almost throughout the entire range of its output capacity. Some PSUs have very obvious sweet spots and very obvious sour spots in the range of their output capacity (from 0 to 100%, that is). Some PSUs are so bad that the entire range 0 to 100% is sour, plagued with very high ripple and loose voltage regulation, among other problems with the PSU. Such PSUs are to be avoided at all costs, even for simple office computers. I can think of one manufacturer right off the bat who makes PSUs like that: Diablotek. Of course, there's also LC-Power, Logisys, Athena, etc. etc. etc.
Anyway, so yeah, PSUs aren't all the same. Just because one 550W PSU does fine in some professional review site's a test, it doesn't mean that
ALL 550W PSUs will just because they have the "550W" rating (plus, some review sites shouldn't be testing PSUs due to their lack of knowledge and proper testing equipment). For one thing, such tests are always extremely short tests which can be very unrealistic in the real world where a person uses their computer several hours per day at nearly full load for more than just a couple of years straight. I'm not saying that yours is crappy or anything or that you will definitely have some sort of problem when you install the new card, but I'm just cautioning you that yours isn't the greatest that Enermax has ever built (and yeah, they do make their own), and that you're making a big change to the power consumption and your CPU is overclocked by 1 GHz (not exactly a small overclock). All of this can mean that you need to be aware that you might not have a 100% smooth and uneventful upgrade. I don't remember THAT much about your PSU, but I do remember learning that I would never include it in a list of PSUs that I'm recommending to a new buyer if they're overclocking. If they're keeping everything at stock, then maybe. Of course, the market has also changed quite a bit as well, so yeah.
I realize how this paragraph will sound here, but I feel that I should say it: I'm very well-known on Overclock.net as a PSU "guru" or "expert". That's not ME saying so; that's what many of the members have said and STILL say (not that I'm agreeing with them - I'm essentially making an observation). All I'm trying to do is assure you that I'm not just some random troll or something, that I really do know what I'm talking about (5+ years on Overclock.net, 12+ hours per day because I don't have much else that I want to do). Again, I'm not saying that you'll definitely have problems. I'm just saying, be aware that there is a chance that this won't be just a simple upgrade, that there's a chance you might have to restabilize your overclock due to making such a big change to the power consumption.I don't know if it's a small chance or a big chance though.
There's one more thing to consider: how stable your system really is. In my own experience and also in the years and thousands of hours that I've spent on Overclock.net, I have learned that a system can be so close to being unstable that making the slightest change can destabilize everything, including making a tiny upgrade from like say a GTS 450 to a GTX 460. I've seen it too many times where someone comes to OCN complaining that they have had no problems whatsoever for the past year or two (or maybe for the past several months), but now after making a GPU upgrade (big or small), they're having nothing but problems. This usually happens to people who decided to take shortcuts when testing the stability of their system; they either felt that a true test of their stability is the daily real-world use of it, not some test like Prime95, OR they weren't told how to properly and thoroughly test the stability (some so-called "expert" gave them bad advice). Either that, or they just didn't have the patience or the time or whatever, and therefore disregarded very good advice. I've had plenty of arguments about this with people who are overclocking for the first time. I've had times where I've gotten into a big argument just because I told the person to make sure their system can withstand a 24-hour test in Prime95 using Prime95's "Custom" Blend test with 80-85% of their memory manually entered into the "memory to use" field. Sometimes the response I get is more or less like,
"That's ridiculous and major overkill. I'm just going to be gaming on this computer." So what do they do instead? Some do 30 minutes to as much as 2 hours (I hate that!). Some do about 6-8 hours. Some just ignore my advice entirely and rely on how well their system does in real-world use (I hate this the most, of course). 9 times out of 10 though, these same people come back a few weeks or a few months later complaining that their system used to be "perfectly stable", but now it's not. Not to be a jerk, but I always think to myself, "Gee, I wonder why." If I can convince them at this point to get their computer to withstand such a "ridiculous" and "overkill" stress test, then their problems magically disappear and they express concern that their CPU has degraded and now it needs a higher core voltage just to be stable again. Facepalm. Wrong. The problem is that their system wasn't actually stable to begin with. Just because an overclocked system isn't experiencing any problems in real-world use, it doesn't mean that it's truly stable.
Anyway, I've babbled on enough, and I sincerely apologize for that. However, this can be very important! Y'know? It can be extremely stressful and aggravating when you're faced with the inability to use your computer just because it keeps locking up on you or BSODing - especially when all you're trying to do is enjoy your very limited free time!
Having said all that, it's obviously best to wait and see what happens when this bridge is finally crossed. All I'm doing is making sure you're aware that the crossing of this bridge can mean that you will have to drop everything for a little bit to restabilize your computer before you can enjoy what's on the other side of that bridge. This way, if it happens, you won't immediately suspect that your new video card is defective; you'll remember what I said here, and you'll get right to work on restabilizing it. It won't be a surprise or a big deal.
