Alright, does the Corsair 450VX have enough juice to power an Antec 900 case, a Raedon 4870, a UD3R mobo and an overclocked Q6600 to around 3-3.2GHz?? I highly doubt it, but I'm just making sure.. also 4 gigs of RAM and a 640GB WD HDD if it matters.. thanks for your time, I really appreciate it.
I am pretty sure that this PSU will do. Your system would probably draw around 450 watts if *every* component were at 100% load. Under normal use, including games, it would probably be around 250 watts even at "full" load. If you are concerned, you can upgrade to the Corsair 520 watt model. The one that will know for sure is sammorris. Wait on his final word.
If you said you were running the Q6600 on stock speeds I'd say you would be fine. With an OC I'd pick up the 520W instead. Even if the 450W would handle the power spikes, it would still be constantly running under high loads while gaming with annoying fan noise. Now it is possible to run at 3.0Ghz on stock voltage, but you won't know that until you test out the exact chip you get. Might as well spend the bit extra now and save yourself headaches later on.
Right, and more power is better anyways. It will draw whatever it needs, so it is not like the Electric bill will go up. You just pay a little more upfront. Actually, the 650 watt is $2 more than the 550 watt, so if you are upgrading, get the 650 watt: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005
That system will draw around 350W at the mains, with a real DC load of about 290W, which is fine, but will stress the VX450 a bit and make it quite noisy. The HX520 will run this system fine, and quietly too, as I run a 4870X2 and Q9550 on this unit.
