Specs:

i7 960 (3.2Ghz stock. I have absolutely no intention of overclocking, but I may actually underclock & undervolt -- only if necessary.)
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5
Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 2Gb Eyefinity-6
RocketRAID 4322 PCI-E card
3x 120mm fans (2 for CPU cooling, 1 as a case fan.)
Some white LEDs. A line of 15 of them, I think? (Does this really even affect the power rating at all?)

All my hard drives are in a separate enclosure, so they're not getting power from the seasonic. Same with the fans for the hard drives.
Most of my USB peripherals connect through my monitors. (Apple LED 24"s.) Since they have their own power (connected to an outlet), I'm guessing the USB power comes from the monitor and not the computer. The monitor themselves connect to the PC via USB as well, but again, I'm guessing no power is drawn.

IDK if this is relevant, but I have a CyberPower pr1500lcdrt2u as a UPS.

Thanks guys. Any comments are appreciated.

I realize that my components are pretty high-powered, but the fact that I'm thinking that the fact that I don't have any peripherals / hard drives may make it OK to use a 400W PSU. Any thoughts are appreciated.

You might have to disconnect some of those LEDs, at least during startup.
Just kidding. You'll be fine.

You will be absolutely fine with the proposed power supply. We have pretty similar rigs, except mine is heavily overclocked. Specs:

Core i7-920 @ 4.01GHz, 1.35v
Gigabyte EX58-UD3R motherboard
3x4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 9-9-9-24-1T
Asus Xonar DX sound card
XFX Radeon 6950 flashed to a 6970 (unlocked shaders, overvolted) @ 880/1375, aftermarket heatsink (Scythe Setsugen 2, custom fan)
120GB OCZ Agility 2 SSD
Scythe Mugen 2 CPU heatsink
Scythe S-Flex FDB fans throughout
Scythe Kaze-Q fan controller (Scythe fan much?)
Seasonic X-460 fanless power supply
Some ASUS blu-ray drive...
Antec P183 case

During a realistic full-load test (8-thread Prime95 + Unigine Heaven demo), my power consumption at the wall is ~430w. Taking into account power supply efficiency, I'm pulling approximately 390w DC. A non-overclocked rig should use much less than this, so you should be completely fine.

This may be FUD, but I'll say it anyways. There have been some reports of some active power factor correction PSUs (like the X-400) having issues with UPS's that don't create a real sine wave (usually only found in more expensive power supplies). I've never had any issues, but it's something to research I guess.

Thanks guys.

m1st, I'm pretty sure my model is supposed to create a real sine wave. How can I tell? It's described as a "1500VA / 1000W Pure sine wave UPS", but the spec only says that the "On battery waveform" is a sine wave.

Here's the UPS in question:
http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/produc ... DRT2U.html

Another question is if I upgrade my rig to start using watercooling, which would mean I'd be adding a water pump into the power circuits, would a 400W psu still hold?

This model, with a "pure sine wave", is as good as it gets. The waveform will be a sine wave whether or not it's running on battery backup. A cheap UPS might switch to a square wave when it switches to battery power, which might clash with a finicky power supply.

Sorry to put a hold on things here but you will have a problem with the X-400 and the Radeon 5870: The X-400 only has a single 6+2 pin PCI-E cable whereas the Radeon 5870 needs 2x6 pin. The X-460 has 2 6+2 pin PCI-E cables plugs so would be better suited. Alternatively you would need to use a 2xmolex - PCI-E adaptor.

Are you in an area where power supply is a problem? Having a UPS for personal use is overkill for most people. How often does it get used? Modern power supplies will handle a little brown out anyway.

Bah, sorry I haven't responded in ages, I didn't know I ever got a reply. I've subscribed to this thread now.

edh, my 5870 actually needs 1x6 pin and 1x(6+2)pin, but your point still stands. I guess I'll be getting the 460 instead. (I mean, they're the same price on newegg anyway ...)

Also, regarding being in an area where power supply is a problem: (scroll down for TL;DR)

My house is pretty old (~60 years, I think?), and has all sorts of problems. One of the big problems is that the 1.5-story house (which basically means that it's a 2-story with a smaller upstairs than downstairs) has a single A/C unit. This, in conjunction with having the A/C controller downstairs, makes everything upstairs much warmer in comparison. (I live in Texas, so it can get really hot around here.) This, coupled with the fact that I have a lot of computer equipment sitting in one room, makes that room really, really hot.

So, to make sure my components don't fry to death (and to keep a livable temperature in that room), I use a portable A/C unit in the office to keep things cooled. But with the electrical wiring and circuit breakers in the house being so old, the room consumes too much power for the breakers to handle, and each time the portable A/C turns on, the room electricity has a noticeable "skip". (As in the lights flicker for a fraction of a second, etc.) It's not a complete outage, as I have some cheaper stuff hooked up without a UPS that don't get power cycled, but with the light flickering and all, I'm thinking that it can't be good for computers (and electronics in general).

Even besides this room having a problem with the portable A/C, the house's elec. wiring in general seems to have a problem. The breakers will trip around once every month or two from various causes (heavy usage in the kitchen, for example), and the power goes out due to lightning a little too frequently for my taste as well.

So to protect my little toys, I invested in the nicest UPS that I could afford at the time. It's served me pretty well. I see it click on for short periods of time a couple of times per week or so.

TL;DR: Yes, I am in such an area.

I think you'd be better off spending the money on getting your house fixed. This would not only be safer for your computer but also safer for you!

When you say that lighting strikes frequently cause trips then this makes me think of earthing issues. I know in the US you have strange/dangerous ideas on what constitutes good earth wiring with all kinds of wierd things like using the plumbing of the house as the earth. I would first test the earth continuity between electrical sockets. Take a multimeter and a pair of IEC leads to measure the resistence across earths. I get around 1A here between ring circuits but have used it when there was an earth fault and you'll find something in the megaohms. This is just to prove that the circuits themselves are wired properly. To look at the house being earthed is more difficult. Check that everything is earthed back to the consumer unit with copper and then follow from the consumer unit backwards. As you are in Texas it may be that the ground itself is not a strong enough Earth at the dpeth that the earth rod has been put. They should have put the earth rod deeper. An alternative is they may have used the plumbing (bad) and I would check to make sure that along the plumbing everything is copper. A former colleague of mine from the US had a house where the plumbing passed through a galvanised tank, thus making the house electrically unsound, easily fixed with a length of copper wire jumped from the inlet pipe to the outlet!

Not being much of an electrician, I had an actual electrician look at the house for me. He wanted to re-lay the wires for the whole house. It would've cost something like $5k, and they would have had to bust down a lot of the dry-wall, which means i'd have to go live in a hotel somewhere for a while w/ my family.

But thanks for the information. I'll see if I can find a multimeter laying around somewhere to verify that the house is grounded properly. I still think that the old circuit breakers are just rated at an amperage too low to handle modern-day usage, but I've never done anything like replacing those breakers, so I wouldn't know where to start with that either.

In any case, thanks again for the tip about checking the ground.

Consider the Seasonic X-560. Generally sells for the same price as the X-460, and has a semi-passive fan design. No fan for low loads, low temps and then a quiet fan for high loads and high temps.

What sort of advantages will the 560's semi-passive fan design bring (other than the 100W increase) compared to 460's fanless design?

- it usually costs the same as the '400.
- the fan is off for loads up to 50%. So, for everything but games, it'll be silent. During games, it'll be fairly quiet - and you won't hear it over the game, anyway.
- you might want a little more headroom. cpu tdp is 130W, GPU is 188W. Add in another 30W+ for mobo, raid card, case fans, and it's ~ 350W DC if fully loaded/stressed.

Hmm. Those all seem like valid points. Is there a review of the 560 somewhere in SCPR? I see the 460 is endorsed in the 400 review, but besides that, the closest one I see is the 650.

Also, I can't seem to find where it says that the 560 is a semi-passive PSU. Can you post a link or something? Thanks!

X-series, fanned: They all behave the same way, same fan controller, same family.

The 560 sounds great, but I'm still kinda iffy about it since SPCR hasn't done a review on it yet. Do you think I can expect the same quality stuff as the 400/460/650 that are listed on the staff recommended list?

yes

Welp. I'm sold! 560 it is.

Ordered the 560 just now.
Will post more when I install it.

-R

This thing is great! It's a very quiet PSU, that's for sure. I don't really know how to measure its "performance", per se, but I've ran it through stressing video games and it handled everything well.

Thanks everyone for your input!

Enjoy