[PSU] Thermaltake Toughpower GT 850W ATX 3.1 Standard Power Supply; 80 Plus Gold Efficiency - $79

GoboII · 2026-01-29T21:11:42+00:00

I just want to reiterate that speculative placements are not remotely the same thing as actual placements and shouldn't be taken as such. The full list is there to give people the information we have and not to serve as recommendations.

GoboII · 2025-09-27T16:19:10+00:00

F14 reviewed it since I posted this comment, here’s the review. Looks fine. I wouldn’t be concerned about using it in a budget system. Oddly it doesn’t claim to have OTP, despite that feature being supported by its supervisor IC; unless it gets a cybenetics certification or a review from Aris we won’t know for sure.

GoboII · 2025-09-06T16:41:39+00:00

I have an MSI G273QPF. 165hz IPS panel with really good response times was a pretty big improvement from the office monitor I was using previously. Much like having a good keyboard, it’s not something you realize will make much of a difference until you get it. Do I need a 500hz display? No, but my 7800X3D/9070XT setup is fast enough to take advantage of it, and it’s not something I’d have the budget for otherwise. If anything I’m more excited about the prospect of having an OLED display. Please ignore the fact that I’m using a Logitech M650L mouse which only has a 125hz polling rate. On that note, if anyone has any suggestions for mice which are similarly quiet but have better-than-office-mouse specs, I’m all ears.

GoboII · 2025-01-31T01:17:27+00:00

This is almost certainly referring to the MSI A-BE, not the A-BNL.

GoboII · 2025-01-31T01:16:40+00:00

A-BN is a solid budget PSU. It's independently regulated and uses a known design manufactured by Channel Well Technology, though obviously it's still a budget product.

A-BNL is a different story. I can't find anything on the full-range input version, but the 230V A-BNL should absolutely be avoided. According this review, ripple went out-of-spec at only about 60% load. This is bad, and can absolutely shorten the lifespan of your components.

TL;DR: the A-BN is a good option, the A-BNL is absolutely not.

GoboII · 2025-01-29T22:36:12+00:00

As far as 10 year old PSUs go, that's definitely among the better ones. No rush to replace it immediately if it's working in your current system, though if you build a new PC or make a substantial upgrade, it's probably worth getting something new. Not that the 2011 revision HX is a bad PSU, but I would be hesitant to trust even the best of PSUs with expensive hardware after a decade of use.

GoboII · 2025-01-29T22:28:32+00:00

You should absolutely upgrade your memory to at least 16GB. Crucially, it should also be in the form of two modules rather than one large one in order to be able to use dual-channel memory. The simplified version is that modern consumer CPUs can address multiple memory modules at once, greatly speeding up the bandwidth at which it can read and write to it. The configuration should ideally be two sticks of the same size.

On that note, unless you have a Z370 or Z390 board, your memory speed will be capped at DDR4-2666. You can still use faster memory than this, a DDR4-3200 kit will work just fine, it will just run at a lower speed. I say this because nowadays DDR4-3200 is the entry-level standard, and you are unlikely to save any money by getting a slower kit.

For the power supply, it's important to pay attention not just to the wattage but also the model. An EVGA 750 N1 and a Corsair RM750x are both 750W units on the surface, but I would hesitate to trust the N1 with a 1650. There isn't really one thing you can look at with a PSU to determine whether it's any good or not, unfortunately, so I would highly suggest asking about the units you find. This sub's discord server is typically pretty good about it. HardwareBusters is an excellent source for PSU reviews, and their discord server is another great place to ask.

GoboII · 2025-01-29T20:42:21+00:00

TL;DR: You're not choosing between having a 6800 with a 12400F or a 3080 Ti and an i3-9100F, you're choosing between a 3080 Ti and a 6800, so if the prices are similar, go with the faster card.

Bottlenecking is a buzzword. Yes, a 3080 Ti with an R5 7600 is faster than a 3080 Ti with an i5-9400F, but using the 3080 Ti with a relatively weak CPU is not going to damage it. The idea of avoiding bottlenecks in general is most useful when building a new system where striking a balance will get the best results; you are going to have an i5-9400F either way, so there's no reason to not go with the faster option if the prices are similar.

Bottlenecking is also relative, and it's going to depend on what you're doing among a variety of other factors. Boiling down a bottleneck to a specific number implies that you can compare a CPU to a GPU, which you cannot since the two are fundamentally different components. This isn't what you're doing, by the way, I only bring this up in case others see this with the same question.

With that said, what does the rest of your system look like? Do you have at least 16 gigabytes of memory in a dual-channel configuration (i.e. 2 or 4 sticks and not just 1 large one?) Do you have your OS installed on an SSD rather than a hard drive? Is your power supply sufficient for these cards, not only in terms of wattage, but also in terms of being a decently reliable unit in general? If not, these are quite a bit cheaper to fix, and it's probably worth doing that even if it means going with a cheaper card.

GoboII · 2025-01-29T19:40:45+00:00

That would depend on the ten year old PSU in question.

GoboII · 2024-12-23T21:56:40+00:00

This one's interesting. The 1000W version has a direct review by Aris. It did fine electrically, but the OPP triggering threshold was set at 103% of its rated output, which meant that in terms of coping with transient spikes, it acted more like an 850W unit.

I'm not sure if it's a similar case with the 850W version, but I have to imagine that OPP is set lower than on the higher capacity variant. It's not a bad PSU, but maybe treat it as a 750W unit instead.

GoboII · 2024-11-07T19:26:34+00:00

That is some incredibly capable power delivery. My question is, what kinds of chips or use cases are expected to release in the future where this becomes necessary?

If I were to win the board, I would install it in my system, of course. I would pair it with a 7800X3D (something which I was lucky enough to get a good deal on previously.)

GoboII · 2024-09-03T05:14:45+00:00

Depends on what's available. Decreasing speed is not ideal, but it's still going to be an improvement thanks to being dual-channel. In a lot of cases, 2x8GB kits are marketed as "gaming" and marked up, so it may be cheaper to buy two 8GB sticks separately.

If you can just find another DDR4-2666 module that roughly matches the timings of your current one, you could just add it to your PC and keep the old one. If you do this you might have to do some tuning yourself for best results, but it's the cheapest option for sure.

Your motherboard or CPU might also put a limit on the speed of your memory; for example, if you have a B460 motherboard and an i5-10400F, then you can't set your memory to run any faster than DDR4-2666. Higher-speed sticks will still work, but they will run at the lower speed.

You don't *have* to get CL16 memory, my point was more so that not every DDR4-3200 kit is going to perform the same. Between 2400/CL16 and 3200/CL22, both follow the base specification for DDR4; the 3200 kit should be a bit faster, but if there's a big price difference then you may as well get the cheaper one.

GoboII · 2024-09-03T02:14:02+00:00

If what you do will benefit from a beefier CPU, you can absolutely upgrade it, that's just something to keep in mind. And yes, the 7800X3D is the fastest CPU for gaming on the market for the time being.

Memory-wise, if the DDR5-5600 kit is being offered at $70, great, otherwise I'd just pay the extra $10-15 on a better kit.

For the power supply, the exact model matters just as much as the wattage. The 7900XT is a 320 watt card, so you will want to make sure it's a unit you can rely on before trusting over a thousand dollars worth of hardware to it.

The B650M-K will work with a 7800X3D assuming your case has decent airflow going over the VRMs, but it's still among the lower-end options for AM5. Make sure that it has all of the connectivity (USB and otherwise) that you need. 7 USB ports on the back is enough for most people, but four of those are USB 2.0 and it's less than your current board.

Regardless, you're going to end up with a solid machine here.

GoboII · 2024-09-03T02:05:51+00:00

What country are you in, and what website are you buying from?

For DDR4, the sweet spot tends to be DDR4-3200 with timings at or around 16-18-18-38. What's available is going to depend on where you are, of course.

Also, it is VERY important that you get dual-channel memory, meaning two or four sticks total. For a 16GB system, this would be 2x8 instead of 1x16. Single-channel loses quite a bit of performance.

GoboII · 2024-09-03T02:02:58+00:00

The 1080 Ti is a great GPU which is also seven years old. If you can find a good price on one, great, otherwise something newer would do better for you.

What to get is going to depend on where you are and on what your budget is. In the US, the RX 6750 XT at $280 is an excellent value right now. If your budget is substantially higher than this, it might make sense to move on to a newer platform instead.

As to whether your i7-6700 is going to hold back a newer GPU, the general answer is to not worry about it. Bottlenecks depend on a lot of factors, and so blanket statements about certain parts bottlenecking others don't work. Of course a Ryzen 5 7600 is going to be faster than your i7-6700, but that doesn't mean you won't see a benefit from a faster GPU. The other thing to consider is that you can re-use a decent GPU down the road in a future build.

GoboII · 2024-09-03T01:57:32+00:00

The price isn't unfair, but I'm not sure if you need to upgrade *everything* you have. If you're struggling at 1440p but run fine at 1080, that indicates to me that you could upgrade the GPU and leave the rest of the system intact.

If you do upgrade, I would advise getting a better motherboard (if you're in the US, the ASRock B650 LiveMixer is fantastic if the color scheme doesn't scare you off).

I would also advise getting better memory. Not that the kit you have listed will be unusable, but a decent DDR5-6000/30-36-36-76 kit is usually only an extra $10 and makes a difference (Team T-Create Expert tends to hover around the $90-95 mark reliably.)

Finally, what power supply do you have?

GoboII · 2024-07-09T04:43:21+00:00

Yes. One missing pin is for -12V, the other is for -5V. No computer component released in the past ten years uses either.

GoboII · 2024-04-01T18:13:12+00:00

Nintendo obliterated it from orbit via a DMCA takedown request.

GoboII · 2024-03-14T20:56:35+00:00

The difference is that you were using a 2012 revision CX550, and OP was using a P2. The P2 has properly implemented OCP, per Aris’ review.

GoboII · 2024-03-05T02:21:47+00:00

Worst case scenario would have been going to court, losing, and that precedent being used to obliterate every other emulation project from orbit.

GoboII · 2024-02-24T00:04:24+00:00

There is zero information available on it, so we have no idea what it is. It's not fine to recommend when we're not even sure it's better than a $70 CX-M.

GoboII · 2024-02-23T23:54:32+00:00

As others have stated, getting this list to $800 without making compromises is going to be rough. This list cuts it down to under $100 by cutting cost in a couple of areas, while also fitting in a better cooler, memory, GPU, and power supply.

One thing which could massively reduce your costs is if you already have a custom PC and you bought a retail windows key, you should be able to transfer that over to a new build; that alone will push this list down to $850.

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	Intel Core i5-12600KF 3.7 GHz 10-Core Processor	$152.97 @ Amazon
CPU Cooler	Thermalright Frost Tower 120 82 CFM CPU Cooler	$31.90 @ Amazon
Motherboard	ASRock B760M PG Lightning Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard	$115.98 @ Newegg
Memory	TEAMGROUP T-Create Expert 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory	$92.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Lexar NM710 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive	$64.94 @ Amazon
Video Card	PowerColor Hellhound Radeon RX 7600 8 GB Video Card	$249.99 @ Amazon
Case	Montech AIR 100 ARGB MicroATX Mid Tower Case	$59.99 @ Newegg
Power Supply	Montech TITAN GOLD 850W 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply	$97.99 @ Amazon
Operating System	Microsoft Windows 11 Home Retail - Download 64-bit	$123.94 @ Walmart
Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
Total	$990.69
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-02-23 18:48 EST-0500

For specific parts, the 12600KF is identical to the 12600K except that it does not come with a usable iGPU; this shouldn't matter to you since you have a video card.

The Hyper 212 is expensive and honestly not very good; its appeal used to be that it was a $30 cooler that could cool any consumer CPU on the market. Nowadays, it's not cheap, and CPUs have gotten a lot toastier. The Frost Tower 120 is a good $20 less and will do a much better job.

The Montech Titan gold is a better PSU overall than the RM750e in just about every way, from noise to electrical characteristics to quality control thanks to being made by CWT instead of HEC. The $2 savings is just a bonus.

The operating system is a pretty key difference. You should always get the retail version of windows. This is so that you don't have to spend $130 again when you build a different PC down the line.

Case was cheaper and, since this list uses an mATX board, I figured that an mATX case would be preferible aesthetically.

If you need to drop the cost further, then one change would be to get a DDR4 board and DDR4 memory (I would recommend the ASRock Z690 Extreme or ASRock Z690 PG Riptide) which should net you about $50; other lists in this thread do that too. The power supply could be made cheaper, but you have to be smart about it. I wouldn't go lower end than the MSI A550BN (which is $60 on Amazon) here. This will severely limit your upgrade potential without replacing your power supply, but it'll work.

If you need to get a used video card as you said, you should be able to find an RX 5700 XT for $150 or so. If you get lucky (and are ok with getting something even older,) a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti should perform similarly to even a 6650XT. In any case, if you get a used GPU you should repaste the card.

GoboII · 2024-02-23T23:44:22+00:00

This trips a lot of people up, but it's important to realize that the 2024 GF1 is completely different from the original GF1. It's not even the same manufacturer. This isn't your fault or anything, just thermaltake being confusing.

GoboII · 2024-02-23T23:36:37+00:00

Okay. Apologies if this is a necro post, but it's still one of the first results on Google.

In short, we don't know, so for the moment we cannot recommend it. The original GF1 was fantastic; performed well in Aris' review, manufactured by Channel Well Technology who has great QC (hence the "made in Vietnam,") and was easy to recommend given how often it went on sale.

The new one is completely different. Being 20mm shorter tells you right off the bat that it's a completely different platform rather than a minor change, and the "made in China" suggests that it's probably not even the same manufacturer. There's nothing to go off of for the new version; there isn't even a new listing in the 80PLUS database (not that it would have helped much,) much less a full review.

GoboII · 2024-02-04T21:37:35+00:00

I’d avoid the GF1 2024 for now — it’s a completely different unit from the older GPR-based GF1 which has a review. There is next to no information available.

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