Best power supplies for triple GTX 260 SLI

[prospex]

I’m going to do a bit of an older build with 3x GTX 260’s and was wondering what power supply (that’s in and around the age of the GTX 260) would be good for three way SLI. I also don’t really have a budget as I’m looking to spend around $500 on this build as sort of a display piece, I already have the motherboard and RAM, as well as CPU.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Drivers don't even support that anymore

[Cave Yeti Supreme]

Depends on the rest of the system. Napkin math says you could probably squeak out a top tier quality 650W if you're only doing a low end Core 2 Quad and a sparse system overall, but if you're throwing down with a Skull Trail dual socket system overclocked, you're gonna wanna go beefcake on the PSU, like 750W plus.

One thing to consider is that SLI isn't super efficient in terms of GPU utilization, so I imagine you won't actually be maxing out the TBP on each card, if you're even going to touch the third one, but you still want the capacity in the PSU for edge cases like power viruses. If they're OG 260's vs Core 216's that'll also impact the requirements.

[Monk]

Old drivers will.

Best bet is make sure you have enough power connectors, beyond that an 650 should cover you.

[prospex]

ANACHRONiSM님이 먼저 게시:

Depends on the rest of the system. Napkin math says you could probably squeak out a top tier quality 650W if you're only doing a low end Core 2 Quad and a sparse system overall, but if you're throwing down with a Skull Trail dual socket system overclocked, you're gonna wanna go beefcake on the PSU, like 750W plus.

One thing to consider is that SLI isn't super efficient in terms of GPU utilization, so I imagine you won't actually be maxing out the TBP on each card, if you're even going to touch the third one, but you still want the capacity in the PSU for edge cases like power viruses. If they're OG 260's vs Core 216's that'll also impact the requirements.

I'm looking to get the OG 260's and I'm just gonna use a core 2 quad q6600 that's OC'd but I might just get something like an 850w PSU for headroom and in case I wanna upgrade to dual socket.

[prospex]

Also, can you mix and match different 260's, like different brands (for example, 1 EVGA, 1 ASUS, and one Point of View or something like that).

[_I_]

just make sure that all 3 support 3way sli (2x sli connectors on all gpus, the gpus with 1x sli connector are only for 2way)

the psu will need 2x pci-e connectors for each gpu, 6x total
each gpu is about 200w, + about 200-300w for the rest of the sytem = 800-900w psu

but 3way sli on those is not recomended, as a 1050 would be better than all 3 combined
https://gpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Nvidia-GTX-260-vs-Nvidia-GTX-1050/3160vs3650

not only is the 1050 about 4x as powerful, its uses much lesss power, and costs less than the cost of a psu required for 3way sli
and many games do not support sli

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Anything older then GTX 550/650 isn't even supported any longer. You'd have to be on an OS like Win7 to even use drivers old enough for gtx 260

[Cave Yeti Supreme]

He said it's a show piece... This is like telling Chip Foose "don't put 20's on a Hudson and bring it to SEMA, just buy a Charger and slap DUB's on it"

[Monk]

ANACHRONiSM님이 먼저 게시:

He said it's a show piece... This is like telling Chip Foose "don't put 20's on a Hudson and bring it to SEMA, just buy a Charger and slap DUB's on it"

Got to agree with this, plus, the 260 wasn't that power hungry and some variants may only need 1 connector.

Regarding if the cards need to be the same or not, its going back away, but I am pretty sure you'll want match g cards to get it to work, as its a showpiece, the fact that sli scales horrendously beyond 2 cards won't be an issue, so, why not go for 4 cards?
Also, why 260's and not 280's? Chances are they cost about the same, though, there's a much higher chance they will need extra power, so, will likely need a beefier psu, not for the Watts, but, as only 1000w psu' s tend to have enough connectors to run 6 or 8 pcie connectors.

[alegiro]

GTX260 has DX tooooo old, and you will not able to play almost 90% of the game newer than year 2015-2016, and with the year 2012-2014 you will have very bad chances.... I have 2 of them... Lying in their boxes since years.
You will waste your time. Buy at least a 3x GTX460, with the updated DX10

[prospex]

Monk님이 먼저 게시:

ANACHRONiSM님이 먼저 게시:

He said it's a show piece... This is like telling Chip Foose "don't put 20's on a Hudson and bring it to SEMA, just buy a Charger and slap DUB's on it"

Got to agree with this, plus, the 260 wasn't that power hungry and some variants may only need 1 connector.

Regarding if the cards need to be the same or not, its going back away, but I am pretty sure you'll want match g cards to get it to work, as its a showpiece, the fact that sli scales horrendously beyond 2 cards won't be an issue, so, why not go for 4 cards?
Also, why 260's and not 280's? Chances are they cost about the same, though, there's a much higher chance they will need extra power, so, will likely need a beefier psu, not for the Watts, but, as only 1000w psu' s tend to have enough connectors to run 6 or 8 pcie connectors.

I’m going with 260’s as I’ve found a couple in my area (two matching EVGA ones) that are up for cheap, I’ll have to source a third one somewhere else.

[prospex]

alegiro님이 먼저 게시:

GTX260 has DX tooooo old, and you will not able to play almost 90% of the game newer than year 2015-2016, and with the year 2012-2014 you will have very bad chances.... I have 2 of them... Lying in their boxes since years.
You will waste your time. Buy at least a 3x GTX460, with the updated DX10

I’m not really looking to play any modern games, mostly ones from the era as this is more of a show piece.

[Bad 💀 Motha]

Radeon 9550님이 먼저 게시:

Monk님이 먼저 게시:

Got to agree with this, plus, the 260 wasn't that power hungry and some variants may only need 1 connector.

Regarding if the cards need to be the same or not, its going back away, but I am pretty sure you'll want match g cards to get it to work, as its a showpiece, the fact that sli scales horrendously beyond 2 cards won't be an issue, so, why not go for 4 cards?
Also, why 260's and not 280's? Chances are they cost about the same, though, there's a much higher chance they will need extra power, so, will likely need a beefier psu, not for the Watts, but, as only 1000w psu' s tend to have enough connectors to run 6 or 8 pcie connectors.

I’m going with 260’s as I’ve found a couple in my area (two matching EVGA ones) that are up for cheap, I’ll have to source a third one somewhere else.

How cheap?
You can buy gtx 780 or 980 dirt cheap and sli 2 of those and actually be able to run modern games

[Monk]

Yeah, but it won't be as cool

[Monk]

Heh, seeing as I never sold my sli 980 rig this has me thinking of finding another one or two cards for the same purpose lol, though, that would probably need a new mobo...