AMD Phenom II 965 X4 BE
MSI 890GXM-G65
2x2Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR3-1600
Swiftech H2O-220 Compact
Asus HD4890 Top
Thermalright HR-03 GT
2x74Gb WD Raptor RAID0
Optiarc 24x DVD+/-RW
Cooler Master HAF 932 AMD Edition
With the S.P.T. status monitor indicators you will only want to mount the Toughpower power supply in a standard ATX style tower case with intake fan facing down so that the LEDs are visible. I found the cables to be of sufficient length even in a bottom mount location and reaching to the top of a full tower case. As with most braided mesh wrap cables they are somewhat stiff and sometimes difficult to route and connect. Also the 6+2-pin PCI-E connector does not firmly latch together, so when an 8-pin PCI-E cable is needed you have to manually hold the two ends together while inserting into the video card. The 4+4-pin +12V CPU connector does snap together and it would be nice if the PCI-E connectors had that same feature.
I graphed the system power usage as a percentage of capacity in order to show where the idle and load requirements fell. As you can see, the 155W needed at system idle represents only 20% of the total power supply capacity, while the 430W draw is around 55% at full load. How much the power supply is loaded is important to take into account when sizing a unit for your system, since both efficiency and operation are affected. The 80 Plus Bronze certification requires a power supply to be 82%/85%/82% efficient at 20%/50%/100% load, so in this system the 775W XT is actually functioning best when loaded. Note also that the cooling fan speed and noise begin to increase significantly above 50% load, so you will probably want to keep power requirements below roughly 75%-80% of capacity.
The OCCT Power Supply stress test was used to load the system. As indicated above a 155W/430W idle/load usage was observed utilizing a Kill-A-Watt power meter. Voltage readings were taken from the back of the connector using a Fluke digital multimeter and are shown on the graph above. As you can see there was almost no variation from idle to load readings, only the +3.3V and +12V differed by 0.01V while the +5V remained constant. Although OCCT could not log the voltage readings from the 890GX motherboard, fluctuation was limited to just +/- 0.01V as noted from manual observation.
Let's wrap things up with some final thoughts and conclusion.
