Emigrating to Canada next year, PC advice needed.

[Fimbulvetr3822]

Good evening,

Assuming that I am issued with a visa I will be emigrating to Canada in the latter half of next year from England. I was originally planning on just building a new gaming rig when I got there, however my current rig is suffering from some overheating problems and a pair of functional but aging GT560s and I would like to upgrade these to something better. However i cannot justify spending £1k+ on a pair of cards that I may only use for a year. So my new plan is to upgrade the cards and cooling in the next 3 months and ship my existing rig over with me when I go. My question is would I need to upgrade/ modify the power supply or would a standard adapter work?

Thank you in advance for your time.

Cheers,

Fim

 

[SnowyGamester]

It depends entirely on the cards you go for and what your current PSU specs actually are. Also I don't quite know what you mean when you say 'a standard adapter'. That being said, I can imagine you needing a cooling upgrade but I'm getting by fine with a single 560 so I don't see you really needing an upgrade unless you're actually having hardware problems.

 

[Supernova1138]

I think he is referring to the electrical outlet differences between Europe and North America. Most modern Power Supplies have an active PFC, which will automatically change to accept either 220v or 110v depending on the outlet it is plugged into. Older power supplies have a red switch on the back that you have to flip to the appropriate voltage. Unless you have a very, very crappy PSU that has no Active PFC and no red switch (yes some of them exist), you should be okay with just using an adapter to plug the computer into a North American outle.t

I would say just look at upgrading your cooling, try to get better airflow into your case with more fans to alleviate your overheating problems, also blow the dust out of your system, it can build up and make your heatsinks much less effective. If none of that works, and overheating problems persist, then maybe you shouldn't bother with SLI and invest in a better single card solution instead. Running multiple GPUs does generate more heat, and if your case doesn't have good airflow, you can run into overheating issues.

 

[SnowyGamester]

Oh of course I can't believe I missed that. I was more thinking about having to change it because of upgrading to more power-hungry video cards (which should also be taken into account). But yeah, it will either have a switch on the back of the PSU or say it's compatible with a range of voltages in which case you can use 'a standard adaptor' or simply replace the entire cable since those adaptors are annoying and most every PSU uses the same cable so you can get the right one for any outlet for just a few bucks.

 

[Fimbulvetr3822]

Good afternoon,

Thank you both for your advice and it looks like i got the answer i was hoping for. The problems with cooling are card specific unfortunately, most versions of the GTX580(typo in original post) can be modified for better cooling somewhat, but the version i got has a sealed plastic sheath surrounding it that cannot be removed meaning that now, with neither card running any serious applications they are hovering around 45c with the fans on each one working at around 70% . Playing anything even moderately graphically intense will push both up to 95c-97c with fans at 100%. Case airflow is fine and I clean the innards of the system every month to keep dust build up down. The good news is that i can now totally justify getting a water cooled Titan before Rome 2 launches

Thank you for your help,

Fim