Hey everyone, I purchased a e-GeForce 8800 GTS Card ... SSC Edition. Anyway, one of the "requirements" that it states on the box is a 400 watt power supply with a minimum of 26 Amps on th e+ 12 Volt Rail. Quite honestly, I am not sure what this means. I purchased this power supply, thinking it would be enough... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... ( OCZ GameXStream OCZ700GXSSLI 700W ATX12V SLI ) But if you look at the images on Neweggs, website... all the 12v rails say "18A". Does this mean this power supply, although its 700 watts can only handle 18 amps or are the 18 cumulative so its actually 72 Amps for all 12v's??? Sorry, Kinda new at this. Thanks!

The reason the PSU you linked is reduced and with a rebate is because the multi-rail style has fallen out of favor. The reason is the Graphics card/s are the most power hungry hardware that needs +12v. By dividing the Amps into multiple rails you can end up not having enough Amps on any one rail to power a hungry card. I attempted to determine the actual amperage draw of that series card and couldn't find anything more than what you posted. That figure of 26A of +12V is for everything that uses 12V. All the drives run on 12V for instance. If you want to keep that PSU I would GUESS that 18A is more than enough to power ONLY the graphics card/s You probably have TWO leads with connectors dedicated to graphics cards. The other two rails will have CPU power connectors, Molex power connectors for drives, SATA drive connectors, etc.

so youre saying this power supply might work for what Im trying to do after all? If not, would you recommend this power supply instead: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... I guess im still a little confused on how to read the "rails"

To clarify, you can't combine the Amps from TWO rails to feed ONE device. What that means in your case is this. If the graphics card needs more than 18A then it can't get it from that PSU. If all the +12V cam from one rail you would have 72A like you added up. That is why manufacturer's are going back to the single rail design. In theory the multi-rail design is good. As long as each rail has enough Amps to feed whatever is connected. You can conceivably connect all the drives to one rail and leave one without any job. Without seeing the leads on the one you bought I would guess there are TWO rails dedicated to Graphics cards (SLI is two cards as is Crossfire). Then one rail is to feed the CPU directly. That leaves one rail to power all the rest of the +12V hardware. This is probably OK.

Do the math for the +12V rails & you'll see that the total is NOT cummulative. If you remember the formula for wattage (watts = volts x amps), 12V x 72A = 864W. Obviously that exceeds the total capacity of the unit, so the claim of four +12v rails at 18A each is a bit misleading. If you look at the label on the PSU & you'll see the max combined wattage on the +12V is actually 680W. That PSU *should* be OK, provided you manually balance the load across the +12V rails when you connect your devices. You don't want one or two rails heavily loaded & the rest being unused. http://www.pcpower.com/technology/m... "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

Nightshadow The PSU linked below would have been a better choice. It is $69.99 with promo code and rebate. Free shipping too. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...