PSU Torture Tuning with the Thermaltake DPS App

I was doing some testing for a review the other night and decided to test a theory.  The theory is that you need a 1000w PSU to run dual GTX 780Ti cards in SLI.  If you ask anyone in the industry they will say the PSU requirements for running a single GTX 780 Ti is 600w and that the card will pull around 250w.  Adding a second card would put the total around 850w.. 

When sizing for a PSU (and there are some "bad" calculators out there to help you with this) your goal is to find your power target (max power) and then take 80% of that.  The result is used to find a PSU in that range with the idea that by staying below 80% of the total power draw you will get the most efficient PSU operation   (The basis for 80Plus Certification)

As some of you know Thermaltake offers a fully digital PSU, the Toughpower DPS.  These are 90Plus Gold rated power supplies and range in wattages between 650 and 1200w.  I was testing the 850w version and decided to mess around with the Smart DPS App Software and see if I could overload the PSU.

The System as it was Tested
The system is an EVGA X99 Classified running a Core i7 5960X @ 4.0Ghz with 16GB of DDR4 ram.  128GB Micron SSD and HP DVD Burner.  The processor is being cooled by a dual fan AIO watercooler and I have Two GTX 780Ti graphics cards running in SLI.  One is a reference design while the other is the famed GTX 780 Ti Classified.  My power supply is the Thermaltake Toughpower DSP G 850w.

After playing Borderlands 2 at 2560x1600 with high settings I discovered the following.

Yes you are reading that correctly, the whole system was only pulling 600w?!?  Efficiency during this run was 91% and the PSU topped out at 39c using the silent fan profile.  Needless to say I’m rather impressed since 600w is just below 80% of 850w. 

Stay tuned for more torture tuning using the Thermaltake DPS App