Do I need a second PSU?

[Vodkanakas]

I have a Cooler master 1200watt silent gold and I want to run a 3rd r9 290. As far as watts I pull ~720 with 2 so I figure less then 1000watts with the third. Now I read somewhere that at max load the gigabyte run 31A. The 12v rail is rated at 96A. So do I need a second psu just to run the 3rd one? Or will this pay work for 3?

[bryan]

@Vodkanakas I'm running 3x 290s + a 280 on 1x 1000 watt evga then the motherboard and another 290 is running a 600 watt.

So I would assume that a 1200 could run 3 + the motherboard as long as you didn't have a bunch of other components like hard drives on it.

Though I'm not an electrician or anything. Please don't burn your house down. If the system randomly crashes and gets way too hot check every wire on the psu for damage before using it again.

[Vodkanakas]

@bryan well that gives me hope.

[bryan]

@Vodkanakas Good luck. Though just to be safe if you had any other pcs around you could salvage a 350 watt PSU and use it for just the one card. On one of my GTX rigs I have one 350 PSU per card. Free is free.

[chrisscott666]

you will be fine. i have 1000 watt power supply running the computer and hard drive plus 3 gtx 1080 cards, i tried 4 and it ran for 20 min the just shut down, so worst case scenario it just freezes and crashes, I'm getting another power supply to run the 4th but 3 is cool