NVIDIA Linux SLI Primer
The next hardware area for SLI coverage is the power supply, which becomes quite demanding when it comes to power consumption and stability. As far as NVIDIA's official power recommendations go, they highly suggest if you're running a GeForce 6600 series SLI system that you have a minimum of 350-420W while supplying +12V @ 20A, 6800 series needs 420-480W with 25A on the +12V rail, and finally the 7800GTX or 6800 Ultra requires at least 500-550W and 30A for its +12V line. Of course, depending upon the number of hard drives and other components the power requirements can change vastly and it is important to have two PCI Express peripheral power connectors. For those who don't have PCI Express peripheral connectors, adapters are available; however, they require two dedicated 4-pin molex connectors. When NVIDIA engineers are under consideration for testing a particular component, the testing strategy is much the same as that for the add-in card and motherboard testing - diagnostics, benchmarking, and the burn-in process. At the time of writing, there are 24 certified power supplies from 12 manufacturers.
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For our NVIDIA construction guide, we have the SinTek 500 SLI. The 500W power supply features an innovative modular cabling design, +12V @ 34A, Active PFC, dual fan control knob design, temperature LCD display, and voltage knobs. Looking at the SinTek 500 SLI. and also the 600 SLI, it sports a wealth of useful features from allowing an easy modular setup to manually adjusting the PCI Express and memory voltages from the twist of a dial. However, the SinTek SLI PSU units aren't presently certified at this moment in time. Due to the superior performance from the unit in our labs, we have no fears suspecting SLI Ready certification. On the other hand, the SinTek PSU's are going through the ATI CrossFire certification compatibility process.
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Bundled with the 500W SinTek PSU was the instruction manual, mounting screws, US power cable, and a wealth of modular cables. At the rear of the power supply, providing exhaust support is an 80mm exhaust fan along with a fan speed adjustable knob for controlling the fan speed not only for the exhaust fan but also for the 120mm intake fan located on the lower portion of the unit. In addition to a small section of grating on both sides of the power supply, to provide some moderate airflow, is a small LCD panel on one side of the PSU. This small LCD display is designed to show the temperature of the PSU innards. The next area of noteworthy interest with the SinTek 500 SLI is the voltage adjustment knobs for the memory and PCI Express. Both of these knobs allow the voltages to be increased or decreased by an estimated 5%. Finally, onto the modular cabling, there are six connections available for additional connectors with outputs for two PCI Express, two SATA, and two peripheral connections. The motherboard connection on the SinTek PSUs is ATX/BTX compatible as well as supporting 20/24-pins. Designed for a 500W continuous wattage, the peak wattage is 658W while the 600W model has peak wattage of 708W. In our testing for this unit, with two GeForce 6600GT PCI Express cards in SLI, we found admirably impressive results under idle and load for the +3.33V, +5.00V, and +12.00V rails. Other SLI-certified power supplies we've sampled recently have been the Enermax EG565P-VE and Hiper Type-R 580W as well as the Seasonic S12 600W and Ultra X-Finity 500W.