As usual everyone vastly over estimates needed power. Running a 4x5870 rig and a Kill-a-watt monitor I measured my rig to pull about 900Watts from the wall on a gold standard PSU, which means about 785Watts to the system.
So any quality 800 - 850Watt PSU will do you fine, just make sure you get something with either a single rail, or rails that can handle the amperage you draw for the GPUs.
1kW PSU is a good choice for 4x5870 mining rig. 800W pulling from PSU, but for 24/7 duty you need some reserve. Due to capacitor aging you need 20% reserve for 1+year life span with 24/7 utilization.
http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp