How much juice (Watts) does your PC use???

[peteamer]

mmm... So let's see.....
I have an Athlon 2400+XP (overclocked ~10%, overvolted by ~10%) on an asrock board. Externally watercooled CPU and GPU, 1X 120mm fan @5V, 1X 92mm fan @5V, DVD-RW and CD-RW, network card, USB 40GB storage HD, two PDA's charging/synching and sound card...
That calculator tells me I'm drawing 425W+...

Anyone, particularly the mushkin rep , care to explain why my,( over a year old ) 330W Seasonic doesn't ramp it's fan up and hasn't failed even though I Fold 24/7?.....

And as for the earlier advice on future proofing... has no-one noticed CPU power draw is actually on the DECREASE.....

 

[Deleted member 3]

http://www.extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine recommends me a 434Watt PSU

 

[AshenSugar]

i laugh at those caculaters, even a high end sli dosnt "need" more then a 350watt quility psu, my 300watt enermax thats as old as my k7s5a(got at same time) has run stuff that the caculater said needed d 550watt psu ROFL

quility vs crap is how i see it peteamer seasonic is a good unit, dont worrie, those caculaters are genrlized, a crappy 750watt is worse then a good 250watt (proven that myself a few times)

 

[trog100]

bit of a con this cpu power decrease thing thow..

i cant help but feel that sticking two slowed down cores ganged together and claimimg a peformance figure higher than what it really is cos most of the time one core sits there doing nothing.. somehow aint real..

the whole thing is based on the simple fact one core isnt working most of the time.. and the performance figures are just a guess so is the heat generation and power usage..

and the grfx card side of things is getting silly.. power usage aint going down there and thats a fact..

trog

 

[BillyBuerger]

bit of a con this cpu power decrease thing thow..

i cant help but feel that sticking two slowed down cores ganged together and claimimg a peformance figure higher than what it really is cos most of the time one core sits there doing nothing.. somehow aint real..

the whole thing is based on the simple fact one core isnt working most of the time.. and the performance figures are just a guess so is the heat generation and power usage..

and the grfx card side of things is getting silly.. power usage aint going down there and thats a fact..

trog

P4 Dual cores were two slower clocked chips slapped onto on CPU. AMD X2s and Intels Core CPUs are not. Look around at the hundreds of Core 2 Duo reviews for performance/power results that show them to be way better than previous CPUs. CPU power levels have pretty much hit the wall at around 100W. They're not going much higher than that.

Yes, GPUs are a mess. ATI and Nvidia will be shooting themselves in the foot if they actually release 200-300W GPUs.

 

[technicks]

300w

 

[Tatty_Two]

Much of this seems to be speculation and guesswork, so if I may for a moment, just comment on facts that I KNOW because i have had the kit and tested it, there was a similar thread to this about 6 months ago that led me to actually test, (well I got a more knowledgable electronics friend to do it for me!) and that is:

I had an Antec SP2 500W with dual 12V rails now in this particular PSU for my 500W on the 12V rails I got 18Amp on the one and 19A on the other, incidentally this PSU blew and fried my motherboard and graphics card with it after just 3 months, why you may ask, well I had a x1800XT that at stock 2D speeds was drawing 8.2Amp (FACT) and on full load at 740/900 @ 1.5V it was drawing 13.8A (again FACT), all off the one rail, add to this 2HDD's, 2 opticles, a PCI card, a floppy, 5 case fans etc etc and its fairly clear to see that there was not enough power there, now in part that could be down to the dual rail setup as the CPU in the main was drawing off the other rail and I probably had like 12A of headroom there so in my case even though my system was drawing much less than 500W it blew! Point here is that things are not always as clear cut as they seem.

Most lower powered PSU's (but not all) tend to be single rail, so the problem I had would not occur which gives you more headroom but it has been shown fairly convincingly that Kets comments are accurate in as much as every system should have 25% headroom for the simple reason that you only need to be playing say Oblivion and in my case drawing 13.8A and then in the game step out into open landscape and trees and because of the increased rendering that 13.8 rockets for a few seconds to say 15.5A and without a overhead, over prolonged gameplay.......BANG. Apart from that, the other argument is that if your PSU is regularily loaded above 75% then its not gonna last too long, my thoughts only of course.

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Well... the 650W Q-tech someone gave me was awful so I went back to my Ebuyer 350W and it all runs stable! Guessing that PSU probably can't handle more than 250W in reality so my consumption must be less than 300W including monitor (unless that Ebuyer is the real deal).

 

[Sasqui]

We had a cubical "squeeze" at work and when we moved back in, a breaker kept tripping (I was on it). Turned out there were two Dells with dual XEON processors drawing a LOT of power - they were previously on a different circuit.

The electrician actually measuered the load at the outlet - each box was drawing over 700Watts !!! I specifically asked if he meant both, or each - he clearly said "each".

The cure of course was splitting one 20 amp circuit into 2. My guess is that both the PSU's are horribly ineffient, and the boxes drawing a heavy load.

 

[AshenSugar]

any psu can die tat the good ones just tend not to take anything else with them

for a good psu that wont break the bank check out the epower 500/550 watt units, 20+20 on 12v rails.

it stronly depends on the psu quility if your gonna get rated amps out of it(amps are more important then rated watts) many psu makers use cheats like masuing the wattage/ampege at say 30below zero, stupid but true.

antec is normaly a good brand but at times they have used some so/so OEM's to get there psu's its sad when a company with d good rep desides to cut corners and trade on that rep to sell crap to users.......

 

[psychomage343]

280 watts according to that link on the first page. not bad, it's about 380 with 2 lcd's running and 400 with the speaker system. whatever mom pays the electric bill lol

 

[Demos_sav]

According to http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp I am using 252W but since I might buy a new graphics card(X1900XT) I will be using 333W

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Well now I've measured it that calculator estimates that I need 344W (peak usage)... my PSU is only a 350W eBuyer one, so I'm impressed if that calculation is right because my PC seems 100% stable.

 

[Moose1309]

They've definitely made the "extreme" PSU calculator better... the last time I checked, it told me I needed some ridiculous amount, and this time it recommends 315 W (my system draws 250W AC while gaming). Then again, it doesn't seem to be registering my CPU - "overclocked CPU wattage" says 0

Anyway, it is true that the wattage rating means almost nothing - quality is far more important. It's hilarious how people buy 700W PSU's for systems that will never draw more than 250W.

I do think ATI and nVidia will release 200+W videocards in the next gen, but the gen after that, power consumption will again be a priority. That was what rumors stated anyhow.

 

[Jimmy 2004]

Then again, it doesn't seem to be registering my CPU - "overclocked CPU wattage" says 0

That happened to me with firefox, I think you need to be using IE for it to work.

 

[peteamer]

I think you need to be using IE for it to work.

How Draconian .....

 

[trog100]

"650W Q-tech someone gave me"

he he he he he..

its amazing they can still get away with selling em.. they are good for about 250 watts max i think..

trog

 

[Beomagi]

Tells me i'm using 519 on my pentium D box - ouch!

wonder how well this will do for winter

 

[Jimmy 2004]

"650W Q-tech someone gave me"

he he he he he..

its amazing they can still get away with selling em.. they are good for about 250 watts max i think..

trog

It made the most annoying buzzing noise known to man every time I went 3D...