Debunking Power Supply Myths
by Christoph Katzer on September 22, 2008 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Building Three Sample Systems
Okay, so far we have some basic power guidelines in place. Let's put these figures into practice and look at some actual system power requirements. We've selected components for three different systems, so let's examine how much power each one requires.
System 1:
Intel Core 2 Duo E4500, 4GB Memory, P35 chipset motherboard, ATI Radeon HD 3650, an optical drive, and one hard drive. Outside of perhaps the memory, this is representative of your modern entry-level computer system. At idle, this computer requires around 90W of power. Even when we put the pedal to the metal and put a full load on the graphics card, processor, and optical drive, we still have a total power consumption of only 140W.
System 2:
AMD Phenom X4 9850 BE, 4GB Memory, AMD 790X Chipset, ATI Radeon HD 3870X2, an optical drive, and two hard drives. Our midrange system roughly doubles our power requirements, and depending on the benchmark it will offer more than twice the performance of our entry-level machine. At idle with Cool & Quiet enabled, this system uses almost 168W of power, while it needs at most 341W when fully loaded.
System 3:
Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850, 4GB Memory, NVIDIA 780i Chipset, NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra SLI, an optical drive, and four hard drives. For our third example, we chose some of the most demanding products for testing. In particular, the 780i Chipset from NVIDIA has the highest power consumption of all chipsets we've tested so far, drawing a constant 69W. (There is of course some variation in power consumption even from chips of the same family, and the features and extra chips on each motherboard differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. Our particular 780i is an EVGA motherboard.) The idle power consumption for this setup is around 310W, and once we place of full load on everything power consumption increases to 544W.
Worth mention is that the second graphics card in an SLI/CrossFire setup never actually uses 100% of the theoretical maximum power consumption. We estimate power consumption based on the figures on page one, and the second GPU only runs at around 50% power at the desktop (i.e. half the idle power draw); adding a third GPU would result in an even lower load, since the third card is frequently underutilized. Likewise getting a full load on quad-core CPUs and multiple GPUs is not a typical scenario. It may be possible to draw slightly more power, but the above guidelines should suffice.
Do these numbers help clarify the situation? The first system has very low demands, and yet if we look at the PC market as a whole 90% of current shipping systems don't even provide the same level of hardware as system one. Even with that fact accepted, the question remains: what sort of power supply should you choose for such a system?
That's the next topic of discussion, and we want to show some simple ways to help you choose the correct power supply for your needs. For the moment will put aside other important factors like DC output stability, ripple and noise, and overall quality and focus on choosing an appropriate power supply. Key factors in this decision will be the efficiency curves and noise levels.
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Dancer - Thursday, October 22, 2009 - link
On the face of it, this article seems an excellent, well-researched contribution to a highly vexed question. I do have a concern, however: We know that the power output of a PSU drops as it ages. We also know that this drop depends partly on quality and partly due to random chance. If I'm buying a PSU to last 3, 5 or more years, will this seriously affect the capacity of the PSU I should buy for a given machine?internetrush - Saturday, June 6, 2009 - link
Ok, lets low ball it, im running 200w (average) per graphics card, about 50w cpu (core i7) and three hard drives.Lets see
200 x 2
+50 + 50 (motherboard chipset)
+30 Sound card
+10 cd drive
+20 (fans)
During a game, much less a stress test, im lowballing a 600w load on my PSU.
If i had an 800w PSU that would be 80% of its total output, which thereby increases its heat and decreases its life.
When you buy a 1000w PSU, not only are you ensuring that you will never watch your computer go up in smoke (had a friend do that to a 350w on an old P4) but you are also not having to replace it whenever you buy a new processor or add something to your system.
This article is good, however, on a tech website i would expect a bit more consideration for the higher end gamers and common sense.
Common sense says, if you are a higher end system user, you WILL expand said system!
For gods sake! Some cards today use up to 500w power (the 4890X2 and new 295 SuperCard).
As a gamer, id rather have a 2000W PSU that id never have to replace than a 400w that would FRY as soon as i threw on a new video card.
Christoph Katzer - Saturday, August 8, 2009 - link
Sorry for the late reply.You are probably right when you see it from the perspective of a high-end-hardcore-gamer... But do you know how small the percentage of people is who actually own a real high-end system?
JohnMD1022 - Sunday, March 15, 2009 - link
It would be nice if you could periodically update this with newer components.lopri - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 - link
BillyBuerger - Sunday, October 26, 2008 - link
Anyone have any info on that Thermaltake QFan 300? That thing looks great efficiency wise. Not normally a Thermaltake fan. And the fan controller looks like it sucks. Just keep it below 150W... Or fan swap.Christoph Katzer - Thursday, October 30, 2008 - link
I will have a review up soon!Cincybeck - Tuesday, September 30, 2008 - link
Couple of "knowitall" friends were trying to tell me I was going to need a larger power supply when I built my new system. Which in turned incited the Microcenter sales person saying oh yea you're probably going to need that too. I turned around said I estimated these parts to draw at most around 200, 250 watts, and I have a 500W Seasonic M12. Shut him up pretty quickly, but my friends were still pushing it the whole way home. So now if they ever bring it up again I can print this article and shove it in their face. Thanks =D0roo0roo - Sunday, September 28, 2008 - link
i like the graphs:)keep it up!
this is the info we need!
normally the psu market is just lousy because of the lack of any real information.
mark84 - Friday, September 26, 2008 - link
For those quoting that old link for the AtomicMPC graphics card power thread, the new/current one is being maintained here http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic...">http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic...