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BS PSU calculator?

T

TechBoy

2[H]4U
Joined
Oct 1, 2006
Messages
2,529
Me and my friend have been fighting about how much power his computer draws. I have been trying to save him money by fing telling him his doesnt draw more than 400watts.

He told me he used this one from Asus and it came out to 700watts. I am sitting here saying WTF.

For ref his system includes:
Pentium D 930 stock @ 3.0GHZ
Asus P5Q Motherboard
2 sticks of DDR2 stock @ DDR800 speeds
3 HDDs
1x 8800GT 512MB.

Does anyone else see something wrong with this system pulling anywhere close to 700 watts? I know damn sure mine uses about 520 watts.
 
Yours' doesn't use anywhere near 700w, let alone 520w. I've run the following off a 610w PC P&C power supply:
Asus Maximus Formula
Q6600 overclocked to 3.6ghz on a Koolance Exos
4 sticks of DDR2 800
22 hard drives
HD4850
8 case fans
 
OP, the rig you've referenced would probably run fine on an Antec Earthwatts 380w. Absolute bare minimum, methinks, but it would work.
 
Blue Fox said:
Missing 2 sticks of RAM in the pic, but you get the idea (actually 23 drives if you count the optical): http://stfcc.org/bluefox/permanent/DSC00683.JPG
Click to expand...

Thats [H] :cool: I've gotta ask, whats the total capacity? Are they mostly raid-5 volumes?

anyways, yeah, 700W is excessive, but hey don't take my word for it go get a watt meter and see for yourself. My guess is that that thing is pulling down maybe... 260W at full load. You could run that system on a 300W without breaking a sweat.
 
MrWizard6600 said:
Thats [H] :cool: I've gotta ask, whats the total capacity? Are they mostly raid-5 volumes?

anyways, yeah, 700W is excessive, but hey don't take my word for it go get a watt meter and see for yourself. My guess is that that thing is pulling down maybe... 260W at full load. You could run that system on a 300W without breaking a sweat.
Click to expand...
Total capacity is a bit under 17TB. The 12 x 1TB drives at the bottom are in RAID 5, while the 10 on top aren't in RAID. I actually just sold most of the 8 x 500GB drives (the last 2 are for my OS) so that I can replace them with more 1TB drives. Once I hit 16 drive in one RAID 5 volume, I'll switch over to RAID 6.
 
Thats what I am thinking his shouldnt even use that much. But apparently that Asus Power calculator tells him 700.
 
Asus's calculator is a little high but it is because they use the peak power draw for each component you select. Probably trying to be on the safe side. My system below was reccomended for a 950 Watt PS. I would say a Good 800 Watt would be fine and right now I am runing it on a 580 watt but I know I am pushing my luck on this Hiper Unit.
 
TechBoy said:
Thats what I am thinking his shouldnt even use that much. But apparently that Asus Power calculator tells him 700.
Click to expand...

I would say maybe 225W tops. Certainly no more than 250W or so, but it's actually probably closer to 200W under full load.
 
i've been using this calculator for a while and it's fairly accurate. keep in mind that it doesn't display amperage requirement unless you download their paid software.

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

from what you listed plus adding an optical drive, the calculator produced 322 watts. this is at 100% cpu load and 100% system load.
 
Here's a list of psu calculators that are accurate:
 
Bbq said:
Here's a list of psu calculators that are accurate:
Click to expand...

comedians aren't we. there's a difference between the term "accurate" and "fairly accurate".

anyhow if you have a better way (software or hardware that is user friendly) that can be used to determine psu power requirement prior to assembling your system, please do post it. it would be much more helpful than sarcastic one liners. i would like to know as well so i can use that for my needs.
 
I just use Corsair's PSU finder. Then I use it to guesstimate the amperage/wattage range I need. Kind of accurate but useful.

So for example, with my build, the finder recommends the 450VX and 550VX. So I know that my rig needs a PSU with at least 33A on the +12V rail but 41A is preferred.
 
Blue Fox said:
Yours' doesn't use anywhere near 700w, let alone 520w. I've run the following off a 610w PC P&C power supply:
Asus Maximus Formula
Q6600 overclocked to 3.6ghz on a Koolance Exos
4 sticks of DDR2 800
22 hard drives
HD4850
8 case fans
Click to expand...


Man thats some fukin insane shit you got there.....2nd most insane thing I've seen besides a laptop do 5GHZ as my 1st isane thing ever!

The heat from those hard drives got to be serzly alot, right?

Also, why on earth would you want to have so much hard drives for in a standard desktop pc? NTP server, File upload server, Torrent server, file server, game server??? Wat is it?
I'm curious to know!

Also, just asking, is that case a Voodoo case?:D
 
Matthew Kane said:
Man thats some fukin insane shit you got there.....2nd most insane thing I've seen besides a laptop do 5GHZ as my 1st isane thing ever!

The heat from those hard drives got to be serzly alot, right?

Also, why on earth would you want to have so much hard drives for in a standard desktop pc? NTP server, File upload server, Torrent server, file server, game server??? Wat is it?
I'm curious to know!

Also, just asking, is that case a Voodoo case?:D
Click to expand...
Heat isn't all that much. 5 x 80mm and 4 x 120mm fans in there (not counting the radiator). As for uses, well, that's not my desktop pc. I just moved my desktop board in there for quakecon (normally have an Intel board with an E2180 in there). It does a bit of everything. It is mainly a file server, but I use it for video capture as well. I even have a nice slide scanner hooked up to it (single image = 50mb). My internet connection isn't sufficient for anything but local things, so I don't use it for internet related things. The case is a Lian-Li V2100B Plus II. Voodoo uses Lian-Li cases for their systems afaik.
 
But serzly why on earth would have that much hard drives. Even for video editing you it won;t take that much hard drive space! But serzly.......that is one of the most insane thing I have ever seen!

I could store about all the games in the world on that thing.
 
Raw HD video takes up a lot of space. If you think I have a lot, I can think of a few people on this forum that have more than me. :p
 
FlyinBrian said:
Asus's calculator is a little high but it is because they use the peak power draw for each component you select. Probably trying to be on the safe side. My system below was reccomended for a 950 Watt PS. I would say a Good 800 Watt would be fine and right now I am runing it on a 580 watt but I know I am pushing my luck on this Hiper Unit.
Click to expand...

Ahem... they gouged my current spec as needing 750W, it's BS, full power draw on an a top notch system with a 4870X2 might need that....
In short this Asus calc sucks and can only mean they expect you to buy a generic PSU or they just want people to waste power and money,,,,
 
Matthew Kane said:
Still fuking insane...but I see no use of spending that much money on a mere server!
Click to expand...

Well many of those servers that I linked to are also doing double duty as ripping/encoding/transcoding/recording rigs in addition to file serving duties. In addition, all of those servers use enterprise grade hardware for better uptime and reliability. Many of those guys can't stand downtime or troublesome consumer grade parts. So they're willing to pay the extra cash for assurance of better quality, support, reliability, and performance.

But yes for most people, their servers are complete overkill. But damn, I want to build one of their servers for myself :) But with consumer grade parts since I rather spend more money on hard drives :D
 
It's all a matter of needs...some people don't give a second though to dropping $1500 on 3 GTX280s. I bought a RAID card for $1000 instead. At the same time, I know people that have paid more for their desktop from Voodoo than I did for all the bits and pieces in my server.
 
Well, the 3 people listed by Danny Bui all bought the same one as me (odditory bought 2 actually). I got a good deal on it too! Was really about $950 shipped and they retail for ~$1200. At least it holds its value unlike pretty much any other piece of hardware. :p
 
altcon said:
Ahem... they gouged my current spec as needing 750W, it's BS, full power draw on an a top notch system with a 4870X2 might need that....
Click to expand...

Hah, not even. You could run a top-end quad system with a 4870X2 off a fucking 450VX and it wouldn't die. The extra wattage is just for piece of mind. There's so much BS marketing around PSUs these days, it's hard to believe.

And I'm serious about the 450VX, by the way. Do the math yourself. The [H]'s test system with a single 4870X2 drew 468W from the wall under load. Factoring in 80-82% efficiency (which is actually slightly optimistic since the load is past the PSU's sweet spot - figure about 78-80% efficiency realistically, so the actual DC load will be slightly less), you get approximately 374-384W maximum DC load.
 
Zero82z said:
Hah, not even. You could run a top-end quad system with a 4870X2 off a fucking 450VX and it wouldn't die. The extra wattage is just for piece of mind. There's so much BS marketing around PSUs these days, it's hard to believe.

And I'm serious about the 450VX, by the way. Do the math yourself. The [H]'s test system with a single 4870X2 drew 468W from the wall under load. Factoring in 80-82% efficiency (which is actually slightly optimistic since the load is past the PSU's sweet spot - figure about 78-80% efficiency realistically, so the actual DC load will be slightly less), you get approximately 374-384W maximum DC load.
Click to expand...

That load is being sampled at an exceptionally slow poling rate so don't take those numbers for the god's honest peak values ;)
 
Paul_Johnson said:
That load is being sampled at an exceptionally slow poling rate so don't take those numbers for the god's honest peak values ;)
Click to expand...

Nah, I just use them as guidelines. Going by those numbers I technically could recommend a 380W Earthwatts unit for that system, but it wouldn't be a very good idea ;).

(Also, I personally wouldn't run a 4870X2 off a 450VX. I'm just saying it's possible ;).)
 
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