My c2d power consumption

[needsnumbers]

As reported by the P3 "Kill-a-watt" device, the surge of startup is 340va (that's volt amps, not watts) <- edit and then 270 during startup and a normal resting 250 as I'm writing this. Games I haven't tested but assuming the efficiency of the video card I'd bet it doesn't get over 340va.
The specs; ASUS P5B-E 1.01g, E6300 at 2.8GHz (400MHz fsb) air cooled and at stock voltage, Corsair 2x512MB PC6400 @ 1:1 ratio, eVGA 7600GT slight oc, 2x Seagate 250GB 7200.10's in Intel Matrix raid0/0 array, WD 250GB, and a NEC dvd burner.
All this powered by a Fortron FSP group AX400-PN
Rock solid and soon to be water cooled for silence. FSB will be moved to ~450MHz when I figure a cost effective solution to cooling the northbridge.
I just thought I'd share that information with those looking at power supplies.
I have a friends mini-atx AMD 3600+ X2 that's running on a 300w Fortron PSU but that is using on-board video, not oc'd and only 1 hard drive.
I think some people are spending too much on PSU's that they are never going to need. Do your research and get a higher quality lower wattage PSU and be happy you spent less and got more! Just because a unit is rated at 600 watts doesn't mean it's a clean 600, let alone a clean 300. Notice my system is oc'd and it's running on a 400 for months Imagine what the requirements would be non-oc'd. I'm guessing 40-50watts cooler (remember video card also oc'd). That's around 200 watts doing normal computer use. Now gaming is a whole nother story. I might reply to this thread if I do further testing.

 

[romeozor]

well said, but most people here get hyped by brands floating around in topics, and prefer to go the safe route and buy a bigger psu instead. probably they dont mind the money, i would.

 

[needsnumbers]

I just edited my above post, re-read it to get the REAL truth about power consumption. Convert from VA to Watts is a power factor in the range of .55 and .65 . So take the VA and multiply it by the factor of .6 and you get approximatly what I'm showing in my total watts load.

Just wanted to tell everybody that my 400watt FSP is cranking away with 2 more hard drives (4 total now), 2 more sticks of ram for 3GB total running at 2.1v, and the real upgrade... an MSI 8800GT 512MB. My new kill-a-watt readings are idle/crysis (peak in crysis) 142/230 watts. I tried intel's thermal monitor tool which has a load base and I ran it with the CS:S video stress test with everything max and wasn't about to tip over 230 total system watts. That's registered at the AC input side, not the DC output. A ruff estimate is that my system is using 190 watts DC tops and that's rounding up! I doubt anybody really understand their system power consumption needs anymore. My 2 added hard drives are seagate 7200.10 single platter 250GB drives which consume so little power it's not even funny. The c2d is overclocked by 50% and running on stock voltage. The chipset is stable at 500MHz FSB and I'm only running it at 400, etc. The list goes on and on. If anything we should have seen a move to more efficient and lower or equal power output. SLI = a decent PSU needed but anything other and it's a complete waste. A 400w good brand PSU will outlast a 800w no name so where should you put your money? Did nobody learn from the bigger isn't always better with Intel's P4 through D era?

 

[Arcygenical]

Yep, couldn't agree more. Even with 8800GTX SLI systems, a GOOD 600w (corsair comes to mind) can be overkill.

 

[Mithent]

Buying a cheap high-wattage PSU is very likely to be a bad investment compared to a higher-quality unit that theoretically puts out less power. However, just because a system can run without using more power than your PSU can provide doesn't mean that there's no reason to get a larger PSU, provided it's decent quality - apart from giving more room for the future, it does mean that the PSU will be under less stress, and therefore probably run cooler and quieter, at greater efficiency (peak generally being somewhere around 50%) and possibly providing cleaner power. That's not to say that ridiculous overkill is sensible either, mind; very few people have a good reason to have 1kW+ PSUs.

 

[needsnumbers]

Buying a cheap high-wattage PSU is very likely to be a bad investment compared to a higher-quality unit that theoretically puts out less power. However, just because a system can run without using more power than your PSU can provide doesn't mean that there's no reason to get a larger PSU, provided it's decent quality - apart from giving more room for the future, it does mean that the PSU will be under less stress, and therefore probably run cooler and quieter, at greater efficiency (peak generally being somewhere around 50%) and possibly providing cleaner power. That's not to say that ridiculous overkill is sensible either, mind; very few people have a good reason to have 1kW+ PSUs.

Well my reply to my own post was to show that my lowly 400w psu WAS ready for my future upgrades! Mostly because technology is going greener and greener by the day. It's not to say power consumption is dropping necessarily BUT I would say that it has on average gone down, not up like the PSU companies would have us all believe.
I would be willing to bet big bucks that over half of the people on HardForum here have PSU's that wouldn't even trip the 50% load mark... EVER (future included).
Seriously, I see guys with sig's advertising they're using some expensive 600+watt PSU when they list a single graphics card solution. I also love how so many of us have been, and still are being sucked into buying bloated motherboards. I mean really... I've got 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives, 4 sticks of ram, an 8800GT and all on the budget ASUS P5B-E board that I picked up open box for 50% when it was NEW. How many people bought the P5B Deluxe and have more than 1 hard drive, HA, it's really sad. I've always been a bang for the buck kind of guy and I like to help others put their money where it should be spent. Companies look out for themselves, I look out for me, and I've got an education and wisdom to save a lot of people some real big bucks if they'd only listen more often.
Having been building and Overclocking since the days of the Turbo button and DOS, I can only hope more listen to me for their sake. Don't buy what you're told to buy from the person selling it to you. Buy what you need and be realistic about your "future upgrades".
Right now the Antec 380w PSU on newegg seems to be the best deal, then come mostly FSP (Forton Group) units.
As for efficiency, that's not really the case to keep it at 50%. Yes, it's usually the sweet spot for higher wattage PSU's but on lower output that works to your favor. Example, idle/low load you'll have a higher efficiency with a 400w PSU because you'll be running it closer to it's sweet spot as apposed to a 800w which wants 400w. Having looked at a bunch of PSU efficiency charts you're better at 80% load than you are at 20%, so again, seems like a lower wattage PSU makes for a cheaper energy bill unless you plan games in SLI with GTX video cards and quad cores overclocked... if not, stick to the 380-500w units, you'll be happy you did because it means you can afford a name brand.

 

[[Spectre]]

Problem is you are still using a Kill-A-Watt so you don't know your peak power draw.

 

[needsnumbers]

Problem is you are still using a Kill-A-Watt so you don't know your peak power draw.

You're right. I don't, but I do know this, almost everything out there these days is rather "soft" on. Rarely do you have a hard spike in powering on any computer component other than the PSU itself. Video cards do not turn off with 3d acceleration when the computer turns on so it's been rather hard for me to believe that a kill-a-watt is a "poor" tool for picking a PSU. It's a great tool for the price.
Peak load are interesting to study but when you look at everything made today, you can't help but see the size of the capacitors. There is enough energy stored in "good" designed hardware these days to not really be worried about a 150% spike in power. Even if that happens, the PSU's that are rated for 400w can usually supply the spike current needed to keep up. At least in the high quality units that I use like FSP and Antec. I can't speak for all of them but that's just how things are built these days.

 

[[Spectre]]

Video cards do not turn off with 3d acceleration when the computer turns on so it's been rather hard for me to believe that a kill-a-watt is a "poor" tool for picking a PSU. It's a great tool for the price.

That is because you haven't used a real power meter or known what your real DC load is. When I used to usea Kill-a-watt and I would trigger the transeint load for the 12v rails the kill-a-watt COMPLETELY missed the additional ~117w load. That is pretty bad. Not to mention that with a number of APFC units a kill-a-watt will read BELOW the actual DC output when measuring the AC input resulting in it telling you that you have greater than 100% efficiency.

BTW that power supply is only ~62% efficient at that load step not 101.8% like the Kill-a-watt says.

Peak load are interesting to study but when you look at everything made today, you can't help but see the size of the capacitors. There is enough energy stored in "good" designed hardware these days to not really be worried about a 150% spike in power. Even if that happens, the PSU's that are rated for 400w can usually supply the spike current needed to keep up. At least in the high quality units that I use like FSP and Antec. I can't speak for all of them but that's just how things are built these days.

I have many dead power supplies that say otherwise, and generally I don't test crap.