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PSU questions....
- Thread starter Kendrak
- Start date
I would say it would depend on the gpu that goes in and the OC you plan on. Your old asus dually is currently pulling 440 from the wall, thats dual 95w cpu's + a 460.
Personally i would get something bigger, 500w or there abouts, so that the psu runs at its most efficent, saving you more in the long run - or is this a must do at minimum up front cost build?
Also consider that if you overload the psu and it goes pop it could take something else with it
If I had that hardware I'd go for it. Then again in the last 3 months I've killed 2 450W PSUs trying to run GPUs with i7s at 1.4V. On died while gaming on the 8600GT and the other died after several weeks running with a GTX 460 and GPU 3. Both PSUs died under load but everything else survived. Make sure you are using a very low power GPU, less than 1.4V on the CPU and aren't running to many fans off the PSU.
Assuming you aren't running a GPU, that PSU is fine. I have one that has been running a 950 for a few weeks now with no issues. Unless you get crazy with the voltages, I can't imagine it pulling over 250W actual, 310 or so from the wall with an 80+ PSU. That is well under the 380W rating, and that PSU is a good quality unit.
This made me wonder...... Suppose your PSU is roughly 90% efficient, and you know you're pulling 440W from the wall (via Kil-A-Watt), does that mean that your PC is using roughly 400W?
No, it's fine.
I usually trust this guy when it comes to PSUs
Yeh, Zero isn't bashful when it comes to sharing an opinion. That said, it is normaly a well informed one.
All the rig will be is 3x1gb sticks, a random hdd, mobo, CPU, and a wimpy lil vid card to let me plug a monitor in. Besides the HSF, no other fans because it will be sitting naked in the rack.
More "D" to come
Yeah it does, scary thought isn't it.
Here's the question I always wonder.
When a PSU is advertised as having a 380W capacity, is that determined at the wall or inside the PSU?
From what i have read on the reviews here on the site its what the PSU can give to the various bits and pieces that determines the capacity.
- Joined
- Apr 25, 2001
- Messages
- 15,725
That PSU will be just fine. I run my wife's rig with a Corsair 400CX. The cpu is folding away as well as the gpu. Check out the details in my sig.
Yes. The real question is whether or not the Kill-A-Watt is giving you accurate readings. The answer to that is usually no.
The PSU's rating is the amount of DC power it can output to the hardware connected to it.
how do you figure that...
Because Kill-A-Watt meters are not very good.
lol.. and how do you figure that...
What do you use instead that makes you believe this...
I don't have an expensive accurate power meter. However, that doesn't change the fact that cheap Kill-A-Watt-esque power meters have poor accuracy and are not capable of measuring fast changes in load. They have a very low sampling rate and basically measure current based on the voltage drop across a component with known resistance. However, they are usually not calibrated very well, and they don't compensate for changes in resistance due to temperature and other similar factors like that. But if you don't believe me, feel free to look at the kind of equipment that good PSU reviewers use.
^ +1
I have and use kill-o watt elcheapo meters... quite handy to have around...
its numbers match my cyberpower ups so either they are both equally off or whatever... but I would love to see the difference... and I wonder how much better the ~ $100 kill o watt meter that connects to a pc is...
anyhow... for another time/ another thread...
Yes, your Cyberpower meter is equally inaccurate as the Kill-A-Watt. Anyway, I'm not continuing this discussion any further. It's been beaten to death on this forum and elsewhere. If you need proof, it's available on the internet with a bit of searching. If you're that interested, you should have no trouble finding it for yourself.
Looks like Kill-a-watts are accurate to within 3% of a Valhalla Scientific 2101 Digital Power Analyzer
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2695
http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2695
First of all, that guy is testing with non-PFC PSUs and with resistive loads. Secondly, read the rest of the thread. Thirdly, different Kill-A-Watt samples are not accurate compared to each other, let alone compared to a good power meter. Oklahoma Wolf has two Kill-A-Watts that gave him different readings when measuring the power draw of a 60W light bulb.
In some cases, Kill-A-Watts can be relatively accurate. However, in many cases, they are not accurate, and the only way to know how accurate they are is to test with a good power meter, which defeats the purpose of using the K-A-W in the first place.
I see a lot of anecdotal arguments, but only the OP has any measurements. I don't have any reason to distrust the OP and trust the rest of the thread.
I was confused by that post since the picture appears to show 229W, not 289W
The load tester is displaying 229W. The power meter is the green box on top of the line conditioner, next to the variac.
I'll take your word for it
My hex system pulls 280 with a gtx460 on idle. So less than 300 is a good bet. Does depend on how crazy your getting with the volts however.
There are chips on digikey (etc) which are basically a power meter with a very low resistance.
The resistance is not much more than a "bit of wire" and they have the other components to output a voltage dependent on the current passing.
they are very cheap to buy and quite accurate. i think the low sampling rate and not very accurate 8 or 10 bit sampling (with not much attention paid to noise) what causes inaccuracies. cheap ADCs are pretty crap, especially the ones built in to micro controllers(like whats in a kill a watt)
If you dont have a video card of any consequence, and 1 drive you will probably be fine. chipset might use 40 while the cpu is maxed. and besides power supply inefficiency the VRMs on the motherboard are wasting some power too.
The resistance is not much more than a "bit of wire" and they have the other components to output a voltage dependent on the current passing.
they are very cheap to buy and quite accurate. i think the low sampling rate and not very accurate 8 or 10 bit sampling (with not much attention paid to noise) what causes inaccuracies. cheap ADCs are pretty crap, especially the ones built in to micro controllers(like whats in a kill a watt)
If you dont have a video card of any consequence, and 1 drive you will probably be fine. chipset might use 40 while the cpu is maxed. and besides power supply inefficiency the VRMs on the motherboard are wasting some power too.
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True. I know it isn't totally accurate, but it helps to get a ball park figure. It's a least good to use to find out if you are pushing your PSU too hard or not.
Exactly. Cheap power meters are useful for getting a rough idea of your power consumption, as long as you keep in mind that you are not getting super-precise readings.
and fun to double check that the rating is what it can deliver not wall pull...
had my ocz 500 powering an overclocked athlon x4 an 3 ati 4850s
benching it would pull ~565w from the wall... or >450w from the psu...
depending on where on the efficiency curve it fell...