When is PSU at its max load?

[oboyco]

Was reading this in another forum. I would have to guess it would be at the first press of the power button when everything is powering up, fans starting, hdds spining up, etc.

However the psu would be relatively cooler than after runing a while, affecting load capacity, and I'm not sure of the load of the gpu at startup. As usual I'm sure there are a number of factors involved.

 

[dandragonrage]

I suppose it would be the split second after you turn it on, as empty capacitors have a damn low resistance (you can consider them a short) that goes up (less current) after they're charged. But even most not-so-good PSUs don't mind this too much as it's for a VERY short period of time. So for all intents and purposes, I'd say while gaming or doing something similarly stressful (video editing/encoding, etc)