Pc taking to much power ??

Balb0wa · 10 Feb 2010 at 08:55

Very odd this, ive got an energy meter, i like to look to see how many watts the pc takes.

Was fine yesterday 500-550 underload playing games. ( crossfire 5770 , 955@4ghz , 4 hard drives)

I check today, its like 1700 watts just idling, wtf is going on :rolleyes:

? lol, dodgy psu (Be Quiet 650 watt) ?

Energy meter is fine, tried it with other gadgets.

CreAtiv3 · 10 Feb 2010 at 09:05

That seems impossible, how can a 650 watt psu draw 1700 watts?

Dont mean this to sound denigrating but are you sure it was 1700 and not 170?
Was it just the psu plugged into this meter or one of those strips with several electronics plugged in?

What is the meter just out of interest?

Sildeh · 10 Feb 2010 at 09:06

CreAtiv3 said:
That seems impossible, how can a 650 watt psu draw 1700 watts?

Dont mean this to sound denigrating but are you sure it was 1700 and not 170?
Was it just the psu plugged into this meter or one of those strips with several electronics plugged in?

What is the meter just out of interest?

What Creative said, how can a 650w psu produce 1700w's?

gt_junkie · 10 Feb 2010 at 09:10

Agreed - that seems strange and very unlikely. :confused:

If you've got it plugged into a multi way adapter just check you don't have a storage heater plugged in as well!

gt

Balb0wa · 10 Feb 2010 at 10:54

well very odd, took the meter out for a while then tried it and its ok now.

Corasik · 10 Feb 2010 at 13:40

Sildeh said:
What Creative said, how can a 650w psu produce 1700w's?

It wont produce any watts on the AC side of things, and PSU's are not 100% efficient, so a PSU that is supplying 500W for example, is probably drawing over 600W measured from the AC socket.

That said it shouldnt be as bad as 1700W!

Are you sure you have the power meter measuring watts rather than VA, if the PSU's got active PFC, then watts and VA should be within 1% or so of each other.. However if the active PFC circuits were broken, or it was not an active PFC power supply, then you could expect to see a lot more VA than Watts. Typically a non active PFC power supply would have a power factor of around 0.6 (60%), and will draw considerably more VA than Watts.

Balb0wa · 10 Feb 2010 at 14:34

Corasik said:
Are you sure you have the power meter measuring watts rather than VA, if the PSU's got active PFC, then watts and VA should be within 1% or so of each other.. However if the active PFC circuits were broken, or it was not an active PFC power supply, then you could expect to see a lot more VA than Watts. Typically a non active PFC power supply would have a power factor of around 0.6 (60%), and will draw considerably more VA than Watts.

Yes it was on the watts setting, i kept cycling through the menu on it, never had it like that before, propper confused me and put me in panic mode ! lol

i left the meter out of the socket for a while , tried it again and it was ok.