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Silly power requirements, an over hyped myth?

Sir Random said:
Can you try running 3DMark while the Orthos CPU test is running? It still won't use the sound card, but will give us a better idea of the max game consumption.
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OK, I will run Orthos at priority 1, this won't change power usage I dont think but will at least allow 3D Mark to run :D . Will post results soon.
 
Tom|Nbk said:
Yea but if you get an effieicent enough 450w or 500w then your spot on. If you got a totally efficient 700w it would last you forever :D , this does not mean any old 450w psu could run my setup, it would have to be fairly efficient.
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well the hiper you have can pull out 360w on thew 12v rails and 240w odd on the 5v and 3.3v rails,

at a guess id say your probably pulling around around 300w of that total 400 your meter read from the 12v rails and the rest probably from the 5v and 3.3v rails.

im guessing quad core cpus would deffo pull more power though but probably no more than another 30w or so.
 
Tom|Nbk said:
OK, I will run Orthos at priority 1, this won't change power usage I dont think but will at least allow 3D Mark to run :D . Will post results soon.
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can you run the ati tool cube spinning thingy, that does the most power woundage for the gfx card.
 
Cyber-Mav said:
can you run the ati tool cube spinning thingy, that does the most power woundage for the gfx card.
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Cant even run ATi tool atm just bsods as its not compatible, OK have redone the test this time I let Orthos stress in the background, both cores at 100%, this did not increase the power usage massively, the power usage this time peaked at 428w and once again this was in canyon flight and only stayed there for a few seconds, canyon flight seems to be the most intensive, on all other tests the power usage stayed aroud 410-420w. Once again pretty impressive. Will be trying other games to get a better idea. Either way I now know I have a nice Oc'ing headroom for the XT for when I decide to do so (Whenever ATi tool is compatible)
 
Excellent work Tom! :)

Correct me if Im wrong, Im assuming that you are measuring wattage drawn from the mains. So.... if you are drawing 400w whilst doing 3dMark06, with a reasonably efficient PSU with an efficiency rating of 75% at that load, does that mean that the system is actually drawing 300w?

Following from that, the PSU ratings that are specified in watts - this is actually the max watts delivered to the PC, not the actual watts drawn from the socket?
 
Great test Tom,

PSUs are very over hyped. Ive done a few tests at work over the last couple of months with decent'ish generic PSUs.

The other month at work, for a customer, I built the following...

Pentium 4D 3.0Ghz, 775
3Gb of 533 Ram DDR2
2x Asus 7600GT's in SLI (As customer was running 4 monitors)
Full size Asus Nforce MB
2x SATA Hard drives
1x DVD-RW Drive

All powered by a decent, but generic 300/350w ( I forget what the exact power rating was now)

The system was put on the bench for a full day a loaded with Orthos and 3DMark which is performed perfectly at.
All rails were within 10% of the ATX spec and I constantly monitored the heat coming from the PSU, which was just warm.

The Machine is running within a office now which is on almost 27/4.
 
While these tests are great, and show what power is really used - this doesn't mean we can all go out and get cheap lower powered PSUs. Q-Tecs were known to work fine for a while, then spontaneously die, sometimes taking hardware with it.

Also the closer you get to a PSU's maximum, the worse the ripple and voltage regulation becomes (not to mention efficiency). Best bet is to check out places like http://www.jonnyguru.com and http://www.hardocp.com who both test PSUs properly at various loads. Just check your projected load, and see how well the PSU does.

Ripple is arguably one of the most important values, because high ripple on the 3.3v rail kills memory, and high ripple on the 12v rail kills HDs.
 
Boogle said:
While these tests are great, and show what power is really used - this doesn't mean we can all go out and get cheap lower powered PSUs. Q-Tecs were known to work fine for a while, then spontaneously die, sometimes taking hardware with it.

Also the closer you get to a PSU's maximum, the worse the ripple and voltage regulation becomes (not to mention efficiency). Best bet is to check out places like http://www.jonnyguru.com and http://www.hardocp.com who both test PSUs properly at various loads. Just check your projected load, and see how well the PSU does.

Ripple is arguably one of the most important values, because high ripple on the 3.3v rail kills memory, and high ripple on the 12v rail kills HDs.
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Which is what we have all said above :confused: , obviously low efficiency 450w is pointless thats not what I set out to prove, I've showed that with a good efficient PSU theres no need for silly wattage PSU's. A Corsair 520w would be ideal in this situation and is some what cheaper than the Type R (I think?)
MikeHunt79 said:
I think this pretty much proves that 1kw PSU's are pretty pointless... They'll probably be bought by people who think that more watts = better PSU :)
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Spot on. a good efficient 750w-800w is more than enough ATM (SLI/Crossfire) and would last eons.
 
Tom|Nbk said:
Which is what we have all said above :confused: , obviously low efficiency 450w is pointless thats not what I set out to prove, I've showed that with a good efficient PSU theres no need for silly wattage PSU's. A Corsair 520w would be ideal in this situation and is some what cheaper than the Type R (I think?)
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Not disagreeing with you at all :) But usually when someone shows how much power a PC uses, some people wander out and get cheap low powered PSUs and then come and cry about it later.
 
Boogle said:
Not disagreeing with you at all :) But usually when someone shows how much power a PC uses, some people wander out and get cheap low powered PSUs and then come and cry about it later.
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Aye but im sure the majority of posters on here would have more sense than that :D .
 
Boogle said:
Not disagreeing with you at all :) But usually when someone shows how much power a PC uses, some people wander out and get cheap low powered PSUs and then come and cry about it later.
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Yup, not saying we should go and get cheap and nasty PSUs. But decent mid range power supplies which work perfectly.

Ive personally used Qtecs at work and they are without doubt one of the worst PSU I have used. Normally either the fans die after a few month of use, run stupidly hot or give up taking boards and HDs with them.
 
Good Job, nice to know ... i knew my 850W PSU was way to much but bought it anyway because it has a blue neon light shinning through which goes well with my Antec 900 and needed it to last a good number of years.

Let us know how you get on if you decide to do any more tests.
 
truebluecfc said:
Good Job, nice to know ... i knew my 850W PSU was way to much but bought it anyway because it has a blue neon light shinning through which goes well with my Antec 900 and needed it to last a good number of years.

Let us know how you get on if you decide to do any more tests.
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LOL, the Blue Neon made the deal ;) :D
 
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