System power draw

Boozebeard · 24 Aug 2010 at 23:45

What do I need enable to test how much power my system is drawing and is it expensive?

lord filbuster · 25 Aug 2010 at 00:42

You can buy yourself a socket energy meter, they are about a tenner or so.

Tealc · 25 Aug 2010 at 09:14

I bought one and it's enabled me to reduce my idle power consumption by 60 Watts. So it'll pay for itself in about 3 months. It also shows that my system draws 150 Watts less than those PSU estimators say at full load.

pastymuncher · 25 Aug 2010 at 09:18

PSU estimators show recommended psu wattage not power draw. How have you managed to save 60w at idle? My main pc only pulls 118w at idle and my second pc only 72w.

raralis · 25 Aug 2010 at 09:26

Hope this helps a bit.

Link

Tealc · 25 Aug 2010 at 09:36

pastymuncher said:
PSU estimators show recommended psu wattage not power draw. How have you managed to save 60w at idle? My main pc only pulls 118w at idle and my second pc only 72w.

I downclock my HD 4890 while idle and also downclock my motherboard (and also CPU, RAM etc) while idle. I could have done it without the meter but it's nice to see the changes in real time.

Old idle usage = 215W
New idle usgae = 155W

Still stable too which is nice.

I could drop it a further 30W-40W or so by removing the overclock completely.