Unused PSU Voltage

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Just wondering, if you have for example a 1000W power supply, but your system components only require about 500, what happens? Does the remaining just stay there and not suck out extra electricity?

In what cases would you even eed a 1000W power supply? dual screen displays for SLI cards?

thanks
 
Only the power which is needed will be used, so you typically wouldn't use any more power with a 1200W PSU than with a 500W PSU, if for example your system draws 400W. :)

A 1000W PSU is only necessary these days with 3 or 4 top tier NVIDIA GPU's or 2 or 3 top tier AMD GPU's.

Higher wattage PSU's may be slightly less efficient than lower wattage PSU's when a small amount of power is being drawn however, but this is usually negligible.
 
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