Interesting question. 😀 I've got a watt meter, I just haven't measured my current systems with it. Maybe a fun evening or weekend project. I'll post back when I've had time.

For my daily machines my 3770k machine with my single R9-290X is around total @ the wall AC side 170 - 200 watts idle and up to 550 - 675 when gaming. Bear in mind I'm running crazy overclocks on this system so that's most of it. +20% core speed & +36% memory speed on the 290X results in that one card alone drawing about 280 - 300 watts when I play games. And I'm considering adding a second one and loading it with a bios to clock it just as high.. need to buy a bigger power supply first though and re-arrange what's plugged in where in the house.... concerned about how much power I'm drawing from each circuit. X.X

On the other side my "chatting and web browsing" machine is just using a stock speed ivy bridge i3 chip no overclocks no video card.. onboard video, couple hard drives. Entire computer uses 27-35 watts @ the wall.

And my big file server in the other room uses constant 350 watts 24-7-365.

All my monitors are LED IPS displays that use 15 watts or less per panel, I have 3 on my 3770k and 2 on the chatting/browsing machine. I have a LG LED IPS display that uses just 12 watts on max brightness for a 27-incher.

kithylin wrote:

For my daily machines my 3770k machine with my single R9-290X is around total @ the wall AC side 170 - 200 watts idle and up to […]
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For my daily machines my 3770k machine with my single R9-290X is around total @ the wall AC side 170 - 200 watts idle and up to 550 - 675 when gaming. Bear in mind I'm running crazy overclocks on this system so that's most of it. +20% core speed & +36% memory speed on the 290X results in that one card alone drawing about 280 - 300 watts when I play games. And I'm considering adding a second one and loading it with a bios to clock it just as high.. need to buy a bigger power supply first though and re-arrange what's plugged in where in the house.... concerned about how much power I'm drawing from each circuit. X.X

On the other side my "chatting and web browsing" machine is just using a stock speed ivy bridge i3 chip no overclocks no video card.. onboard video, couple hard drives. Entire computer uses 27-35 watts @ the wall.

And my big file server in the other room uses constant 350 watts 24-7-365.

All my monitors are LED IPS displays that use 15 watts or less per panel, I have 3 on my 3770k and 2 on the chatting/browsing machine. I have a LG LED IPS display that uses just 12 watts on max brightness for a 27-incher.

That's a lot of power! 😳 😅
I can't imagine 600W and more gaming but I understand that nowdays things use a lot more power than in the past.

Athlon 1400/133, Radeon 9600.... 107W in idle... almost like the Barton.. the top of the Athlon heat. 😁

My main PC (Xeon E5-1650 V1 @ 4.3 GHz + GTX 1070, 1x HDD, 1x SSD) draws around 90W idle and 330 - 380 when gaming... depends on CPU load. Idle is rather high, that's the price for running X79 platform.

Home server (Celeron G550 + 4x HDD) is doing around 50W IIRC (always idle).

And something from my VGA benchmarking project (which is now suspended). Everything measured at wall socket / PC only /. Using Pentium E5700 @ 3.9 GHz, ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2, single SCSI 7200rpm HDD.

The 5800 Ultra impressive for its time.

I used to know the power requirements of my rigs and the rigs of a friend of mine from top of my head (we both measure power consumption at the wall).
Obviously PSU efficiency mattered a lot when taking these measurements.

I also bought one of these power measuring gizmos 😁

Haven't used it much, but I want to get a better idea of the power requirements of various systems.Need to find a good game or test to use as well. The only reading I have so far is from my Windows 98 graphics card benchmarking station, the reader tells me around 50W at idle and roughly double that in 3DMark 2000 first test.

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I also bought one of these power measuring gizmos 😁

Haven't used it much, but I want to get a better idea of the power requirements of various systems.Need to find a good game or test to use as well. The only reading I have so far is from my Windows 98 graphics card benchmarking station, the reader tells me around 50W at idle and roughly double that in 3DMark 2000 first test.

It was better before buying it, now it make me want to build a ultra-low power pc. Not to mention I begin to hate the fan noise... 😁

My P4 1.6A SL668 machine pulls 48.3w idle, 71.5w when running Cinebench R11.5's CPU test. Measured from PSU AC using my Kill-a-Watt.

Relevant specs are:

• 2x1GB Dell-branded DDR-400
• Biostar P4M80-M4 motherboard
• Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM HDP725025GLA380
• GeForce 6200A 128MB
• Seasonic SS-300ES 300w 80Plus Bronze
• WinXP Home
• No overclocking.

I need to get around to testing my other machines.

By the way, Athlon XP Mobile (Thoroughbred core) 1400+ @ 1200+/1Ghz, Radeon 9600 and 2GB ram... 66W at idle... too bad PowerNow! feature with linux can't run cause this mobo bios has some strange pst internal table.

SW-SSG wrote:

My P4 1.6A SL668 machine pulls 48.3w idle, 71.5w when running Cinebench R11.5's CPU test. Measured from PSU AC using my Kill-a-W […]
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My P4 1.6A SL668 machine pulls 48.3w idle, 71.5w when running Cinebench R11.5's CPU test. Measured from PSU AC using my Kill-a-Watt.

Relevant specs are:

• 2x1GB Dell-branded DDR-400
• Biostar P4M80-M4 motherboard
• Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM HDP725025GLA380
• GeForce 6200A 128MB
• Seasonic SS-300ES 300w 80Plus Bronze
• WinXP Home
• No overclocking.

I need to get around to testing my other machines.

Not bad!

Tetrium wrote:

I used to know the power requirements of my rigs and the rigs of a friend of mine from top of my head (we both measure power consumption at the wall).
Obviously PSU efficiency mattered a lot when taking these measurements.

This is something some folks may want to bear in mind. With a good power supply of at least 80% efficiency or above.. I forget the exact calculations but roughly you consider something like +20% AC side. Which means like my 3770k computer pulling 600 watts when gaming, that's the AC side and it's actually doing something like 450-500 DC side inside the computer. I don't have the little dongle to connect to my corsair unit in mine to read it with the software but that's pretty much how it works.

I was using a seasonic platinum unit in my 3770k, but it decided to go wishy-washy when I loaded it one day.. literally wouldn't switch my computer on, no earthly idea why. Swapped it out for a Corsair RM750 Gold that a friend of mine gave me on trade instead and been fine every since... and my seasonic platinum seems to work fine for other "test systems" in the house.. no idea why either. Power supplies are weird.

A while back before, my gaming rig I had for 2 and a half years was a 1200-watt-at-the-wall beast. It consisted of a pair of water cooled GTX-470's (with huge overclocks about +35% core & +44% ram), which were the main culprits.. almost 400 watts each. And then I had 8 x 15,500 rpm scsi SAS hard drives in it too, and an i7-980x CPU @ 4.6 ghz @ 1.55v water cooled.

So it may seem like my 3770k system uses "a lot of power" @ 650 watts gaming.. but compared to what I had before this system now overall is roughly +3x to +3.5x faster in performance in every aspect vs my x58 system, and uses about -600 watts less power. Main savings came from switching to a pair of samsung Pro 850 series SSD's in raid-0 that replaced the whole sas array I used to run. +3x faster and tons less power.

kithylin wrote:

This is something some folks may want to bear in mind. With a good power supply of at least 80% efficiency or above.. I forget t […]
Show full quote

Tetrium wrote:

I used to know the power requirements of my rigs and the rigs of a friend of mine from top of my head (we both measure power consumption at the wall).
Obviously PSU efficiency mattered a lot when taking these measurements.

This is something some folks may want to bear in mind. With a good power supply of at least 80% efficiency or above.. I forget the exact calculations but roughly you consider something like +20% AC side. Which means like my 3770k computer pulling 600 watts when gaming, that's the AC side and it's actually doing something like 450-500 DC side inside the computer. I don't have the little dongle to connect to my corsair unit in mine to read it with the software but that's pretty much how it works.

I was using a seasonic platinum unit in my 3770k, but it decided to go wishy-washy when I loaded it one day.. literally wouldn't switch my computer on, no earthly idea why. Swapped it out for a Corsair RM750 Gold that a friend of mine gave me on trade instead and been fine every since... and my seasonic platinum seems to work fine for other "test systems" in the house.. no idea why either. Power supplies are weird.

A while back before, my gaming rig I had for 2 and a half years was a 1200-watt-at-the-wall beast. It consisted of a pair of water cooled GTX-470's (with huge overclocks about +35% core & +44% ram), which were the main culprits.. almost 400 watts each. And then I had 8 x 15,500 rpm scsi SAS hard drives in it too, and an i7-980x CPU @ 4.6 ghz @ 1.55v water cooled.

So it may seem like my 3770k system uses "a lot of power" @ 650 watts gaming.. but compared to what I had before this system now overall is roughly +3x to +3.5x faster in performance in every aspect vs my x58 system, and uses about -600 watts less power. Main savings came from switching to a pair of samsung Pro 850 series SSD's in raid-0 that replaced the whole sas array I used to run. +3x faster and tons less power.

Interesting! I never built anything that high level so I always choosed low middle end psu. Actually I've a cheap Corsair VS650 for newer builds and a Enermax EG365 old type for retro builds. The Enermax is great inside with many good components but I don't know about its efficiency.

386SX wrote:

Interesting! I never built anything that high level so I always choosed low middle end psu. Actually I've a cheap Corsair VS650 for newer builds and a Enermax EG365 old type for retro builds. The Enermax is great inside with many good components but I don't know about its efficiency.

You learn something new every day! 😀

I don't think it matters much if your rig is under 200W or so when measuring from the wall. Even my Phenom II never seemed to consume that much, but that's also because I stick to mid-range graphics (and I'm not using Seasonic or another absolutely top-brand PSU, I've always gone for the next best thing like FSP) and I'm more of a "playable framerates" guy and don't even have any HD displays here. I actually tend to disable all the extra stuff like smoke because to me that's just an extra annoyance I don't want to have to deal with 😜

386SX wrote:

Interesting! I never built anything that high level so I always choosed low middle end psu. Actually I've a cheap Corsair VS650 for newer builds and a Enermax EG365 old type for retro builds. The Enermax is great inside with many good components but I don't know about its efficiency.

Pretty much if it's an older unit that doesn't even list efficency.. it's probably 60% or worse. Older units didn't even list efficiency ratings at all. And then they started the "80 plus" series where everything listed "80 plus certified" of 80% or more. And then later we got in to today's new "multi-tier" system of bronze (80% minimum), silver(81% - 84%), gold(85% - 89%), platinum(90% minimum) and titanium(usually 94% or better). The main thing about efficiency is the crappier ones that were below / before 80-plus generally can't handle their rated maximum load. Or if they did handle what they were rated for they'd dump 60% of it into the room as waste power.

I remember about 4 years ago now when I had that huge dual-470 beast daily that Originally I was using a Silverstone Strider ST1200, a 1200-watt unit but it was only "80 plus certified" and actually did worse than that @ 100% load and it caused the entire system to draw some 1600 - 1700 watts AC side at the wall. It was terrible. Then later I switched the entire thing for a Seasonic 1200 watt platinum unit and it dropped the AC @ wall side draw down from 1600-1700 down to 1200 watts just by changing the power supply, without changing anything else inside or any settings.

So depending on your application.. these newer platinum and gold units are really a godsend. Maybe not for your "average" computers that are down at the 150 - 200 watt range already, but for some of us that are like pushing huge overclocks and lots of hardware in a system they make a huge difference.

Some of the new titanium power supplies can actually handle something in the 1000 - 1200 watt range almost completely passively with no fan, or if they do use the fan usually like 600-800 rpm's really low. They're sort of amazing tech these days.. suuuuuper expensive though.

kithylin wrote:

Pretty much if it's an older unit that doesn't even list efficency.. it's probably 60% or worse. Older units didn't even list ef […]
Show full quote

386SX wrote:

Interesting! I never built anything that high level so I always choosed low middle end psu. Actually I've a cheap Corsair VS650 for newer builds and a Enermax EG365 old type for retro builds. The Enermax is great inside with many good components but I don't know about its efficiency.

Pretty much if it's an older unit that doesn't even list efficency.. it's probably 60% or worse. Older units didn't even list efficiency ratings at all. And then they started the "80 plus" series where everything listed "80 plus certified" of 80% or more. And then later we got in to today's new "multi-tier" system of bronze (80% minimum), silver(81% - 84%), gold(85% - 89%), platinum(90% minimum) and titanium(usually 94% or better). The main thing about efficiency is the crappier ones that were below / before 80-plus generally can't handle their rated maximum load. Or if they did handle what they were rated for they'd dump 60% of it into the room as waste power.

I remember about 4 years ago now when I had that huge dual-470 beast daily that Originally I was using a Silverstone Strider ST1200, a 1200-watt unit but it was only "80 plus certified" and actually did worse than that @ 100% load and it caused the entire system to draw some 1600 - 1700 watts AC side at the wall. It was terrible. Then later I switched the entire thing for a Seasonic 1200 watt platinum unit and it dropped the AC @ wall side draw down from 1600-1700 down to 1200 watts just by changing the power supply, without changing anything else inside or any settings.

So depending on your application.. these newer platinum and gold units are really a godsend. Maybe not for your "average" computers that are down at the 150 - 200 watt range already, but for some of us that are like pushing huge overclocks and lots of hardware in a system they make a huge difference.

Some of the new titanium power supplies can actually handle something in the 1000 - 1200 watt range almost completely passively with no fan, or if they do use the fan usually like 600-800 rpm's really low. They're sort of amazing tech these days.. suuuuuper expensive though.

Thanks for the answer. Lately I read some great review of those psu expert site and it's great to see that the component I usually wouldn't spend a lot on it, it's actually the most important. This Corsar VS650 is the lowest end but maybe a bit better of the various nobrand or light psu you find cheap. But next time I'll buy probably an EVGA one.
By the way 1600W at the plug .. oh well... gonna check the eletric watt limit of the whole house if I build a similar config.. 😁

Tetrium wrote:

386SX wrote:

Interesting! I never built anything that high level so I always choosed low middle end psu. Actually I've a cheap Corsair VS650 for newer builds and a Enermax EG365 old type for retro builds. The Enermax is great inside with many good components but I don't know about its efficiency.

You learn something new every day! 😀

I don't think it matters much if your rig is under 200W or so when measuring from the wall. Even my Phenom II never seemed to consume that much, but that's also because I stick to mid-range graphics (and I'm not using Seasonic or another absolutely top-brand PSU, I've always gone for the next best thing like FSP) and I'm more of a "playable framerates" guy and don't even have any HD displays here. I actually tend to disable all the extra stuff like smoke because to me that's just an extra annoyance I don't want to have to deal with 😜

I usually buy too the cheap version of a good quality psu. What do you think about FSP psu?

By the way... Sempron dual 1,45Ghz, Radeon R5 with on demand power load: 22W in idle oh yeah. 😁