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PC Power Supply - confused!

sps1013sps1013 Posts: 700
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in PC & Mac Hardware and Software #1
Hi all,

Just after an answer to satisfy confusion!

My son has asked for a gaming pc for Christmas and looking through the spec it states it has a 500W power supply. Now, I am not a scrooge but will this really be pulling 500W all the time and running up a huge electricity bill?

I am slightly concerned so just looking for some advice please.

Thanks.

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    Mr DosMr Dos Posts: 3,637
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    #2
    When the pc is in regular use eg YouTube, surfing etc it will only use about 50W or less. During gaming, the graphic card will have to work harder, so using more power. If the processor is given a hard task eg video encoding, it will use more power also. 500W is the max rating and includes some overhead. My guesstimate is that during the most intense gaming, the power consumption would still be a lot less than the max rating. I'm sure there's some gamers on this forum who have measured watts used, and could quote some more accurate numbers if you supply some hardware info.
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    SambdaSambda Posts: 6,210
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    #3
    sps1013 wrote: »
    Hi all,

    Just after an answer to satisfy confusion!

    My son has asked for a gaming pc for Christmas and looking through the spec it states it has a 500W power supply. Now, I am not a scrooge but will this really be pulling 500W all the time and running up a huge electricity bill?

    I am slightly concerned so just looking for some advice please.

    Thanks.

    500W is the max the supply will deliver, not the average or continuous draw.
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    PES 2009PES 2009 Posts: 1,146
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    #4
    A lot of it depends on the CPU and graphics card. A typical quad core CPU can use up 100w in idle.

    Ramp it up into full gaming with a pretty powerful graphics card and you could be looking at over 200w.
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    Mr DosMr Dos Posts: 3,637
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    #5
    PES 2009 wrote: »
    A typical quad core CPU can use up 100w in idle.

    Got to disagree. My i7-4770K says 84W TDP on the Intel sheet. Just measured it using Aida 64 and got 7W idle and 67W using Prime95. See pic

    http://s24.postimg.org/qrmcl0e5x/4770_K_watts.jpg
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    d'@ved'@ve Posts: 45,531
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    #6
    Mr Dos wrote: »
    Got to disagree. My i7-4770K says 84W TDP on the Intel sheet. Just measured it using Aida 64 and got 7W idle and 67W using Prime95. See pic

    http://s24.postimg.org/qrmcl0e5x/4770_K_watts.jpg

    Correct. My entire i7-4770K system (excluding separately powered twin monitors) is only using 46 watts right now as I type this, and there are a few background programs running too. BUT an AMD high end processor will use more, hang on while I power it up to find out...

    As another poster said, it's not often going to be drawing more than 200W even with a big graphics card and heavy gaming, and that won't be by much or for any great length of time.
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    Mr DosMr Dos Posts: 3,637
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    #7
    Just remembered - a coupla nights ago I had a big render job on, so I thought I'd take an electic meter reading before and after. My 6 * i7s (all at 100% but with no monitors) seemed to be using about 1KW between them (allowing for the fridge etc) . These 4th gen cpus run quite cool esp compared to the 1st gen eg i7-930 has TDP 130W !
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    d'@ved'@ve Posts: 45,531
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    #8
    Have just run some tests, the most I could hammer out of my i7-4770K system with 16GB memory was 130 watts at 100% (HD file rendering and an HD video playing as well). I use the CPU's internal graphics though. Idle is 40-45 watts in all.

    On the other hand, when I fired up my old but still working AMD which uses a fan-free moderately powerful HD video card and quad processor (AMD 965 BE) with 8GB memory, it drew 155 watts while powering up and 250 watts when rendering and playing HD video. A more powerful graphics card would likely push that up to the 300 watts area on full load.

    There is a similar margin at idle (AMD 90, Intel 45), so my more powerful Intel system draws around half the watts of the feebler AMD setup, Intel is the way to go for green minded folks.
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    PES 2009PES 2009 Posts: 1,146
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    #9
    Mr Dos wrote: »
    Got to disagree. My i7-4770K says 84W TDP on the Intel sheet. Just measured it using Aida 64 and got 7W idle and 67W using Prime95. See pic

    http://s24.postimg.org/qrmcl0e5x/4770_K_watts.jpg

    My system is an AMD and using my power meter gives me figures in the 100w region from when PC is switched on and in idle.

    Add a fairly capable graphics card to any quad core based unit and it will probably be over 100w even if you use it for youtube/surfing.
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    Smiley433Smiley433 Posts: 7,900
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    #10
    Apologies for taking the thread slightly off topic, but for those people running an i7-4770K, do you find the CPU runs quite hot when maxed out?

    I have a self-build i7-4770K and found that when the CPU was running flat out (performing BOINC tasks for example) the reported CPU temp was something like 94 deg C which prompted me into thinking I hadn't put the thermal paste on properly. However following some investigation it did seem that this particular model does run rather warm when compared with the rest of the range.

    Anyone else experience this?
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    d'@ved'@ve Posts: 45,531
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    #11
    Smiley433 wrote: »
    Apologies for taking the thread slightly off topic, but for those people running an i7-4770K, do you find the CPU runs quite hot when maxed out?

    I have a self-build i7-4770K and found that when the CPU was running flat out (performing BOINC tasks for example) the reported CPU temp was something like 94 deg C which prompted me into thinking I hadn't put the thermal paste on properly. However following some investigation it did seem that this particular model does run rather warm when compared with the rest of the range.

    Anyone else experience this?

    Me too, and I'd read about the possibility if using the stock cooler, so I bought a Coolermaster Hyper 212 EVO fan and it works a treat. Very quiet too. Coretemp reports a max of 64 deg C on 10 minute HD conversion jobs (100% CPU), though it might go a bit higher eventually I suppose.
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    MaxatoriaMaxatoria Posts: 17,980
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    #12
    With a PSU you should generally look for something that at about 2/3rds of its max rating will be able to handle everything you have installed, graphics cards usage is normally over estimated unless you're going for one of the mega overclocked ones as they don't know if you have one drive or 55 drives in the system so they generally thing 2 hard drives and probably a few optical ones
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