Actual power consumption of mid-range PC

Jul 21, 2006 7 Replies
J

What power does a real-life average-to-middle modern PC system unit consume? I want to keep the power consumption down.



Don't know much about current AMD cpu's or the roadmaps but something I would tend to go for something at the "value" end of the market provided it's not a dead end in 6 months!



I would like a real-life figure rather than fill in a consumptio chart and make various assumptions.


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My existing PC is: Athlon 2100+ socket-A 1GB SDRAM air-cooled VIA mobo air-cooled graphics GeForce2 card few hard drives It consumes about 115W (under load it's a bit more).



It's 17 inch CRT uses about 65 to 70 W. Printers & scanners are extra.



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S

Obviously you need a bigger power supply ..... ;-)

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R

My existing PC: Athlon 64 X2 4400+ socket 939 2GB DDR SDRAM air-cooled Nvidia mobo fan-cooled graphics ATI X800GTO video card 3 hard drives 3 case fans DVD-RW DVD-ROM DSL Modem 8 port switch 19 inch LCD. 75W Speaker system

Total 216 watts +/-

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A

That power consumption figure seems impressively low.

No chance of an error anywhere?

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R

I guess there's always that possibility?

Here's some other reading. They are measured through a APC Back-ups XS 1500 UPS using their software.

Computer only 155 w

  • monitor 181 w
  • DSL Modem 190 w
  • Switch 198 w
  • Speakers 216 w

these reading are measured at idle, pretty much.

playing a video with sound cranked up 224 watts.

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R

Check out this article

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W

I checked it out. Wouldn't believe a thing these guys say. Showed charts with Intel speedstep running while the AMD cpu's CnQ was disabled. And then when they explained how it works they got that wrong. Their test indicated to me that it was still not working when they supposedly enabled it. probably because all they did was enable it in the bios and not the OS. Is most of their data correct? I sure wouldn't trust it.

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