Need for MORE power(or not?)

Yo all,

in the quest of "how big PS do I need" I have found out quite a few things, but I´m not sure if I am any closer to my goal´...

CPU: AMD Athlon XP series(1500-2000) requires 55-63 watts of power typical and 60-70 watts max, depending on model. Those figures are for standard voltage(1,75v). O/C to 1.85v is about 4-7 watts more, assuming that the current stays the same.

Hard disk(s): A 7200 rpm ATA/100 disk requires 12-14 watts of power during read/write/seek. 7-8 watts during idle. During start-up: 20-30 watts.

CD/CD-RW/DVD: 12-17 watts max, almost nothing at idle.

Motherboard/Video card: This is where it start to be real hard. The only reference I found here were documents about AMD´s 760 north/southbridge components. They consume about 6 watts toghether, which leads me to wonder why most manufacturers choose to use a fan for cooling. Is it a sales trick or is the fan really useful?
Unfortunatley I couldn´t find any tech info about the video chips themselves, but if we compare the cooling on the average video card with the cooling of most northbridge chips, it would seem that a video CPU would produce about the same heat as the northbridge chip. Say 200% more to be sure - 15 watts.
I haven´t checked out memory modules/chips yet.

Sound/Network/TV/RAID etc: No heatsinks, no fans, no heat=low power consumption. Can´t tell how much though, 1-2 watts per card?

Sources: Tech PDF files from AMD, Quantum, Maxtor, IBM, Seagate, Aopen, Plextor.
If anyone knows for sure about this, or where I can find the missing numbers, please tell me.

Summary

• CPU(75w)+MB /w memory+FanHS+2 HDD+DVD+CD/RW+Video+Sound+RAID+3 case fans=about 220w maximum.

O/C or not makes as far as I can tell almost no difference, from a power point of view.


CONCLUSION

If these figures are even near the truth, an ordinary 300W PS(assuming it delivers true 300W) would be enough for almost everybody, not including dual-AMD systems. 400 or even 500 watt PS seem to be a huge overkill.


best of regards,
Henry.

Henry Rollins II said:

CONCLUSION

If these figures are even near the truth, an ordinary 300W PS(assuming it delivers true 300W) would be enough for almost everybody, not including dual-AMD systems. 400 or even 500 watt PS seem to be a huge overkill.

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Agreed.
I run a Sparkle 350W with a RAID, all my IDE channels full, some SCSI drives, many fans and much more.

250W is enough for most systems.

You do omit to detail any differences between the PSU demands of bi-phase, 3-phase and quad-phase power regulation circuitries and the size of capacitation.

Please do detail your recommendations based on these three readily marketed power solutions on Socket A and P4 systems.

bi-phase = MSI KT266A board RU with USB 2.0
3-phase = Iwill KK266Plus R
quad-phase = EPoX 8K7A+

wild_andy_c said:

You do omit to detail any differences between the PSU demands of bi-phase, 3-phase and quad-phase power regulation circuitries and the size of capacitation.

Please do detail your recommendations based on these three readily marketed power solutions on Socket A and P4 systems.

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Are you stoned?

regards,
Henry.

Henry, this is just what I was looking for. Helps out a ton.

Cbone

Henry Rollins II said:

Are you stoned?

regards,
Henry.

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Our crazy_uk_guy is very knowledgeable and would probably be right even if he was stoned.
In this case I am not exactly sure what he is talking about, somehing about the power requirements of different motherboards. If he gets a chance he will explain.

Happy Gilmore Avatar. Not bad. Wild_andy knows his stuff, plus he lives in the same town as me!!!

Well, maybe wild_andy could speak for himself then?

regards,
Henry.

Not stoned in the slightest - it's just that you've written a piece which is very well worked, however it doesn't take into account the following points which render its useability a lot lower:-

1. Northbridge power requirement at nominal 2.5v from the combined power area of the PSU. This differs depending on wether a 200MHz or 266MHz CPU is utilized in a default configuration.

2. Differentiation of different power phase systems - 2 phase requires less combined (3.3v and 5v) power than 3 phase and 3 phase requires less than 4 phase.

3. CAS latency and aggressivenes of memory - such settings do take more or less wattage (current in fact) dependant upon how they are set.


I'm not trying to be a bum-hole or anything, just pointing out a few things that may add to your knowledge.

wild_andy_c said:

Not stoned in the slightest - it's just that you've written a piece which is very well worked, however it doesn't take into account the following points which render its useability a lot lower:-

1. Northbridge power requirement at nominal 2.5v from the combined power area of the PSU. This differs depending on wether a 200MHz or 266MHz CPU is utilized in a default configuration.

2. Differentiation of different power phase systems - 2 phase requires less combined (3.3v and 5v) power than 3 phase and 3 phase requires less than 4 phase.

3. CAS latency and aggressivenes of memory - such settings do take more or less wattage (current in fact) dependant upon how they are set.


I'm not trying to be a bum-hole or anything, just pointing out a few things that may add to your knowledge.

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1. Yeah....but as it said: Athlon XP. My aim aint really to pin-point exaxt numbers here, just to get a general idea of the total power consumption.

2. No, that is NOT true.

3. Same thing here as in no.1: I am not concerned about small differences(2 watts or less).

The reason for writing this is: I wanted to find out if a standard 300 watt PS would be enough for MY system(as described in the sig.).
I can´t see how your points would render my piece "a lot lower useability". 220 or 222 watts, who cares? Still: A 300 watt PS is enough for almost everybody.

regards,
Henry.

I had to use a 350Watt to just boot my 1.3Ghz, so you're not entirely correct, yes a 300Watt PSU is ok for most but every system is different.

Henry Rollins II said:

1. Yeah....but as it said: Athlon XP. My aim aint really to pin-point exaxt numbers here, just to get a general idea of the total power consumption.

2. No, that is NOT true.

3. Same thing here as in no.1: I am not concerned about small differences(2 watts or less).

The reason for writing this is: I wanted to find out if a standard 300 watt PS would be enough for MY system(as described in the sig.).
I can´t see how your points would render my piece "a lot lower useability". 220 or 222 watts, who cares? Still: A 300 watt PS is enough for almost everybody.

regards,
Henry.

Click to expand...

This goes to prove my point - a 3 phase or 4 phase system does require more power in order to initially boot.

Don't try to hang onto credibility if wrong ! You end up worse off in the end !!

nick_cw said:

I had to use a 350Watt to just boot my 1.3Ghz, so you're not entirely correct, yes a 300Watt PSU is ok for most but every system is different.

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...*sigh*...

You see the can at the bottom of my my sig? I had the configuration as it shows now + 1 extra DIMM + 2 more Harddrives + USB scanner without external power + 2 80mm fans.

The reason for you having problems with booting up, is propably that your 16 fans overload one of the PS´outputs. This combined with the facts that the harddrives consume 100% more power during start-up, may cause that you are unable to boot even though the actual power requirement never is above 300w. Solution: get rid of 14 fans, they are useless anyway.

regards,
Henry.

wild_andy_c said:

This goes to prove my point - a 3 phase or 4 phase system does require more power in order to initially boot.

Don't try to hang onto credibility if wrong ! You end up worse off in the end !!

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This is stupid. I ain´t listening to you no more.

regards,
Henry.

Henry Rollins II said:

This is stupid. I ain´t listening to you no more.

regards,
Henry.

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I won't loose any sleep in the knowledge that I'm correct on this one!

Actually I had 3fans when booting it up. And useless are they??? LOOK AT THE WEBSITE ADDRESS OVERCLOCKERS!

nick_cw said:

Actually I had 3fans when booting it up. And useless are they??? LOOK AT THE WEBSITE ADDRESS OVERCLOCKERS!

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ROTFLMAO!!!!

??????????Wat????

Cool avatar!

nick_cw said:

??????????Wat????

Cool avatar!

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Thanx.
=> Rolling On The Floor Laughing My *** Off.