JigPu
12-15-11, 12:04 AM
It's been a really long time since my last build (take a look at the sig ;)), so I was very excited to put together my new rig. I was tired of having to live with the annoying sound of fans and built it to be as quiet as possible while still having some muscle. The parts came in, I put it together, and my ears believed it to be a spectacular success.
...and then I plugged in my kill-a-watt.
Under load, my 550W PSU was looking extremely oversized. I was still waiting on the video card, so I quickly googled the TDP of what I was getting. Even adding it in, 550W would be super comfortable. In fact, the numbers suggested that I could even pull off going SLI if I were that crazy.
...so I borrowed an identical second card.
The highest I've gotten my kill-a-watt to read under load is ~375W. Originally I was going to make a post asking if my kill-a-watt was giving me bogus numbers, but the math seems to work. At 400W from the wall my PSU should be 93% efficient, making ~350W DC. This is just about 80% of the combined TDP from the CPU (i5 2500) and GPUs (2xGTX 560 TI).
Apparently things don't draw as much power as I remember :D
JigPu
...and then I plugged in my kill-a-watt.
Under load, my 550W PSU was looking extremely oversized. I was still waiting on the video card, so I quickly googled the TDP of what I was getting. Even adding it in, 550W would be super comfortable. In fact, the numbers suggested that I could even pull off going SLI if I were that crazy.
...so I borrowed an identical second card.
The highest I've gotten my kill-a-watt to read under load is ~375W. Originally I was going to make a post asking if my kill-a-watt was giving me bogus numbers, but the math seems to work. At 400W from the wall my PSU should be 93% efficient, making ~350W DC. This is just about 80% of the combined TDP from the CPU (i5 2500) and GPUs (2xGTX 560 TI).
Apparently things don't draw as much power as I remember :D
JigPu