Quad G5: Actual Power Consumption

I haven't seen the numbers posted, so I thought I'd share from this config:
Quad 2.5 Ghz G5 (Rev A, dual pumps)
4.5 GB PC2-4200 RAM (4 x 1 GB, 2 x 256 MB)
Geforce 6600
Western Digital 250 GB SATA Drive (WD2500JS)
Seagate 400 GB SATA Drive (ST3400832AS)
No firewire or USB devices connected (except keyboard, mouse)
Here was the measured power consumption (in watts):
455 Peak measured (with 4 CPU's at 100%, disks writing)
275 Idle (CPU at Highest)
245 Watching a DVD (CPU at Automatic)
210 Idle (CPU at Reduced)
43 Mac Sleeping
The specs page lists "At least 10A" required at 120 volts. Even if you squeezed 9 drives into the G5, I don't see how one would ever approach 1200 watts.
I use a Belkin 1500VA (830 watts) UPS, which is 55% loaded when the Quad is at its peak, and can sustain that for around 10 minutes.
At 7 cents per kWh, running BOINC could cost 77 cents per day, running idle would be 36 cents, and sleeping 8 cents.

I posted similar results a few months ago. Amazing that people were worried (when the Quads first appeared) that they'd have to run new power lines to support them.
I used a 'Kill A Watt' to measure - what did you use?

Similar Messages

Actual power consumption on WS-C6509-E

Hello everyone,
I have a WS-C6509-E with two WS-CAC-6000W power supplies. I have to determine what is the real power consumption of the whole device but I noticed that there is a mismatch between measurements and show power output so I would very much appreciate if someone could explain why is that so.
I did the following test to try figure out the consumption from the power grid.
Step 1. When both supplies are active, show power gives me the following output:
C6509Test#show power
system power redundancy mode = redundant
system power total =     5771.64 Watts (137.42 Amps @ 42V)
system power used =      2253.72 Watts (53.66 Amps @ 42V)
system power available = 3517.92 Watts (83.76 Amps @ 42V)
                        Power-Capacity PS-Fan Output Oper
PS   Type               Watts   A @42V Status Status State
1    WS-CAC-6000W       5771.64 137.42 OK     OK     on
2    WS-CAC-6000W       5771.64 137.42 OK     OK     on
                        Pwr-Allocated Oper
Fan Type               Watts   A @42V State
1    WS-C6509-E-FAN      150.36 3.58 OK
                        Pwr-Requested Pwr-Allocated Admin Oper
Slot Card-Type          Watts   A @42V Watts   A @42V State State
1    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
2    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
3    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
4    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
5    VS-S720-10G         338.10 8.05   338.10 8.05 on    on
6    VS-S720-10G         338.10 8.05   338.10 8.05 on    on
7    WS-X6724-SFP        125.16 2.98   125.16 2.98 on    on
system auxiliary power mode = off
system auxiliary power redundancy operationally = non-redundant
system primary connector power limit =   10920.00 Watts (260.00 Amps @ 42V)
system auxiliary connector power limit = 10500.00 Watts (250.00 Amps @ 42V)
system primary power used =              2253.72 Watts (53.66 Amps @ 42V)
system auxiliary power used =            0 Watt
Step 2. Then I switched off power supply 1:
C6509Test#
*Jan 22 09:29:21.753: %C6KPWR-SP-4-PSOUTPUTDROP: Power supply 1 output has dropp
ed
*Jan 22 09:29:21.769: %C6KPWR-SP-2-PSFAIL: power supply 1 output failed.
*Jan 22 09:29:21.769: %C6KPWR-SP-4-PSREDUNDANTONESUPPLY: in power-redundancy mod
e, system is operating on one power supply.
C6509Test#
C6509Test#show power
system power redundancy mode = redundant
system power redundancy operationally = non-redundant
system power total =     5771.64 Watts (137.42 Amps @ 42V)
system power used =      2253.72 Watts (53.66 Amps @ 42V)
system power available = 3517.92 Watts (83.76 Amps @ 42V)
                        Power-Capacity PS-Fan Output Oper
PS   Type               Watts   A @42V Status Status State
1    WS-CAC-6000W       3780.00 90.00 -      -      off
2    WS-CAC-6000W       5771.64 137.42 OK     OK     on
                        Pwr-Allocated Oper
Fan Type               Watts   A @42V State
1    WS-C6509-E-FAN      150.36 3.58 OK
                        Pwr-Requested Pwr-Allocated Admin Oper
Slot Card-Type          Watts   A @42V Watts   A @42V State State
1    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
2    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
3    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
4    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
5    VS-S720-10G         338.10 8.05   338.10 8.05 on    on
6    VS-S720-10G         338.10 8.05   338.10 8.05 on    on
7    WS-X6724-SFP        125.16 2.98   125.16 2.98 on    on
system auxiliary power mode = off
system auxiliary power redundancy operationally = non-redundant
system primary connector power limit =   10920.00 Watts (260.00 Amps @ 42V)
system auxiliary connector power limit = 10500.00 Watts (250.00 Amps @ 42V)
system primary power used =              2253.72 Watts (53.66 Amps @ 42V)
system auxiliary power used =            0 Watt
Step 3. Now I disconnect the power input 1 on running power supply 2 thus leaving the device working on only one out of four power inputs:
C6509Test#
*Jan 22 09:35:50.297: %C6KPWR-SP-4-INPUTCHANGE: Power supply 2 input has changed
. Power capacity adjusted to 2671.20W
*Jan 22 09:35:50.297: %C6KPWR-SP-4-PSOUTPUTDROP: Power supply 2 output has dropp
ed
C6509Test#show power
system power redundancy mode = redundant
system power redundancy operationally = non-redundant
system power total =     2671.20 Watts (63.60 Amps @ 42V)
system power used =      2253.72 Watts (53.66 Amps @ 42V)
system power available = 417.48 Watts ( 9.94 Amps @ 42V)
                        Power-Capacity PS-Fan Output Oper
PS   Type               Watts   A @42V Status Status State
1    WS-CAC-6000W       3780.00 90.00 -      -      off
2    WS-CAC-6000W       2671.20 63.60 OK     OK     on
                        Pwr-Allocated Oper
Fan Type               Watts   A @42V State
1    WS-C6509-E-FAN      150.36 3.58 OK
                        Pwr-Requested Pwr-Allocated Admin Oper
Slot Card-Type          Watts   A @42V Watts   A @42V State State
1    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
2    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
3    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
4    WS-X6748-GE-TX      325.50 7.75   325.50 7.75 on    on
5    VS-S720-10G         338.10 8.05   338.10 8.05 on    on
6    VS-S720-10G         338.10 8.05   338.10 8.05 on    on
7    WS-X6724-SFP        125.16 2.98   125.16 2.98 on    on
system auxiliary power mode = off
system auxiliary power redundancy operationally = non-redundant
system primary connector power limit =   10920.00 Watts (260.00 Amps @ 42V)
system auxiliary connector power limit = 10500.00 Watts (250.00 Amps @ 42V)
system primary power used =              2253.72 Watts (53.66 Amps @ 42V)
system auxiliary power used =            0 Watt
C6509Test#
*Jan 22 09:37:22.317: %C6KPWR-SP-4-INPUTCHANGE: Power supply 2 input has changed
. Power capacity adjusted to 5771.64W
*Jan 22 09:38:58.523: %C6KPWR-SP-4-PSOK: power supply 1 turned on.
*Jan 22 09:38:58.535: %C6KPWR-SP-4-PSREDUNDANTBOTHSUPPLY: in power-redundancy mo
de, system is operating on both power supplies.
C6509Test#
Step 4. I used the current clamp to measure the current on the remaining power input and it reads 4.9 A.
When I multiply the current with voltage I get
P=4.9*230=1127 W.
So why does the show power output gives system power used = 2253.72 Watts, which is actually double value of measured 1127 W? What am I missing?
Thank you in advance for any help on this,
Marin

marin_otto.
Where are you located and what AC line voltage are you operating on (208 or 230v)? I ran into your post and was wondering if you were operating on 208v which is line to line (two hots) and perhaps you are only measuring current on one line, effectively half the power.
Dave

XServe dual quad core max power consumption

What can I expect to be the max power consumption of a dual quad-core XServe?
I have four new XServes that I administer in four separate locations and I need to know what Apple recommends for an Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) per server.
Right now, I have a 500VA one that I've had on hand at least one site. However, I've noticed that this one, eventhough the UPS has a new battery in it, does not support an XServe -- ie, when I test it, the XServe shuts down abruptly. My guess is that 500VA is inadequate.

What Apple might recommend and what might work in your environment, I do not know.
The APC SmartUPS 1500 works reasonably well for an Xserve and its usual accretion of giblets and accouterments, and Mac OS X Server automatically recognizes this device via its USB connection.
And one thing I've discovered that's not widely listed. Get yourself some short power cords. A handful of appropriately-rated power extension cords (of about one foot in length) makes most UPS products far easier to deal with. These cords are a few dollars each from various vendors, and very useful.

Power consumption with dual power supply

Hi,
I need to know how dual power supply works, I mean, when you have two power supplies in a router if both of them are working at the same time, or if one of them is working while the other one only begin to work when the first one stops.
And if both of them are working at the same time, what is the power consumption, the same as if only one of them was working?
Thanks

marianares0001 wrote:Hi,I need to know how dual power supply works, I mean, when you have two power supplies in a router if both of them are working at the same time, or if one of them is working while the other one only begin to work when the first one stops.And if both of them are working at the same time, what is the power consumption, the same as if only one of them was working?Thanks
The implementation details can potentially differ per product category but usually the following is applicable:
The product provides configurable power redundancy modes and choosing a mode dictates whether load will be shared across supplies or whether a particular supply will be dedicated for redundancy.
If both (or more) supplies are working at the same time then both share the power load.
The actual power consumption depends on the power required to run the installed components and is the same whether you use power supplies in redundant or power sharing mode.
Atif

C7600 power consumption

Hello,
I'am trying to find out actual power consumption on c7600 routers.
When issusing comman "show power used":
7606#show power used
system power used =      1736.28 Watts (41.34 Amps @ 42V)
7606#
router don't show actual power consumption, it shows sum of all power allocated for each of the module in router... Even for redundant SUP/RSP even if it is not in router.
On ASR9k, I can see exact power consumption on each power module:
RP/0/RSP0/CPU0:asr9010#admin show environment power-supply
Wed Jul 30 13:30:11.200 CETDST
R/S/I   Modules         Capacity        Status
                        (W)
0/PM0/*
        host    PM      1500            Ok
0/PM1/*
        host    PM      1500            Ok
0/PM2/*
        host    PM      1500            Ok
R/S/I           Power Supply    Voltage         Current
                (W)             (V)             (A)
0/PM0/*         346.8          54.2             6.4
0/PM1/*         434.4          54.3             8.0
0/PM2/*         421.9          54.1             7.8
Total: 1203.1
Is there any way to find out actual consumption on 7600 in similar way as on ASR9k?
The same question stands for ASR9000V satellites!

You can measure your G5's power usage with this device

Esoteric topic - power consumption

Got out my Kill A Watt meter tonight to get an idea of the actual power consumption of the MacPro and peripheral. Tomorrow I'll use the cumulative reading for an hour with the computer, monitor, and speakers on to calculate $/hr - I expect it will be higher than I would have thought.
MacPro alone: 335 watt (~ 2.80 amp)
MacPro sleep: .13 amp
MacPro off: .08 amp
Samsung 24" LCD, SyncMaster 245BW
on: .44 amp, 52 watt
sleep: .01 amp
Speakers, KRK Rokit 5 Studio Monitors, self powered
on: .13 amp, 16 watt each, X2= .26 amp,32 watt
So, the total current to run the computer, monitor, and speakers is 419 watts, or exactly the power of 7 ea. 60 watt light bulbs. No wonder it gets warm in the computer room. Much more power than I thought, and will get me thinking of getting it and the monitor to sleep more often, and put in a switch for the speakers rather than leave them on 24/7.
Tomorrow I'll leave it all on for one hour in cumulative mode, then figure out cost/hr. based on our cost of electricty KWH written on our electric bill.
My wife did say she thought the electric bill had gone up a little since we got this new computer. Lets blame it on Leopard <g>
John F

Good topic. I'm actually thinking about putting all my networking gear (firewall, cable router) and speakers on one power strip and turning it off at night. My MBP is set to sleep after an hour of non-use and I sold off all my windoze gear. I doubt my Time Capsule is designed to be shut on and off every day, so I'll probably leave that on.
My goal is to reduce as much power consumption when I'm not at home or asleep.
Thanks for the post!

Checking the power consumption of mac mini

i have a PPC mac mini. Is it possible to monitor/check the power consumption of the mini, as well as peripherals attached to it, say like an external firewire disk. System Profiler doesn't give such information.
should this post have been under the category of "using OS X"? If so, could the moderators move it to the correct category
Message was edited by: Ravindra Holalkere

If you are looking for a software solution, there isn't much of one. A server grade UPS may have some monitoring ability that you could access, but otherwise, you would have to hook up some test equipment to get the actual power consumption. All is not lost, since pretty much all electrical equipment (especially if it is sold in the US) has a label that tells you what the maximum power consumption is. The label usually states the voltage and the current, which multiplied together roughly equals the number of watts - in the case of a PPC mini, about 85 watts.

Power Consumption Quad-Xserve w max RAM?

Hi,
actually our "old" dualcore Intel xserves consuming approx. 260 Watts (4 RAM Bars, 3 HDDs).
unfortunately there are no Power Consumption Charts for the actual Quad-Core Xserves. Can someone gimme an average value: 3 Ghz Quadcore, 3 HDDs, fully plunged RAM Bank? Shure, it depends on the serverload... roughly speaking... at moderate load?
thanks
timo

What Apple might recommend and what might work in your environment, I do not know.
The APC SmartUPS 1500 works reasonably well for an Xserve and its usual accretion of giblets and accouterments, and Mac OS X Server automatically recognizes this device via its USB connection.
And one thing I've discovered that's not widely listed. Get yourself some short power cords. A handful of appropriately-rated power extension cords (of about one foot in length) makes most UPS products far easier to deal with. These cords are a few dollars each from various vendors, and very useful.

PowerMac G5 Quad Power Consumption

Hello
I purchased a brand new Apple PowerMac from the online store.
Quad PowerMac G5
250GB HDD
1GB RAM
Standard VGA Card - GeForce 6600
Can anyone tell the exact power consumption when idle and maximum use.
Many thanks.
Haresh Kainth

Unfortunately, that document only addresses idle
power consumption, which is of limited use. You might
be able to estimate monthly energy cost from this, if
the computer is mostly idle, but you can't tell how
big a UPS to buy.
I think this is the link tele_player is referring to.
http://www.apple.com/environment/resources/calculator.html
-Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group
Join Us @ MacOSG.com
 An Apple User Group 
MacOSG Podcast >>

Power consumption on sleep

After upgrading to Mavericks, I have noticed that the power consumption on battery on my MBP when in sleep with the lid closed is way up. 99% charge when puting the computer to sleep, 45% after 12 hours when opened. What gives? Any suggestions?

Actually, the APC 1200XS works fine if and only if the G5 is already powered on. I'm running a stock Quad G5 + and extra 4GB of RAM, but nothing else off of the UPS.
It's actually not uncommon to have appliances that draw significant currents/power on startup that exceed the basic circuit rating. Things like motors/pumps can draw large currents on startup. Circuit breakers and fuses need these high current levels to be present for periods longer than the lifetime of an inrush current situation. Most reactive components, i.e. the inductors and capacitors, in a large power supply like the Quad G5's only take few 10's of milliseconds to charge up, so the high draw subsides quickly.
I'd also be surprised if your APC 1500XS doesn't have the same issue as I have since my guess is that APC builds a class of UPS with the same basic electronics on the input side and then just modifies the output side a bit along with the battery capacity. You can test whether you have this issue as well by putting the machine to sleep, pull the UPS's plug from the wall and then wake up the computer (if it doesn't wake due to the power being lost).

2011 MacBook Pro hard drive power consumption

Does anyone know the differences in power consumption between the Apple-supplied 750GB 5400rpm HDD, 500GB 7200rpm HDD, and 256GB SSD drives? I'm currently using a 2011 MacBook Pro with an Apple-supplied 256GB SSD and I'm getting between 5-8 hours of battery life, depending on what I'm doing. I wish it could get closer to a full 10-hour battery life for longer trips, but I realize there's a price for performance. What's the best hard drive option to minimize power consumption? Are there any other tips for increasing battery life? Does it make a difference if you turn off Bluetooth and WiFi when you know you're not going to be able to use them? Thank you in advance for your reply.

Yes, turn Wi-Fi and BT off when not needed. That and your screen are the biggest power consumers. Keep the brightness as low as you can to conserve power.
17" 2.2GHz i7 Quad-Core MacBook Pro  8G RAM  750G HD + OCZ Vertex 3 SSD Boot HD 

Nokia N86 power consumption

I have a Nokia N86 which is 2 years old.
I have been experiencing a problem with battery drainage since I bought it. The battery meter suddenly drops from 5 bars to one bar when I browse the net using HSDPA, after about 30mins or so, when the phone is already hot. I sent it into service once, because it happened very randomly and it did not look like a major issue. They said they recalibrated the battery. After a week of somehow uniform battery draining, the battery started going flat suddenly, again, from 5-6 bars to "low battery".
I went to a service center again to check if it's the battery or the phone. Nokia Energy Profiler says that the current is about 400-500mA when using HSDPA. The engineer at the service center connected a power supply with measurable current consumption, and during the usage of HSDPA, the current was at least 800mA, with almost 1000mA peaks. He said that these current intensities damage the battery in about a month and that he would not recommend changing the battery, but the HSDPA chip. The warranty period expired a month ago.
I am asking you guys:are these values normal? 800-1000mA during HSDPA usage for a Nokia N86? I need a serious, valid opinion from somebody who really knows mobile hardware. Thank you.

This has happened to me every now and then. First it seems as if the battery is almost full and then it's suddenly empty even without using the device much.
Sometimes the device feels warm. In those cases I just reboot it.
Obvious things to check would be that BlueTooth and WLAN are off if you don't need them.
Sometimes the switch of the kickstand has activated when I have carelessly thrown the phone on a bed for example. If you have defined it to start an application that could cause some power consumption.
I haven't tried to measure my power consumption. I guess there are two options:
- the device actually consumes a lot of power sometimes
- the battery indicator isn't always up-to-date i.e. it shows several bars when the battery is actually almost empty.
It's a shame because it's a pretty nice phone and I quite like it. Luckily it's quite a rare problem.
(But not that great if the battery dies during a bicycle trip just because I have SportsTracker running.)

MacBook Power Consumption

We operate tens of macbooks at our campus for student loans. We are trying to cut on the power consumption of the loans operation. I am interested to know how much power does the power brick consume when:
a) nothing is connected to the MagSafe jack.
b) the macbook is fully charged and the LED is lit green.
Please don't guess or think! give me a firm answer if you know. I appreciate that!

I pulled out my 1940s era General Electric Wattmeter. This is a two-coil instrument that measures Vrms * Irms * cos( phase angle) = actual Watts. This type of meter does not measure reactive power that does not deliver energy to the load but circulates in the system. Reactive power is a concern because the out-of-phase current of reactive power does cause energy loss (I squared R loss) by heating the wires carrying the current.
Power brick energized, but not attached to computer - unmeasurable.
Power brick energized, attached to computer, green LED on - about 0.7 Watt.
Power brick energized, attached to computer, OSX booted, but idle - 8 to 10 Watts.
Power brick energized, attached to computer, screen saver running - 8 - 12.5 Watts.
Power brick energized, attached to computer, 5th Element DVD playing - 12.5 -15 Watts.
Power brick energized, attached to computer, Grapher, contours.gcx - 18.5 - 20.5 Watts.
Once in a while, I could get the MacBook to peak at about 25 Watts (averaged by the mechanical dynamics of my meter) of power consumption. The initial plug-in of the power pack to the socket also consumes several amps for a split second - too hard to measure accurately with my crude equipment. There's also a little audible crack! as the prong touches the outlet, so it is obviously a pretty large momentary in-rush of current.
When the power brick is unplugged, the Irms current draw is about 22 mA according to my Fluke 8060A. Presumably that's almost all reactive at close to -90 degrees phase angle relative to the voltage. Switch mode power packs like the MacBook's tend to be capacitive loads. That's about 2.64 VARs of reactive power.
When the MacBook is idling at about 9.5 Watts of real power consumption, the current draw is about 245 mA. The real power corresponds to about 70 mA of in phase current. This gives the surprising result of about 234 mA of lagging reactive current.
In terms of what real-world thing can you do? For 10 to 100 MacBooks, I don't belive it is worthwhile to do anything. Probably remediating the power supply to reduce the reactive current load would be good thing. At industrial scales, factories worry about current phase angle a lot. Power providers bill for reactive current they have to generate, otherwise they would lose revenue by heating their transmission lines, but the customer gets no energy delivered to the manufacturing process by the out-of-phase reactive current.
Probably, the energy consumed and eventual environmental waste generated by remediating 10-100 power supplies, not to mention the engineering hours required, would not offset the power that would be saved over the useful life of the MacBook.
On the other hand, grumbling at Apple to contract with the manufacturer for a greener design for the power pack for the many thousands of users would be a good thing on which to expend a little energy.
PS: just to be sure my Wattmeter is giving reasonable results, I plugged in a "60 Watt" bulb that's been used for about 200 hours. According to the meter, it draws 58 watts.
Bill
Message was edited by: impulse_telecom

Power Consumption Revisited

I was reading an article on tomshardware.com the other day in which they described a process by which they were able to measure the power consumption of various video cards using a simple device that plugs into a standard wall socket and then displays the number of watts the currently plugged in device is using. In light of the ever-increasing PSU recommendations that tend to show up here (I recall seeing one poster recommend "a PSU with 24 or more amps on the +12V rail for anything other than a barebones system"), I decided that it might be beneficial to these forums if I did a little empirical study of my own. So anyways, I shelled out ~$30 for the device shown here:
http://www.supermediastore.com/kilwateldet1.html
...and ran some tests of my own. The results:
Preliminary Testing -
To verify that my power meter would give reasonably accurate readings, I first hooked it up to a 3-way lamp with a 50/100/150 watt bulb installed. The readings returned for the 50/100/150 watt settings (respectively) were 44/94/142, so it would seem like my power meter is at least reasonably accurate. Some other stuff I measured just for the hell of it...my speakers use 3 watts of power in stadby mode, and 30 watts when active (haven't yet tested when active and playing at full volume), and my monitor uses about 70 watts when on, and about 2 watts in standby mode.
Results -
Satisfied that I had not just wasted my money on an inaccurate power meter, I then went and hooked it up to my PC (the one described in my sig) and measured the power consumption under a variety of circumstances. It is important to note that these readings reflect the total amount of power drain being applied to the wall socket, not the amount of power that is actually being demanded by the system. This is because no PSU is 100% efficient (a good one will be maybe 80% efficient, if even that much), so the amount of power that is actually needed by the system is actually about (at least)20% *less* than the recorded values. Anyways:
During startup, the power usage spikes very briefly at 197 watts, then averages 152 watts over the rest of the boot cycle.
The system uses 134 watts of power when idling.
Under full CPU load, the system uses 168 watts.
Running 3d Mark 2001 the power usage is 169 watts.
Playing Far Cry (high detail settings, 1024x768x32), the power usage is again 169 watts.
Conclusions -
So, let's now assume a worst-case scenario, in which the extra 34 watts recorded during full CPU load came entirely from extra CPU power drain (a reasonable assumption), and in which the extra 35 watts recorded during 3d Mark and Far Cry came entirely from extra video card load (a much less reasonable assumption), and in which we have a PSU that is 90% efficient (greater efficiency means that the system would actually have to demand *more* power in order to get the total power drain up that high). In this case we see that if an application were developed that fully taxed the video card and CPU continuously, the total power drain would be 134 + 34 + 35 = 203 watts (which actually correlates rather nicely with the 197 watt spike observed during the boot cycle), meaning that the system is demanding about 183 watts from our unrealistically efficient PSU (note that with the PSU efficiency set to a more realistic 75%, the system would only be demanding a mere 153 watts of juice at full CPU and video card load).
Admittedly, the video card in my system is relatively weak, so let us again take the worst case scenario and assume that if I were to be using a 6800 Ultra, the total power drain would be 100 watts greater (this is above what the actual difference should be given the results posted on tomshardware.com regarding the power use of the 6800 Ultra), so our video card now consumes an astounding 135 watts of power, and our total power drain (in our unrealistic situation where we have some application which is capable of 100% CPU and video card utilization for a sustained length of time) is now 303 watts. With our unrealistic 90% efficient PSU, it would mean that the system is demanding about 273 watts from the PSU (about 228 watts with a 75% efficient PSU).
Note that aside from the weak video card, I have a fairly robust system (which also happens to be slightly overclocked), with 4 HDD's (two of which are WD Raptors), 2 optical drives, several PCI devices, and two large 120mm case fans, and yet the power demands of this system, even in an unrealisticly demanding situation, are *well* within the ability of a quality 380W (or even 300W) PSU to deliver. In this case even if all the power happened to be being sucked off of the +12V rail (which is not the case), any PSU with 18 amps at +12V could still handle it. Furthermore, even if I were to add a needlessly power-hungry video card into the mix, the power demands are *still* safely within what any decent 380W PSU should be capable of (and even what a quality 300W PSU should be capable of, although this may be pushing it a little, though it should always be noted that the numbers indicate a hypothetical worst-case power drain that should be beyond the maximum drain possible in any real-world situation).
So, we can therefore conclude that the power demands of a reasonably robust Athlon64 based system are not astronomical by any means, and that they do not justify a minimum recommendation of a 465W PSU with 24+ amps on the +12V rail for any system which is not "barebones," and that there is no observational evidence to support the idea that a PSU with 18 or fewer amps at +12V is categorically inadequate for use in an Athlon64 based system.
...anyways, I guess that's all, I hope you found this interesting, or at least informative. I'm off to see what else I can do with my power meter thingy...

Really? Do you have measured data which clearly supports your claims, or are you just holding up an opinion as a matter of fact?
My point was, my measured results show that the total power demand of an Athlon64 based system across *all* of the rails is fairly low, even at 100% system load. So, let's recalculate things assuming a 75% efficient PSU, with 75% of all load being at + 12V (which is still probably higher than the actual value), and let's leave the hypothetical 6800U inside of my system. We get .75 * 303 = 227 watts in total that the system is demanding. Of these 227 watts, the system is demanding .75 * 227 = 170 watts over the +12V rail. 170 watts / 12V gives us a total demand of 14.2 amps on the +12V rail. Note that this is with the hypothetically demanding 6800U card installed and is still likely to be at least a couple amps higher than what a *real* system would ever use, and any *quality* PSU capable of 18 amps at +12V should still be perfectly adequate for use in the system.
Furthermore, PSU efficiency dropping to 60% in real world situations supports my results, as it means that the actual system was demanding substantially *less* power than the system in my hypothetical example, making things even *easier* for the PSU. Re-running the above equation with a 60% efficient PSU and 75% of all power demand coming from the +12V rail, we see that the system is only asking for 11.4 amps at +12V at full load with a 6800U installed (and also at full load).
If you want to disagree with my results, that's fine, but don't expect me to take your argument as credible unless you have some actual, measurable data to back up your claims. Saying "this is the way things *really* work because I say so" doesn't cut it, so until you want to break out a multimeter and measure the amps your PSU delivers to the MB on the +12V rail at boot, idle, load, and gaming and then report your results and discuss whether or not they are consistent with your "amps are what counts" hypothesis, I hold my results and conclusions up as being valid, and as soon as I see any measured results which contradict mine, I will gladly stfu about PSU recommendations being needlessly high.

Average power consumption comparision: i7 and t500

Hi,
What is the average power consumption (non-peak) of a t500 system,
doing web-surfing and light tasks ?
I have read that the i7 mobiles (non-lenovo) are at 52W avg, and 75W peak,
and this will help me decide whether to buy the t500 or wait for the lenovo
i7 based laptops
thanks!

P8400 / P8600 etc core2duo mobile (2,2-2,4ghz) take 25W. I think in office use my T400 uses about 15W, not sure. It depends on load. I find quad core laptop CPUs quite useless for the average user.I think the i7 mobiles have a 45W specification, which is quite higher than the modern dual cores. I prefer longer battery life to having four cores i will most likely never use in daily work. This changes, of course, if you use your laptop as Desktop replacement or primarily for CPU intensive tasks, such as video en/decoding.
Thinkpad T400 (Windows 7 Ultimate x64)

Quad G5: Actual Power Consumption

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for