Adam Carter wrote:
> Even my rig - hotter, doesn't reach 300W when I artificially torture the > system. Normal 'max' load is in 200W range. An normal desktop? Under 100. > OK -- just to find out the truth I've attached a kill-a-watt to my current workstation which is ~4yrs old w/ slow cpu and ancient video card but has been upgraded w/ 7 SATA Drives:So the figures below are AC in, not DC out. Pretty sure the figure everyone uses for comparison is DC out.Idle - ~285W Light Use (emerge --sync) - ~310W Kernel Compile w/ video app running and minor torture- ~340W This is definitely much higher than 100-200W stated above. Anyhow, given that the discussion was about a system lasting ~8yrs, which is twice the current age of my system, I don't think it's unfeasible that future upgrades (especially if video card related or if moving cpu from 2 core to 8 core) could get normal power util 20% higher to ~372W eventually. If you conservatively state that PSU wattage should be 1.66 * normal util (so that PSU is normally running at 60% of peak) then: 1.66 * 372 = 617 I think you've double dipped there....see above comment.My 2c WRT power supplies - buy a quality brand as they are one of the least reliable components in a PC.
To add a little info about me and my puters. I don't update very often. I started out with 512Mb of ram and upgraded to 2Gbs. I started with a 30Gb hard drive and upgraded to a 80Gb and added a 750Gb when I got DSL and could watch videos. Basically, as far as power is concerned, I added a single hard drive. I doubt the memory changed power very much. Swapping a 80Gb drive for the 30Gb probably wasn't much change either. The new drive may have even use less power. The only other change was that I added 2 120mm fans on the side to help with the cooling.
As you can probably tell, I build it and it stays the same basically. Maybe a little minor changes but nothing major. I figure I will add one more drive when I can afford it. Maybe a 1.5 to 2Tb or so. They are still dropping in price.
Now to reply to some others. Dale :-) :-)
