eXtreme PSU Calculator update

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mnemonik23

Member
Jan 12, 2005
49
0
0
February 8, 2006


The following changes were made:

- added System Type: Single or Dual CPU

- added Alphacool AP1510 Pump
- added Asetek WaterChill Xtreme Pump
- added Danger Den CSP-MAG Pump
- added Danger Den DDC-12V
- added Danger Den DD12V-D5
- added Innovatek Eheim HPPS Plus Pump
- added Laing DDC-1 12V Pump
- added Laing DDC-2 12V Pump
- added Swiftech MCP 655 Pump

- added Koolance Aquian ICM Water Cooling Kit
- added Swiftech H20-220 Apex Ultra Water Cooling Kit
- added Thermaltake CL-W0020 Tribe Water Cooling Kit
- added Thermaltake CL-W0052 TideWater Water Cooling Kit

Video Cards update will be released next week!


www.extreme.outervision.com
 
T

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
1,789
0
0
This calcualtor is totally bogus, just like every other PSU calculator.

I mean, it looks like you put a lot of effort into looking up CPUs, but the rest of it is useless.

For example, you calculate 15W for every 7200RPM drive. Then you add 45W for a single 15,000 RPM drive! Where on earth did you get this? 10K and 15K drives use smaller platters and require less power (they require a little more operational power, but the max power from the spinup is much lower).

The max wattage of a hard drive relates more to number (and physical size) of platters than RPM. A 3-platter 7200RPM Barracuda requirs 37.6W to spin up. That's more than double what your calculator says. But look at a Cheetah 15K.4. It takes 26.33W to spin up.

Then you have to consider that power is drawn in different places. For example, you could have a 500W PSU that's more than enough to run 8 hard drives in theory, but, again looking at a Barracuda 7200.8, the drive draws 2.8 amps on the 12V1 rail. Not many hard drives have an extra 22.4A on a single rail. So you have to look at the rails. Hard drives pull a lot of spin-up power off the 12V1 rail but most of the operational power comes from the 5V rail.

On that note, video cards pull power from all over the place. A GeForce 4 is pulling a lot of power from the 3.3V. A GeForce MX440 is pulling a lot from the 5.0V. You have to know where the power's coming from.

And speaking of video cards, the massive power requirements you see on something like a SLI setup is going to be under a 3D load. Most of the power requirements you see from hard drives only comes within the first 5 seconds of turning the machine on when the drives are spinning up. Obviously you're not going to be playing games while the drives are spinning up. This is a big deal, because hard drives need about triple the power to spin up, and video cards need about triple the power during gaming. Saying you need the power to do both at the same time is a mistake.

Also, the amount of memory matters. Two 1GB sticks will use more power than two 64MB sticks, and different memory has different voltage requirements. You have a blanket statement that two sticks of memory uses 20W. That is not true. An average 512MBx2 memory kit uses 1.6A on the 5V rail for a total of 8W.

The motherboard/keyboard/mouse do not total 43W. The average motherboard needs about 3A on the 3.3V rail, 2A on the 5V rail, and 0.3A on the 12V1 rail for a total of 23.5W. A keyboard and optical mouse total about 3W. So we're talking under 30W total.

Your calculator is misleading on almost every level, but I guess it makes up for that by grossly overestimating the power required. Better safe than sorry, right? It's things like this which cause 90% of people to think they need a 500W PSU when their requirements are likely half that.
 
J

jelifah

Senior member
Dec 6, 2004
241
0
0
Glad this is up for discussion. I had an Antec True Power 350Watt power supply for the system in my sig, and here are REAL WORLD problems I had.

Three months after having my system the power supply stopped working. Used it one night, the next morning it wouldn't power on. RMA time.

With both the old power supply that died, and the one that I got for the RMA, using my BFG 6800 OC, I would be listening to sound through the onboard sound from the motherboard to my external speakers, powered from the wall, that had a manual control for the volume. The sound would fade out and disappear. If you turned the volume up and down, you could bring it back. But occasionally it'd just not come back at all.

I thought it might be a power supply issue, based on various websites claiming you need a higher power supply. But then others would chime in saying 350 was more than enough and point to a website that claimed I only needed a 250-300 Watt Power Supply.

Then I installed my current video card, the AIW x800 during November. New issues begin, in addition to the sound problem, where my monitor would lose its signal. It would be powered on, yet the display video would disappear and it acted like I had unplugged the VGA cable. It got to the point that I thought the room might be drawing to much power on the circuit.

Then, 2 weeks ago, I installed the 430Watt Power Supply from Seasonic. Since then all those problems have disappeared.

Just an fyi from a real world perspective. 2 months ago I would have thought a 350 Watt Power Supply was enough, but now I have joined the crowd who say ?Bigger Power Supplies Are Better?
 
T

Tostada

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
1,789
0
0
jelifah:

Well, I gotta say that if your first 350W PSU had been made by SeaSonic you probably wouldn't have had those problems.

You can't really blame the PSU that much. A 350W True Power is just an older generation PSU. It very well may have had the right wattage but not on the right rails.

You gotta know that if you're trying to run an overclocked GF6800 you're going to need something solid.
 
B

bobsmith1492

Diamond Member
Feb 21, 2004
3,875
3
81
Doesn't work for laptops... apparently mine draws about 157 watts. Considering the power supply is rated for 67 watts.... yeah, do the math.
 
J

jelifah

Senior member
Dec 6, 2004
241
0
0
Thanks Tostada.

The thing was the True Power came from Antec in 2004 so I would have thought it would have been part of the 'newer generation'.

Anyway, I have to reiterate how happy I am with SeaSonic. Everything is solid, and quiet. Especially noticable when I am playing games because I can no longer hear fan noise over the sound of the game.
 
C

Cheesetogo

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2005
3,824
10
81
It says I need 505 watts at 100%, but I've been running my system fine with a 420watt enermax. If I switch to a dual core it says close to 600 watts! :shocked:
 
M

mnemonik23

Member
Jan 12, 2005
49
0
0
February 15, 2006


Version 1.3 of eXtreme PSU Calculator has been released!

The following changes were made:

- updated Video Cards power consumption based on real 3D tests

- added Video Type: Single Crad, SLI or Crossfire

- added 9 overclocked Video Cards

- added ATI Radeon X700 Pro
- added ATI Radeon X800 GT
- added Chrome S25
- added Chrome S27
- added NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GS AGP
- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500

- added CPU Utilization based on TDP

- updated SCSI Hard Drives

Stay tuned, a few major updates and tools are coming! One of them is a nice surprise (we hope) for Liquid Cooling enthusiasts ;)

www.extreme.outervision.com
 
n7

n7

Elite Member
Jan 4, 2004
21,281
4
81
You guys can rip on this guy for the calculator not being accurate, but really, it is a very decent overall measure of the PSU power you need.

 
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mnemonik23

Member
Jan 12, 2005
49
0
0
March 5, 2006

The following changes were made:

- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 330
- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 1300
- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 3400
- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450
- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 4400
- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500
- added NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 SDI

- added AMD Sempron 3300+ 1800 MHz Palermo (Socket 754)
- added AMD Sempron 3400+ 1800 MHz Palermo (Socket 754)
- added AMD Sempron 3000+ 1800 MHz Palermo (Socket 939)
- added AMD Sempron 3200+ 1800 MHz Palermo (Socket 939)
- added AMD Sempron 3400+ 2000 MHz Palermo (Socket 939)
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-28 1600 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-30 1600 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-32 1800 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-34 1800 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-37 2000 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-40 2200 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-42 2400 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 MT-44 2400 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-28 1600 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-30 1600 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-32 1800 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-34 1800 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-37 2000 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-40 2200 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-42 2400 MHz
- added AMD Turion 64 ML-44 2400 MHz


www.extreme.outervision.com

 
JEDIYoda

JEDIYoda

Lifer
Jul 13, 2005
33,986
3,321
126
Check out jonnyGURU`s sticky on Power Supplies!!
Of course you need to go to the sticky to use these links...
Handy power supply related links:

ATX12V Power Supply Design Guide
Extreme PSU Calculator
How Stuff Works: How PC Power Supplies Work
Many Different Connector Pinouts
Ohm's Law Calculator and Formulas
PFC Decoded
Power Supply and Chassis Chapter from Upgrading and Repairing PC's
UL Online Certification Database Seach
UL's Complete Database of Power Supplies
Wikipedia Entry for SMPS
World Electric Guide (V, Hz and Plug Types Around the World)
PSU Inquisitor

 
P

Pariah

Elite Member
Apr 16, 2000
7,357
20
81
For example, you calculate 15W for every 7200RPM drive. Then you add 45W for a single 15,000 RPM drive! Where on earth did you get this? 10K and 15K drives use smaller platters and require less power (they require a little more operational power, but the max power from the spinup is much lower).

The max wattage of a hard drive relates more to number (and physical size) of platters than RPM. A 3-platter 7200RPM Barracuda requirs 37.6W to spin up. That's more than double what your calculator says. But look at a Cheetah 15K.4. It takes 26.33W to spin up.
Click to expand...

I don't know where you are pulling your numbers from, but they aren't accurate. When SR released their newest testbed they posted power consumption charts of all current hard drives they measured using a custom built meter. The results of the 16 drives tested? 9 of the top 10 highest power consumption drives at startup were SCSI drives (all 10/15k drives) with only one ATA drive (Barracuda 7200.8) cracking the top 10. The Raptor was 11th, and the last 5 drives were all 7200 RPM ATA drives. It should be noted that the drive with the lowest startup power usage was the Deskstar 7K400 which was the only 5 platter drive in test completely debunking the theory that higher platter counts means higher power usage. RPM's have a far greater impact on peak power usage than platter count does. In fact, peak power usage is the the reason we have not, and may never see a drive spinning faster than 15k RPM's. 20k RPM drives have been in labs for years according to someone who works at Maxtor, but they have been indefinitely scrapped by all manufacturers (as far as he knows), because no one could get the power requirements low enough to be usable in current infrastructures.

The operational results were even more stark, with SCSI taking the top 9 spots followed by all ATA drives, and then the 2.5" 10k Savvio which was designed with low power conumption in mind finished with the lowest usage of the group.

Back to the topic at hand, just like every other PSU calculator this one seems to calculate inflated results though this one less so than others. This one tells me that at 75% usage I need a PSU more powerful than the one I had powering it for 3 years. According to this calculator, at 100% usage, the PSU I had likely should have melted while trying to initate the fission reaction required to power my system.
 
M

mnemonik23

Member
Jan 12, 2005
49
0
0
March 22, 2006

The following changes were made:

- added NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX
- added NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX (690/1760)
- added NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT
- added NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT
- added ATI Radeon X850

- added Intel Core Solo T1300 Yonah
- added Intel Core Solo T1400 Yonah
- added Intel Core Solo U1300 Yonah
- added Intel Core Solo U1400 Yonah
- added Intel Core Solo T5600 Merom
- added Intel Core Duo T2300 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo T2400 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo T2500 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo T2600 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo T2700 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo L2300 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo L2400 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo U2500 Yonah
- added Intel Core Duo T7200 Merom
- added Intel Core Duo T7400 Merom
- added Intel Core Duo T7600 Merom
- added Intel Core Solo E4200 Millville
- added Intel Core Duo E6300 Allendale
- added Intel Core Duo E6400 Conroe
- added Intel Core Duo E6600 Conroe
- added Intel Core Duo E6700 Conroe
- added Intel Core Duo E6800 Conroe
- added Intel Core Duo EE Conroe

- added 150mm Fans

- added Surge current during start up compensation
- added Electrolytic capacitor aging

- updated Drives section with ability to select multiple drives

Announcement. Sneak peak at eXtreme Flow Designer. eXtreme Flow Designer is a liquid cooling system scheme and flow indication tool for liquid cooling enthusiasts. This tool will help you to create a quick flow design for your liquid cooling system just in a few clicks! Release scheduled for a beginning of the next month.
More details here: http://www.extreme.outervision.com/update.jsp?updatefile=03222006


Best Regards,
eXtremeOV
www.extreme.outervision.com

 
M

mnemonik23

Member
Jan 12, 2005
49
0
0
April 5, 2006

New additions this month:

- eXtreme Flow Designer has been released! Your comments, suggestions or bugs are very welcome.
- added a separate CPU Overclock Calculator
- added CPU Temperature Calculator
- added C/W Calculator
- added Temperature Conversion tool

eXtreme PSU Calculator changes:

- added NVIDIA FX 5900
- added NVIDIA FX 5900 XT
- added NVIDIA 7600 GS
- added NVIDIA 7300 GS
- added NVIDIA 7300 LE

- updated power consumption for the following NVIDIA video cards:

7900 GTX
7900 GT
7800 GTX
7800 GT
7600 GT

- updated power consumption for the following ATI video cards:

X1900 XTX
X1900 XT
X1800 XT

http://www.extreme.outervision.com
 
M

mnemonik23

Member
Jan 12, 2005
49
0
0
May 16, 2006

The following changes were made:

- added Nvidia GeForce 7900 GX2
- added Nvidia GeForce 7950 GX2
- added Quad SLI for GeForce 7900 GX2 and 7950 GX2

- added AMD Socket AM2

- added AMD Athlon 64 3500+ 2200 MHz AM2 Orleans
- added AMD Athlon 64 3500+ EE 2200 MHz AM2 Orleans
- added AMD Athlon 64 3800+ 2400 MHz AM2 Orleans
- added AMD Athlon 64 4000+ 2600 MHz AM2 Orleans
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ 2000 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ HE 2000 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ EE 2000 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ 2000 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+ HE 2000 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2200 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+ HE 2200 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ 2200 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ HE 2200 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ 2400 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4600+ HE 2400 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ 2400 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ HE 2400 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ 2600 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 X2 5200+ 2600 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 2600 MHz AM2 Windsor
- added AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 2800 MHz AM2 Windsor

- added new Intel's socket 771

- added Intel Xeon 5110 Woodcrest
- added Intel Xeon 5120 Woodcrest
- added Intel Xeon 5130 Woodcrest
- added Intel Xeon 5140 Woodcrest
- added Intel Xeon 5150 Woodcrest
- added Intel Xeon 5160 Woodcrest

- updated Intel Xeon 5020, 5030, 5040, 5050, 5060, 5070, 5080 (Dempsey core)


Best Regards,
eXtremeOV
www.extreme.outervision.com
 
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mnemonik23

Member
Jan 12, 2005
49
0
0
May 23, 2006


The following changes were made:

- added AMD Sempron 64 2800+ 1600 MHz AM2 Manilla
- added AMD Sempron 64 3000+ 1600 MHz AM2 Manilla
- added AMD Sempron 64 3200+ 1800 MHz AM2 Manilla
- added AMD Sempron 64 3400+ 1800 MHz AM2 Manilla
- added AMD Sempron 64 3500+ 2000 MHz AM2 Manilla
- added AMD Sempron 64 3600+ 2000 MHz AM2 Manilla

- added ATI Radeon X800 GTO
- added ATI FireGL V7100
- added ATI FireGL V7530

- updated list of current AMD AM2 Athlon 64, X2 and FX Processors and their wattages according to the new AMD modifications.

- updated wattages of ATI and NVIDIA video cards


Best Regards,
eXtremeOV
http://www.extreme.outervision.com
 
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