Hi,
I'm sort of baffled as to the power consumption of my desktop PC while it's doing nothing else but showing the desktop and running it's background processes with CPU usage close to zero.
Power consumption when loading it heavily is of no surprise to me, but how much it uses while doing next to nothing really surprised me. I suppose it's primarily the graphics-card, but I really have no idea what draws this much current while doing nothing.
Any ideas as to what I can do to reduce it? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
Lower overclock is not really an option as it's pretty sluggish already when I'm gaming and/or using Adobe Lightroom.
I will be upgrading the PC soon, but will move these older parts to one of my sons PC's, so whatever I can do to reduce the power consumption now, will be helpful afterwards as well.
Power usage measured at the socket:
Idling: 305W
Prime95, Max heat: 355W (+16% up from idle)
Prime95, Max heat + Furmark: 465W (+52% up from idle)
The following components are plugged in while measuring power consumption:
System data:
CPU : C2D E8500 @ 3.75GHz (1.34 VCORE)
GFX : MSI N560GTX-448 (GTX560Ti-448)
RAM : 4x 2GB DDR2
PSU : Corsair HX620
HDD : WD Raptor 150GB
HDD : WD Caviar Black 1TB
SSD : Intel X-25M 80GB
Monitor : DELL U2410 (24")
Monitor : HP w2007 (20")
I'm sort of baffled as to the power consumption of my desktop PC while it's doing nothing else but showing the desktop and running it's background processes with CPU usage close to zero.
Power consumption when loading it heavily is of no surprise to me, but how much it uses while doing next to nothing really surprised me. I suppose it's primarily the graphics-card, but I really have no idea what draws this much current while doing nothing.
Any ideas as to what I can do to reduce it? Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.
Lower overclock is not really an option as it's pretty sluggish already when I'm gaming and/or using Adobe Lightroom.
I will be upgrading the PC soon, but will move these older parts to one of my sons PC's, so whatever I can do to reduce the power consumption now, will be helpful afterwards as well.
Power usage measured at the socket:
Idling: 305W
Prime95, Max heat: 355W (+16% up from idle)
Prime95, Max heat + Furmark: 465W (+52% up from idle)
The following components are plugged in while measuring power consumption:
System data:
CPU : C2D E8500 @ 3.75GHz (1.34 VCORE)
GFX : MSI N560GTX-448 (GTX560Ti-448)
RAM : 4x 2GB DDR2
PSU : Corsair HX620
HDD : WD Raptor 150GB
HDD : WD Caviar Black 1TB
SSD : Intel X-25M 80GB
Monitor : DELL U2410 (24")
Monitor : HP w2007 (20")