Multi-meter numbers funny.. does anyone really need 600-700+ watts?

[Deleted member 4644]

My roommate has a multimeter that costs about $200 (so I assume its semi decent quality).

It measured my computer (see sig) as drawing 2.00-2.50 amps @ 117 vots while playing UT3.

So... that works out to be a max of 300W or so. So why do we tell people we need 600-700W PSUs? Is it just to be safe? To give us headroom?

Edit-- that is running the video card on the main power supply w/o using the aux supply. That is also with 4x 120mm fans and 1x 250 mm fan.

 

[jonnyGURU]

"w/o using the aux power supply"

So, your aux power supplies not plugged in and nothing's plugged into it?

Also, if you're just running UT3 with a pair of GT's, that's not much. UT3 is actually "dumbed down" because Sega paid Midway to not make the game as good as possible for PC because they wanted the console version to look "as good." You can actually run UT3 fairly well with a single 7800 GTX even with all of the eye candy cranked up. It simply does not utilize all that PC hardware has available to it.

Try it with Company Of Heroes or PT Boats or something DX10 and see what it's reporting.

Will you ever see > 500W coming off the wall? Nope. Highly unlikely with your machine. But it's good to have some overhead and then you have to account for the quality of the PSU, how the rails are distributed, etc. I usually suggest a good 550W for a pair of GT's.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

I am not being paid by anyone, and I have a Corsair HX620 on order from clubit after reading JonnyGuru's reviews (and others).

BUT, I am not longer *convinced* that I *have* to have the bigger PSU.

ALSO -- I made a big BOO BOO here. I am running one (1) 8800GT. The other one is still waiting to be put in. My figures are with one card and one PSU.

 

[jonnyGURU]

Originally posted by: Deleted member 4644
I am not being paid by anyone....

Where in this forum did I say you were?

Originally posted by: Deleted member 4644
ALSO -- I made a big BOO BOO here. I am running one (1) 8800GT. The other one is still waiting to be put in. My figures are with one card and one PSU.

Pretty big "boo boo" considering the graphics card uses more juice than anything else in your system.

 

[Deleted member 4644]

Just one word for your Mr. Guru: