RAM sticks power consumption Q

[Totti]

How much power does 1 stick of 512mb DDR stick use up?
I know it runs of the +5V rail but don't know how much....

Does the size or speed of the ram matter?

I am trying to calculate how much power I need for the PC I am getting.

Thanks !

 

[Lord Evermore]

AMD estimated 2 amps for a 128MB DDR module in a design guide not long ago. To be conservative you could multiply that by 4, but presumably higher density chips would consume less power per MB. I doubt it's that high, that'd be 40W just for the memory at maximum draw.

 

[zephyrprime]

I think you can roughly guage the power of a dimm by comparing it to a light bulb. 😛 It seems like a dimm produces less heat than a 15 watt bulb to me.

But seriously, according to here:
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/reviews/1787/11/
it's 9.1 watts.

Here says 8 watts for 512MB of ddr333 of infineon with 512mbit chips.
http://www.overclockers.com/articles696/

 

[Lord Evermore]

I'm not sure I trust anything under 10W for the number of chips on a 512MB module. AMD's build guide is on the upper side of average power consumption for some devices, and lower on the others, so I assume that they didn't overestimate 2amps very much.

 

[mechBgon]

You can find Micron's opinion on page 13 of this PDF file: 16W maximum.

 

[Lord Evermore]

Hmm, that maximum doesn't specify what size module it refers to. I'd presume that different densities and module sizes would use different power levels. Past page 13, they specifically provide the current draw for each module size. The "auto-refresh current" for a 512MB module is a sizable 3.9A for a particular revision, which is the highest of them all, so I presume that 16W is the maximum for any module size, and the smaller modules would have a lower max.

 

[mechBgon]

Hehe, well I sure hope they don't spend much time putting out 15W 😀 but sometimes mine do get quite hot when running a memory-intensive project such as SETI@Home.