Upgraded to a more efficient PSU

[jawknee530]

I'll be the first to admit that tests are in no way perfect. They were done from the wall using a P3 Kill A Watt, a pen, paper, and my eyeballs. Every 3 seconds by the clicking of my clock i would write down the display number of the killawatt and I averaged them for the results below.

You can see my rig in my sig below. The antec 900 has four 120mm antec tri-speed fans set to low and one 250mm fan set to high. Speed stepping and smart fan control for the 120mm fan in the tuniq tower are enabled.

I recorded the power draw of my pc from the wall in three different scenarios before and after the psu switch. All variables in the computer remained the same. The scenarios I tested are:

Idling on the desktop, running 3dmark06, and running Prime95.

Here's the results:

Antec TruePower 2.0 550w
idle: 143w 3dmark: 243 Prime95: 218

Corsair hx520w
idle: 120w 3dmark: 210 Prime95: 186

these numbers are rough estimates and of course not exact. the killawatt didn't fluctuate more than +/-5w on these tests from what I saw. a 16, 13, and 14% gain in efficiency in these scenarios is nothing to blink at though. And i must say that I thought that my pc would draw a lot more power than it does.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Overall power draw isn't what most people expect but you have to plan you PSU purchase around the possible peek load the system may impose on the PSU. Not to mention accounting for cap aging which will cause the PSU's output to drop over time. If you really want to stress the system and see what kind of power draw you can really get from it run both Prime and 3D Mark at the same time. That way your loading both the CPU and GPU. That will truelly put a strain on the PSU.

 

[jawknee530]

ill try running both at once and see what my draw is once i get home. would this be the best way to see the maximum power draw of my pc? also, since this psu is better does that mean that i may have a better chance of getting my cpu stable at 3.6GHz since I couldn't ever get it stable there before.

edit: running both gave me a pull of 235w. but i have no benchmark to compare that to with my old psu.

 

[mpilchfamily]

Sometimes a better PSU will help with your OC.

 

[jawknee530]

cool, ill try to get my rig to 3.6 then. does anyone know if this power supply has an ocp per rail or will it push all of its 12v amps through one rail as though it's a single rail psu?

 

[John]

The GameXstream (built by Fortron and based on the Epsilon platform) is a true quad rail psu with 18A max per 12V, and it has a combined output of 50A (600W). Unfortunately the Gamexstream/Epsilons have ripple that goes out of ATX spec on >500W loads.

 

[jawknee530]

thanks for the info John

 

[Zepper]

Cooling and the specific CPU will determine OCability, assuming the power is adequate and relatively stable. CPU power is regulated and filtered on the mobo anyway.

.bh.