What is your desktop power usage while browsing these forums?

[Idontcare]

Forgot to press the go button on my Amazon order last week. Killawatt should be here Friday, which will ruin a good portion of that day for me.

 

[Khato]

Its my understanding that the SB/IB 24fps bug is overblown because it only affects people who are playing back video on tv/displays that can accept and output native 24p instead of the usual 60p. Blu ray videos typically go through the 3:2 pulldown process to sync to 60hz on tv/displays.

Exactly. It only affects those purists who specifically setup their systems to playback in that mode.

I actually experimented with running my HTPC at a 23.976 Hz output for a bit since my projector supports it. It actually does make it look more like a movie theater... which far as I'm concerned is a bad thing. Especially for anything with panning/action shots all it does is make it jerky - sure that may be the director's intent in rare occasions but usually it's just a visual distraction from the movie.

The other major con about running the HTPC on a 23.976 Hz output - talk about making a UI feel sluggish. Granted you can get around that by only enabling 24 fps output with certain players only in full screen mode such that there's no UI even available... But again, it's just that much more hassle for no real gain.

 

[Idontcare]

...sure that may be the director's intent in rare occasions but usually it's just a visual distraction from the movie.

My personal feeling on that is that in addition to 24fps it was also the director's intent that the audience would experience their movie as viewed on a large screen in an actual movie theater, complete with having a hundred or so noisy snack-munching neighbors surrounding themselves while sitting in a sticky soda-covered theater seat.

As soon as one takes it upon themselves to view the director's creation in a setting such as their personal home, sans the crowds, sans the theater-sized movie screen, sans the aroma of stale popcorn and gummy bears rotting under the seats...they are then fooling themselves if they think forcing their projector/viewer to display the movie in 24fps mode redeems this altered environment in such a way as to leave them in the right to declare "this is what the director intended me to experience while watching their movie"

The only time you get to watch a movie at home and be certain you are viewing it as the director intended is when the director made a "straight-to-video" movie...and that won't be in 24fps.

 

[Khato]

...they are then fooling themselves if they think forcing their projector/viewer to display the movie in 24fps mode redeems this altered environment in such a way as to leave them in the right to declare "this is what the director intended me to experience while watching their movie"

Hear, hear! I will admit though that there are a hand full of movies that actually make use of 24fps to achieve a certain effect, but they're few and far between.

The only time you get to watch a movie at home and be certain you are viewing it as the director intended is when the director made a "straight-to-video" movie...and that won't be in 24fps.

Possibly, though it's not too often that I see a blu ray using either the 25i or 30i formats instead of 24p. It's understandable why they kept the fps options so low with blu-ray - higher fps necessitates higher bitrate in order to maintain constant quality.

If only the display links were all capable of running at the ~120Hz refresh rate then we'd have no problems whatsoever with 24p content since the actual displays are typically capable of outputting that refresh rate. The source could simply do the frame replication or CFI.

 

[jaqie]

Khato, the situation you describe is one of very few that I would actually like to see (temporal) interpolation at work.

 

[bononos]

That is good to know.

So would it be fair to assume that with the advent of APU/iGPU that basically no HTPC uses a discrete video card?

I'm wondering if my 2600K would make for an acceptable HTPC with its iGPU. I understand the CPU itself would be overkill, but I already own the CPU and am just looking for a home for it. If it can be converted into a low-power HTPC then that is a win for me.

Pretty much since igpus are in the good enough territory. The SB HD3000 looks be comparable to the Llano for htpc purposes which is plenty good. THW had a nice review which shows that a discrete 5750 is the minimum for maxing out post processing quality options without dropping frames.
But there are newer things like frame interpolation mentioned by the other poster which needs more grunt power.

 

[Tsavo]

Well, got the Killawatt today.

My 150 watt estimate was way off. :hmm:

Core i5/750 w ATI 4850, 4GB RAM, 1 120GB Intel G2 SSD, 1 WD Blue 1tb HDD, 1 WD Black 1TB. 1 Dell 2313HM monitor.

Core i5/3570k w GTX 660. 8GB RAM, 1 128GB Crucial M4 SSD, 1 1tb WED Red, 1 1tb Samsung F3. 1 1TB Toshiba external USB3 drive. 1 500GB Seagate external drive. 1 2412M monitor.

2 sets of assorted speakers, 1 HP inkjet printer.

220-230 watts surfing on the main box, with HD video playing on the 2nd box.

3570k uses 68 watts just sitting there. Monitor off.

i5/750 uses 80 watts just sitting there. Monitor off.

Each Dell LCD uses 30 watts each.

3570k uses 196 watts w/LCD running LinX. As much as 220 watts running the built in Tomb Raider benchmark.

Good thing electricity is cheap here.

edit: i5/750 has an older Corsair TX650v1 PSU. Not 80+ rated. 3570k has an Antec branded Seasonic that is 80+ rated.

 

[Chiropteran]

212-220W on this i7-3770 Dell XPS 8500 system. Of course, "idle" means mining bitcoins.

Shutting down the bitcoin miner application...

It's bouncing around between 90-100W. I'm also installing a game and downloading some large files, running skype & steam & gtalk, so it's still not a real idle. I'll updater later when I can shut everything but browsers down.

 

[Deders]

Now I've upgraded to a 670, it's around 108w when my cpu is clocked to 3800, Furmark and Prime64 give me 375-380w.

Standard stock clocks give me 83w, with Furmark and Prime 64 it's 294w

Lowest clocks with 2 cores disabled gives me 74w, prime64 and Furmark give me 262w.

 

[alcoholbob]

432W is my idle draw from the wall O_O

When I'm gaming sometimes I see it hit up to about 685W.

3770K @ 4.4GHz
GTX Titan OCed to 1100/6300
4 USB hard drives
Xbox 360 Controller
Plus a 32" IPS LG TV that sucks a ton of power
and a Yamaha RX-A3000 receiver

 

[Rhoxed]

Rig #1 in sig -(the 1090T) 12 fans total, 2 1tb HD's and a bluray drive not listed in specs

Idle, fans on high - 240-250W - Fans on low - 210-215W - Fans off 190-200W

Just upgraded rig! - 8350 @ 4.7ghz 1.425V / Gigabyte 990FX-UD5 / Corsair H100i / Added a 2tb drive, switched out 5 120mm fans for 1 230mm, all other parts are the same. Made the rig damn near silent, runs ALOT cooler than the 1090T.

8350/H100i - 80 - 95W idle


saving a good 100watts over the 1090T and enjoying cool silence.

(looking to take the 8350 to 5+ for benches if she allows, we will see this week)

 

[Deders]

New case and the wattage drops to 102w @3800

 

[ensign_lee]

684W.

But I am bitcoin mining.

 

[Rainer]

135 W

With a SAS controller, HD backplane, Soundcard and 4 Harddisks, it really adds up :hmm:

 

[aigomorla]

lets say ive seen my system peak at about 700W+

...

Tri sli... intel Hexcore..

 

[jaqie]

These kinds of measured wattages make me wonder what you all do for room cooling to get that heat out of the room the computer is in...

 

[Idontcare]

These kinds of measured wattages make me wonder what you all do for room cooling to get that heat out of the room the computer is in...

True. Dumping 700W into a room for an extended period of time will definitely make that room quite toasty.

 

[aigomorla]

These kinds of measured wattages make me wonder what you all do for room cooling to get that heat out of the room the computer is in...

BIG BOX fan prop'd up to a window...
unless its the summer... then the AC goes on...

if ur wondering whats cooling those 700+W

4 radiators....

True. Dumping 700W into a room for an extended period of time will definitely make that room quite toasty.

ive done that too... probably more then 700W when i had a 40kppd crunch farm back in the days...

who needs a heater for winter??

at least its not a prescott so i know most the heat isnt a waste product of the cpu.

 

[Idontcare]

BIG BOX fan prop'd up to a window...
unless its the summer... then the AC goes on...

if ur wondering whats cooling those 700+W

4 radiators....


ive done that too... probably more then 700W when i had a 40kppd crunch farm back in the days...

who needs a heater for winter??

at least its not a prescott so i know most the heat isnt a waste product of the cpu.

In winter it is far smarter to heat your house with your computer than with a simple resistor-heater. The computer does stuff for you while also heating your home! Win-Win!

 

[westom]

700 watts will toast bread. If your machine is that hot, then use that toaster oven to also toast bread and muffins.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

Slight page #2 necro, just got my kill-a-watt and this thread was part of the reason.

Anyways, i3-540 @ 3.9GHz /w speedstep and a 7950 web browsing gives me around 74w usage.

 

[Idontcare]

Slight page #2 necro, just got my kill-a-watt and this thread was part of the reason.

Anyways, i3-540 @ 3.9GHz /w speedstep and a 7950 web browsing gives me around 74w usage.

Nice, I'm impressed with that given the 7950 in the mix.

 

[BallaTheFeared]

I dropped it down to 3.8GHz @ 1.3v (3.9 required almost 1.4v), dropped my 7950 to 800MHz and undervolted that to 950mv...

Edit: Oh and dropping the offset so much lowered the idle voltage, as well as reducing the blck I now idle around 65-70w in IE10.

Played a game of BF3, 64 player..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=316b91nt5ig

Peaks around 184w, AVG (wish it had that toggle) was probably around 175~. With just prime95 it sits around 113w... I really wish I had lower idle, I can't wait for Haswell :\

 

[jaqie]

I just bought an IBM X41 tablet PC (1.5GHz p3 mobile based cpu, 2gb installed ddr2, 60gb 1.8" pata HDD) and while typing this it is taking 15.2w with a fully charged battery. xfce-mint 14 x86. This is going to replace my 'old' (newer) pentium dual core 1.87GHz laptop for chatting and net browsing and mobile / bed movie watching (DVD quality to me is plenty enough). I just shut off my main pc, the 6 core thuban, for the first time in months and my room is already cooler. This is going to be my main summer PC.

I wonder how much my core 2 duo custom built mini ITX file server machine takes under normal use? I guess I could get a wifi N card in this and also use it as a remote app server for the more piggy apps, too. hmm.

do I now have the lowest wattage box here? Im not sure, just curious. prolly 2nd or 3rd lowest.

 

[SPBHM]

laptops are extremely efficient, it's pretty easy to stay under 15w (with the screen!).

BallaTheFeared, I thought the overclocked i3 would use more power, it looks pretty comparable to what I get with an i3 2100 + hd5850.