What will the power requirements be in 1.5 years?

[Ronin13]

In an effort to reduce the noise of my current, aging rig, I'm considering getting a Seasonic S12 430W PSU (instead of my current 300W Antec).

I'm also planning on building a new (Conroe based) rig in about 1.5 years, and I'm hoping the S12 will be powerful enough at that time.

What do you expect the power requirements to be in 1.5 years?

(This is for a pretty basic system: Propably a 3(?)GHz Conroe (dual core), 1-2 GB RAM, a DVD-burner, a single harddrive, a single graphicscard.)

 

[bchreng]

I'm guessing that 400W would be sufficient for low-to-midrange systems with high end ones requiring 480W or above.

 

[airfoil]

A little prayer that the current ATX specification will stay constant may help too.

 

[Brian23]

acording to Moores law, power requirements double every 18 months.

 

[Ronin13]

Originally posted by: airfoil
A little prayer that the current ATX specification will stay constant may help too.

Are you thinking of something other than BTX? ('Cos, afaik, an ATX PSU will work just fine in a standard BTX tower.)

Originally posted by: Brian23
acording to Moores law, power requirements double every 18 months.

Have power requirements really increased that rapidly in the past?!? (If that was true, a build that needs 400W today should have gotten by on a mere 25W 6 years ago.)

And even if it had been true for the past, do you really expect 6400W to be the norm in 6 years?

One more thing, since Moore's Law has to do with an exponential growth in transistor count, can you accurately use it on total power requirements as well? Granted, CPU's and GPU's stand for a great deal of the total power consumption, but what about stuff like haddrives, optical drives, casefans, etc? Any reason why these components will have exponentially increasing power needs? Or do they use so little power that it doesn't really matter if their needs increase or not?

 

[biostud]

As long as you don't plan on running dual GPU's I would think 400W would be fine.

 

[Ronin13]

*bump*

 

[OzzieGT]

I don't agree with those who say power requirements are going to go up. I bet you an Athlon 3000+ venice system with a 6600 GT will use LESS power than my current Athlon 1900+ system with a ti4200. It's a much more powerful system and I am sure it will still run on my 350W PSU.

If you want to be safe get a Seasonic that is ~400ish watts.

 

[Brian23]

Originally posted by: Ronin13

Originally posted by: airfoil
A little prayer that the current ATX specification will stay constant may help too.

Are you thinking of something other than BTX? ('Cos, afaik, an ATX PSU will work just fine in a standard BTX tower.)

Originally posted by: Brian23
acording to Moores law, power requirements double every 18 months.

Have power requirements really increased that rapidly in the past?!? (If that was true, a build that needs 400W today should have gotten by on a mere 25W 6 years ago.)

And even if it had been true for the past, do you really expect 6400W to be the norm in 6 years?

One more thing, since Moore's Law has to do with an exponential growth in transistor count, can you accurately use it on total power requirements as well? Granted, CPU's and GPU's stand for a great deal of the total power consumption, but what about stuff like haddrives, optical drives, casefans, etc? Any reason why these components will have exponentially increasing power needs? Or do they use so little power that it doesn't really matter if their needs increase or not?

No, I was just kidding.

 

[Lonyo]

Originally posted by: Ronin13

Originally posted by: airfoil
A little prayer that the current ATX specification will stay constant may help too.

Are you thinking of something other than BTX? ('Cos, afaik, an ATX PSU will work just fine in a standard BTX tower.)

Originally posted by: Brian23
acording to Moores law, power requirements double every 18 months.

Have power requirements really increased that rapidly in the past?!? (If that was true, a build that needs 400W today should have gotten by on a mere 25W 6 years ago.)

And even if it had been true for the past, do you really expect 6400W to be the norm in 6 years?

One more thing, since Moore's Law has to do with an exponential growth in transistor count, can you accurately use it on total power requirements as well? Granted, CPU's and GPU's stand for a great deal of the total power consumption, but what about stuff like haddrives, optical drives, casefans, etc? Any reason why these components will have exponentially increasing power needs? Or do they use so little power that it doesn't really matter if their needs increase or not?

Transistor counts double, which doubles power consumption, theoretically.
But then as transistors get smaller, they require less power.
It's like the Athlon X2 on 90nm requires less power than a 130nm Clawhammer, and a dual core Dothan (Yonah) on 65nm will require about the same power as current 90nm Dothans.

 

[imported_rod]

430W would probably be enough. Is that PSU ATX2.0/BTX (24-pin) compatible? If so, it should definately be alright.

But then again, with computers, you can never be sure.

RoD

 

[Tostada]

Look at the 430W SeaSonic's specs. They are very close to the 500-600W model specs. It'd be almost impossible to build a normal system that would require something better in the forseeable future. With 14-15A rails, power requirements would have to double for almost every component.

Hard drives draw about 2A peak spinning up, and a GF6800 Ultra draws 4.22A max off 12V1. I think the Prescott 3.8 GHz draws a max of 7.2A on 12V2 (or maybe that's the FX-53, but I know the worst CPU is still under 10A peak), so the power requirements of CPUs would have to more than double, and that's not going to happen.