Power Consumption by Component

[lyoshenka]

I don't know if this is the right forum for this but I've been having a really hard time figuring out a good estimate of how much power my planned system is going to consume. I've seen estimates from several years ago that claim things like "Motherboard consumption: 50-150W" and I have no idea how accurate these figures are or how relevant they are today.

So, my question is this: are there any sites where I can look up how much power each of my components uses (either peak or average use)? It doesn't have to be exact, but it should be a pretty narrow range and hopefully backed up by actual data.

I realize that this might not be possible (short of measuring everything myself) but I'm just wondering. Also, I've read in a lot of places (including here) that there's almost no way a typical PC uses over 300-400W, but I'd like to see actual evidence of that. The SPCR tests were done several years ago and I don't know if they still apply.

[stromgald]

There are plenty of PSU sizing calculators online, but most of them are very, very conservative. If you want to look at overall system power consumption, check out anandtech.com . Most of their CPU and motherboard reviews have overall system power consumption. They don't do individual parts because that's a lot harder to measure. For system power, you just need a $20 Kil-a-Watt meter.

Here's a link to a motherboard round-up done at the end of last year:
http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=3471&p=11
As you can see, power consumption for setups with high-end motherboards with only one GPU, generally top out at around 250-300W.

You have to dig through the article for their system setup, but it should be there. If you want more recent data, they have newer articles as well.

[petercrab]

I did search power consumption benchmarks for similar systems to my own to get an idea. Hope this helps.