Hello

The title was supposed to be "excessive PSU power consumption" but for some reason I was unable to post with that title.

I've recently recieved my dormitory electric bill of 30euros for last month and i've decided to investigate as to what is eating all that power.
After sticking a cheap 6907 "power calculator" in between different appliances i've found that my Pc takes up 5-7watts when it's off which is reasonable (isn't it?) since it has a standby power mode.
But what surprised me is that when the pc is on it takes up about 130 Watts of power! And that's when not running any programms, just sitting there on the desktop.It jumps up to 160-170 when doing basic things like web browsing.
The pc is almost 4 years old and after some calculations I estimate that it has seen 17000-20000 working hours.
I won't go into details of the spec of the PC but the basics are :

- 3.2 Ghz 4-core processor
- 1M graphics card
- Some decent (at that time) motherboard
- 1terrabite HDD
- 1000 WATT power supply

I have a suspicion that the power supply is eating alot of power for no good reason.
Is it possible for the efficiency of an ATX or similar switching power supply to drop after tens of thousands of hours of use?
Should I open it up and check the Electrolytics first?

I am going to post a similar thread on some computer forum to see what
people more experienced with computers are going to say but I want to hear
an opinion from an electronics point of view aswell.

The power supply is a 1000Watt coolmaster silent pro.

Ps. yeah yeah I know a 1000Watt PSU is too much but when I was putting my pc together I didn't know much about Pc's and took advice from a friend who recommended that I get a 1000watt psu.

 

I have a suspicion that the power supply is eating alot of power for no good reason.
Is it possible for the efficiency of an ATX or similar switching power supply to drop after tens of thousands of hours of use?
Should I open it up and check the Electrolytics first?

I suspect had you tested the P.S. when you got the PC, you would have found comparable results.
I wouldn't expect that to be excessive?
Max.

 

I haven't tested the PSU when I got the PC so I don't have comparable results. But my pc had been running at about 12 hours daily and I haven't been getting high power bills until lately so that's what proned me to check it out.
Hmm you really think that 130 watts is reasonable?
Where is it all going?

 

I haven't tested the PSU when I got the PC so I don't have comparable results. But my pc had been running at about 12 hours daily and I haven't been getting high power bills until lately so that's what proned me to check it out.
Hmm you really think that 130 watts is reasonable?
Where is it all going?

LOL
My video cards requires more power than that ...

 

Taking the efficiency of your power supply into account (85%) leaves your PC pulling about 110W.

Sounds about right.

 

LOL
My video cards requires more power than that ...

Well yeah , i've also got a 200watt card but I didn't think that the quiescent power consumption would be so high.
Well I guess there is nothing I can do about it

 

Well yeah , i've also got a 200watt card but I didn't think that the quiescent power consumption would be so high.
Well I guess there is nothing I can do about it

Right now I am using a ATI 5770 1gb and Also have a Ati HD4870 512mb....
Remenber too
4 core Proccessor- 95 or more watts
Video card-150 or more watts
And the rest of the hardware pulls power and also you cooling system too

 

" Paranoid Pete " sez... It's conspiracy and collusion of the power conglomerates to rip off the power consumer...

 

dont use standby mode! when you start up kill off any processes you dont need, make sure you dont have silly programs that start when the pc starts. keep the start up as lean as you can, then just start the programs as you need them. have a good look at how many background programs and processes are running, stop any you dont need at the time. It all adds up in the end.

 

paulk went up the road I was thinking. The more excess capacity you have, the more waste at idle loads.

 

paulk went up the road I was thinking. The more excess capacity you have, the more waste at idle loads.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing.

Also I think that I have too many unnecessary idle processes running.
I compared my quiescent power consumption with a guy's down the hall
and he has about 95 watts quiescent and a much more powerfull(much more recent) pc than I do.