How can I tell how many watts my system is using?

[KingstonU]

How can I tell how many watts my system is using?
Is there a program for this like CPU-Z or something?

What is the TDP of my 130nm Athlon 64 3200+ ClawHammer? (Rest of PC in signature)

Compared to my 3 year old system, How much less power would a new basic PC with a 65nm CPU with DDR2 ram (I beleive DDR2 uses less power than DDR1), significant at all?
How about a 45nm CPU, DDR3 ram and a Solid State hard drive?

Just curious, thanks

 

[athfbum]

New PCs today use more power, but they execute tasks more efficiently using the least amount of power they possibly can. However, most of us (when I say us I mean OCers and gamers) don't really care about power consumption except when picking out a PSU and to see how much heat it will put out (more power consumption -> more heat)

A C2D E6600 and 8800GTX use a lot of power, but they have an enormous amount of processing power. The combination allows for the most pleasurable gaming experience which is what most of us aim for.

With a system if you want low power consumption you try to aim for the most performance per watt.

[athfbum]

 

[dfuze]

Look for a program called Overklockulator (I think it's spelled w/ a 'k'). It has a tab that allows you to select components to determine the type of power supply to get.

 

[athfbum]

Extreme Outervision PSU calculator works really well

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculator.jsp

 

[Operandi]

There is no software that can answer that question. You can measure the power from the wall with a kilowatt meter to get the AC power draw -- power consumed by your hardware plus the power loss in your PSU for the AC to DC conversion.

To get a good idea of what each component draws read this SPCR article (Power Distribution within Six PCs).

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: Operandi
There is no software that can answer that question. You can measure the power from the wall with a kilowatt meter to get the AC power draw -- power consumed by your hardware plus the power loss in your PSU for the AC to DC conversion.

To get a good idea of what each component draws read this SPCR article (Power Distribution within Six PCs).

kill-o-watt FTW!!!! you will see exactly how many watts you are pulling from the socket...

 

[KingstonU]

I'm not talking about top of the line gaming rigs with 8800GTX and 750Gb harddrives, I'm talking basic systems.

I mean in terms of the TDP of newer CPUs is decreasing as manufacturing process gets in to 65nm and 45nm, we now see 65W and 35W CPUs and below when at idle.

Solid State hard drives use a fraction of the power of regular hard drives

DDR2 memory uses less power than DDR1

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: KingstonU
I'm not talking about top of the line gaming rigs with 8800GTX and 750Gb harddrives, I'm talking basic systems.

I mean in terms of the TDP of newer CPUs is decreasing as manufacturing process gets in to 65nm and 45nm, we now see 65W and 35W CPUs and below when at idle.

Solid State hard drives use a fraction of the power of regular hard drives

DDR2 memory uses less power than DDR1

again, get a kill-o-watt, it will tell you how much you are pulling

 

[aceO07]

Yup. I have a Kill-a-Watt. My desk uses about 190watts. That's 20" DELL LCD, router, dsl modem, speakers, lamp, laptop and the desktop.

 

[ShawnD1]

New computers use the same amount of power as old computers. I have a Core2 6600 with a GeForce 7950 and the peak power usage is never over 200W, as measured by my UPS. Idle power consumption is in the ballpark of ~130W.

Contrast that with something like a Pentium 4 or Athlon XP (32-bit) and it's not all that different. Even the original Athlon and Pentium 3 processors took about that much.