[Nix]

Originally posted by Liberator
Well if you figure the following:
Mobo == 45w
Processor == 50-60w
HDD == 25w per(min 2)
Optical == 25w per(min 1)
Video == 225

225+25+50+60+45 == That's 405w minimum...MINIMUM!!!  There is no reason for it to be that high.  That is more power than the rest of the system combined...

Correct, but wouldnt that be the maximum power needed? Right now, my system is sitting comfortably consuming 220-230 watts.  My PSU has a gauge hooked to it showing the total consumption, and it's pretty dead-on.  My system by the way, using a 450W coolermaster power supply is:
Asus K8VSE DLX, Athlon 64 Proc 3000+ not o/c'd
Radeon 9800 Pro not o/c'd.
1 Seagate SATA drive, 2 IBM Deskstars on RAID,
Playing audio CD in DVD burner drive, additional DVD Reader, and the rest of the usual components, Modem, NIC, Audigy Sound card, Axim USB Link, the onboard components, etc.  Never ever has this psu been stressed past 300 Watts.  
and yeah, the needle on this gauge constantly bounces up and down so it does work properly.

[vyper]

You'd think we'd have developed less power intensive processors (both CPU and GPU) by now - but nooooo.... these bastards just want to keep running up my electricity bill...

[SadisticSid]

Originally posted by Grug
What's the best budget Video card?

I was thinking of an ATI 9800 Pro. I havn't been following Nvidia anymore.
I'll probably be looking to upgrade very soon. It should be fairly cheap (within $300-$350 AU) but if there is a drastic issue, I'd consider paying slightly more. The less the better though.

9800 Pro seems to be the way. Anyone who's got them, have you ever experienced considerable slow down in any game?

No slowdown when running WoW 1280*1024, except when entering areas with large numbers of players, which is a limitation of one's connection, hard drive, and processor speed rather than the graphics card AFAIK.

[Thorn]

Rawr.
http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

[edit] and Lib, thats the nature of technology. The more advanced it gets, the more power it will require. A few years ago a 350 watt was unheard of.

[Flipside]

I've just bought a 400W power supply, glad I did now

[Taristin]

Hmm... I've only a 330w...

But, ehh. I'm really really happy with my 9600XT, so I don't need to worry about this krupke.

[Grey Wolf]

I've had some limitations here with the 9800 series. More along the lines of limitations in how high I can raise the settings in modern games. Usually can pull off the best LoD, but AA and Anisotropic Filtering suffer in some.

[Liberator]

Originally posted by Thorn
[edit] and Lib, thats the nature of technology. The more advanced it gets, the more power it will require. A few years ago a 350 watt was unheard of.

I know that.

It just seems a little obscene for the one component to use more electrcity than the rest of the system combined.

[StratComm]

That's not totally true.  The Cray systems were about 10% as fast as a modern microprocessor, yet burned off enough power to require a liquid-bath cooling system.  But yes, in general, more computational power = more actual power.  Though power is one of the facets of microprocessor design that is optimized pretty heavily, believe it or not.

[EtherShock]

Originally posted by vyper
You'd think we'd have developed less power intensive processors (both CPU and GPU) by now - but nooooo.... these bastards just want to keep running up my electricity bill...

I guess comparing processors to something like car engines is like comparing oranges and apples, huh?  It seems to make sense though, make more powerful processors that use the same or less juice.

[Dark RevenantX]

Just borrow your dad's nuclear generator...

[Grey Wolf]

Now we just need the Mr. Fusion and the portable liquid nitrogen bath...

[Clave]

My PSU is 700W...

[Nix]

Originally posted by Clave
My PSU is 700W...

So you have a server-class machine or are you just mad?

[Kosh]

Originally posted by Liberator
Poking around before bed and saw this:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=22917

The Nvidia was asking PCISig for 75w more power.

So you'd basically have:

75w from the slot
75w from one 6 pin connector
75w from a second 6 pin connector

That is just plain obscene.

Combining that with a 110 Watt dual core Prescott would bump that minimum requirement up to 335 Watts. Can you imagine how hot a system like that could get?

[kode]

Originally posted by Nix


So you have a server-class machine or are you just mad?

he's got a dual cpu mac with all the bells and whistles, if I remember correctly.

[Grey Wolf]

Originally posted by Kosh



Combining that with a 110 Watt dual core Prescott would bump that minimum requirement up to 335 Watts. Can you imagine how hot a system like that could get?

110W for a Pentium D? The standard Prescott is 115W, and that's using Intel's poorly representative numbers. The Pentium D is listed at 130w, so I'd say estimate up to 150w at maximum load.

On a related note, those not understanding P=IV can really hurt your head...

[Kosh]

I thought the standard Prescott was 90 something watts. My mistake.

[Clave]

Originally posted by kode


he's got a dual cpu mac with all the bells and whistles, if I remember correctly.

Single CPU, one bell, one whistle, but I guess the same power supply is used in the dual-processor ones as well.  But even so, I just dont get it - as far as I know the IBM processors actual use less power than a P4....

[Grey Wolf]

They do. Apply just probably felt like putting an overly large PSU in so they could brag about the specs. Also, the efficiency may not be quite as high as some others.