Research: actual power usage modern PC's

Introduction

Reducing the power usage of computers has become a priority to manufacturers of both processors and graphics cards. Not strange, as the last few years the usage of PC's has risen to alarming levels. We checked out different systems and the actual true power usage of these, and wil give you a few tips on how to reduce this and save on your energy bill.

Not even that long ago computers had PSU's that could supply a maximum of 200 or 250 Watts to the different components, and it was unthinkable that the system would actually need this amount of power. However faster and more complex processors, graphics cards and other components are responsible for a change in this.

Nowadays a computer store will not sell a PSU that can deliver less than 300 Watt to a system, and a 400 Watt PSU is not an oddity anymore. High end machines require a minimum of 500 Watt, and there are plenty of PSU's on the market that can even supply more than this. Does your machine acually use this amount of power or is it all overkill? Sadly we have to conclude that the asnwer to that question is yes, it does. There are prcessors on the market that alone require 130 Watts and high end graphcis cards that use less than 70 Watts are very hard to find. Of the 10 machines that we have tested there was one energy efficient PC that uses 132 Watt at 100% capacity, but the heaviest PC does require more than 400 Watt when in full use.