Power Consumption and the Modern Geek

mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech's Loyd Case got his hands on an Extech model 380083 power meter and decided to find out exactly how many watts today's geek equipment uses. He compares AMD vs. Intel processors, Nvidia vs. ATI graphics cards, and even checks out what a cranked up audio system draws -- it's a lot more than a PC."

Comments

P3 International's P4400 Power Meter

[Futurepower(R)]

Cheap Power meter: P3 International's P4400. Everyone who has more than 4 computers on at the same time should have one. LOL. Less than $30.

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Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?

Can too overclock a CnQ enabled AMD system

[Brian Stretch]

From TFA:
The way Cool'n'Quiet works is that it reduces the multiplier when at idle or reduced load. So the clock speed effectively goes down, which means the CPU draws less current. But it also means that we couldn't overclock. On our ASUS A8N32-SLI motherboard, enabling Cool'n'Quiet disables the ability to overclock.

Maybe they changed it on the A8N32-SLI, but that's not how it works on the A8N-SLI Premium. My X2 3800+ is OC'd by 15%, running 1150MHz in CnQ mode and 2300MHz at full speed. What you can't do is change the core voltage from its default settings with CnQ enabled, so forget about OC'ing a 3800+ to FX60 levels. Since AMD is very conservative with their default voltage settings you have some room to play with if you have proper cooling.

CnQ on desktop CPUs normally runs the processor at 1GHz at 1.1V core while idle and full speed at a higher core voltage under load. In practice this makes a fairly minor difference, but for a machine that runs 24x7 every little bit helps.

Notebook CPUs use 800MHz at an even lower core voltage (usually 0.95V or 1V) as their low-power setting, which makes CnQ significantly more effective than in desktops. You definitely want to keep power management enabled in notebooks.

Core voltage has a much greater effect on power consumption than clockspeed, which is why undervolting is so popular.

You'll want to buy AMD over Intel regardless ;-).

Re:European model?

[lakin]

Not as fancy as the one in the review, but how about this? Its got a UK plug/socket but should be fine for use in FR (from the specs on that page it should work with 240v 50/60hz but not 120v).
I have one, seems to do the job!