does 500 watt psu always draw 500 watts of power when its on?

[anonlychild]

hello

my pc : i5 4460 + mb + 8gb ram + 120gb ssd + stock cooler + 2 case fan with m12ii evo 520w seasonic full modular , windows 7 pro (set power option : balance)
(currently no GPU & no sound card)

so im about to move to an apartment from my parents house, see the tariff for electricity on apartment are about 3 times more expensive than in regular house.

im concern if my PC will draw to its maximum psu capacity, need input please

 

[rohitbaran]

No, it depends on the computational load on the system. If you are making the system do demanding stuff like high requirement games or complex editing or some other CPU or GPU intensive work, your system power draw will increase. Under normal operation though, it will be a fair bit lesser.

 

[anonlychild]

No, it depends on the computational load on the system. If you are making the system do demanding stuff like high requirement games or complex editing or some other CPU or GPU intensive work, your system power draw will increase. Under normal operation though, it will be a fair bit lesser.

thank you for answering, are there a software or method to check how much power my pc uses from time to time?

and if you have to guess with my current setup, how much power does it typically use when browsing & downloading?

 

[Grabofus]

As a guess your load will be about 180 watt.

You can use the following site to calculate the load wattage with different setups:
http://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

You also have to consider the efficiency of your PSU. In your case it is a 80 PLUS Bronze certified one.
With your watt usage the PSU will run on around 34% load. (180W / 520W)

You can look up a chart about how efficient are different 80 PLUS certified PSU's on each percentage.

In your case you should expect about 82% efficiency at maximum load. So the PSU will have to draw about 219W from the wall to be able to supply your system the desired 180W. (180W / 0.82)

 

[rohitbaran]

That usually means the psu can monitor the power that is being drawn and sends it to the pc and then you can view it. This cannot be done with all psus. Corsair Axi series offers that feature.
If you want to do so with other psus, get a wattmeter. Here is one:
http://www.corsair.com/en-us/ax760i-digital-atx-power-supply-760-watt-80-plus-platinum-certified-fully-modular-psu

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Even if you added a 970 you would have plenty of power.

Your electricity won't be affected much at all there won't be a full draw or close to it with no card.