Component Power Requirements
The following table is based on numbers that we’ve collected in our test lab. The power supply power requirements refer to the heat dissipation, which all power supply units struggle with. The better the PSU efficiency, the less power it will convert into heat. The motherboard requirement summarizes the requirements for all motherboard components such as Northbridge, Southbridge, additional controllers and voltage regulators, as well. Processor and memory power requirements depend directly on the motherboard, as the efficiency of voltage regulators has an impact as well. The table does not include dual graphics setups ; these would increase the requirements even more.
| Component | Best Case | Worst Case |
|---|---|---|
| Power Supply | 5-15 W | 40-60 W |
| Motherboard | 10-15 W | 30-50 W |
| Processor | 12-30 W | 60-120 W |
| RAM | 5-15 W | 30-50 W |
| Hard Drive | 3-5 W (2.5") | 10-15 W (3.5") |
| Graphics Card (single) | 3-10 W (integrated) | 25-180 W (PCI Express) |
| Total | 38-90 W | 195-475 W |
Test Setup
We used a rather conventional Intel Core 2 system with a P965 motherboard from Gigabyte :
| System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Socket 775 | Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 (Conroe 65 nm, 2.93 GHz, 4 MB L2 Cache) |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte 965P-DQ6Chipset : Intel P965, BIOS : F10 |
| Common Hardware | |
| RAM I | 2x 1024 MB DDR2-800 (CL 4.0-4-4-12)Corsair CM2X1024-6400C3 XMS6403v1.1 |
| RAM II | 4x 512 MB DDR2-800 (CL 4.0-4-4-12)Corsair CM2X512-8500C5 XMS85053v1.1 |
| Graphics Card | Zotac 8800GTSGPU : Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTS (500 MHz) |
| RAM | 320 MB GDDR3 (1200 MHz) |
| Hard Drive I | 750 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/300(System + Replacement)Seagate Barracuda ES |
| Hard Drive II | 100 GB, 7,200 RPM, 2 MB Cache, UltraATA/100Western Digital WD1000BB |
| Hard Drive III | 120 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, UltraATA/100Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 |
| Hard Drive IV | 160 GB, 7,200 RPM, 8 MB Cache, SATA/150Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 |
| PSU | Skyhawk Power One 600W GM570PC |
| Software | |
| Nvidia Graphics | Forceware158.22 |
| Intel Chipset | Version 8.3.0.1013 |
| DirectX | Version : 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904) |
| OS | Windows XP, Build 2600 SP2 |
