Calculating the power of the power supply unit of a modern gaming computer

Until recently, there were no special problems with the choice of power supply for the computer . I bought it, put it and forgot it until the breakdown. After it went out of order, a new source was bought, which successfully replaced the previous one. This technique worked in those cases when nothing else but him broke in the computer. But now the situation has radically changed, the choice of such an element must be thoroughly approached. By scientific research, to date, many methods have been developed that allow calculating the power of the power unit.

The main consumers of electrical energy in the computer are a processor, a graphics card (sometimes also called a graphic accelerator), coolers (there are several fans for cooling, there are several in the modern gaming system), RAM (consumes little, but it must also be taken into account) Board and drive on a hard magnetized disk. Each of these elements has its own consumed energy, and in carrying out such an operation as calculating the power of the power unit, these indicators must be taken into account.

Let's start with the processor, because this is one of the most energy-intensive parts. For example, the most powerful processor of the company Analog Micro Devices FX series with the index 8350 has a TDP of 125 W. This does not mean that it consumes 125 watts. Its cooling system should be designed to drain exactly this amount of heat. The second, the main consumer of energy in the computer is a graphic accelerator. Not the most productive, not the most hot to date, AMD video card series Radeon 6990 in peak mode is able to consume 450 watts. The motherboard consumes an average of 75 watts at maximum load. Next, add 60 watts to the hard drive, and if there is a DVD-RW drive, then we also increase the power by 30 watts. In the end, we take into account 20 watts of cooling system and 10 watts of memory. As a result of the summation, we get 770 W of such an indicator as the power of the power unit. It is recommended to take the source of electrical energy for the computer with a margin. In our case, it's best to purchase 800 watts.

In the simplest case, the calculation of the power of the power unit is made by summing up the energy that each individual component consumes separately. At the next stage, this number is rounded to the nearest available value, as in our case it was 770 W, and the result was rounded to 800 W.

Logical completion of such a course of things was the complete automation of such a process as the calculation of the power unit's power. Now many programs have been developed, which include databases with detailed data for each device on the market. The end user simply selects the components for his computer, based on this configuration is calculated. The program gives the minimum allowable value of this parameter for such an electronic computer.

In conclusion, it is worthwhile to give the simplest way of how to test the power of a power supply using a multimeter. To do this, you must first check the voltage value in the socket by direct measurement. In the next step we go into the current measurement mode and determine its value in the maximum load mode of the PC (for this we force the computer to start up as many programs as possible). The resulting values are multiplied and we get the power consumption. If this number is less than the nominal, then everything is in order. Otherwise, more detailed diagnostics and finding out the reasons for the device malfunctioning are necessary. All this can be done only in the service center.