Question Power Consumption Too High? [HELP]

[hotfusion]

Hello everyone,

Recently, I've noticed that my PC's power consumption is high, and I've always wanted to test it, but I lacked the necessary tool. However, I realized that my Multimeter could do the job.

I checked the amount of current (in amps) my PC drew at idle from the wall, and here are the results I obtained:

(Note: I live in Asia, and the AC voltage from the wall typically ranges between 220V to 240V, so I used 230V as a baseline here.)

1. R5 3600 + RX 570 + 27 inch 1440p monitor = 0.68A (156W)
2. R5 3600 + RX 570 = 0.54A (124W)

This leaves my monitor consuming around 35W, which should be reasonably accurate.

I believe that 150W+ at idle is too high for an entry-level system. Even without the monitor, my PC still uses 120W+, which is still very high in my opinion. However, I am unsure of how much it contributes to my monthly electricity bill.

I also have an old i7 Haswell (4th Gen) system that consumes less than half of what my Ryzen system consumes at idle.

So what should I do with these results? Do you think they are accurate? If so, should I consider switching to Intel? I do not require much system power, as I only play games for 2-3 hours a day, and they are typically light games. However, I do leave my PC idle for long periods.

Here are my full system specs:

1. Ryzen 5 3600 (undervolted)
2. RX 570
3. Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite
4. Corsair Vengeance RGB 8GBx2
5. 7x 120mm fans (5 of them have LEDs)
6. 2x 7200RPM HDDs
7. 2x NVMe SSDs
8. Around 5-7 years old Corsair CS750M 80+ Gold PSU
9. 27 inch 1440p 144Hz monitor.

 

[Aeacus]

80+ Gold PSU

If you'd factor in PSU's inefficiency, your PC actually consumes 111.6W. Your PSU's efficiency, at 20% load, is 90%. Meaning that 12.4W of total max, is wasted as excess heat by PSU.

Now, if you'd have 80+ Titanium PSU (like i do) with 94% efficiency at 20% load, only 6.7W would be wasted as excess heat, making total power consumption 118.3W. That's a diff of 5.7W.

For reference, my Intel build (6th gen), Skylake, full specs with pics in my sig, currently consumes 70W, while i type this. Including my monitor which is 28W monitor.
How i know mine? Well, i have true/pure sine wave, line-interactive UPS, which displays the output wattage (among other things). At max load, i've seen ~212W out of my setup (during benchmark).

On paper;
* your GPU consumes 30W more than mine (RX 570 is 150W GPU, while i have GTX 1660 Ti, which is 120W GPU).
* your Ryzen chip is rated for 65W. Probably consuming less due to under voltage. My i5-6600K is rated for 91W and currently consumes ~20W (source: HWinfo64).
* you have two HDDs in your build. HDDs take quite a bit of power. I've discontinued all HDDs in my build, by keeping only: 2x M.2 NVMe SSDs, 2x 2.5" SATA SSDs.
* fans wise, i have more. Got 6x 140mm (running ~1100RPM), 3x 120mm (running ~700RPM). All my fans have LEDs. Three of them have ARGB LEDs.
* PSU wise, i have 80+ Titanium unit, you have 80+ Gold unit.
* i don't have RGB RAM. Nor has my MoBo any RGB on it either.

Alright, enough of my build, since you won't be getting the same build as i have.
But, i suggest that you download and run HWinfo64 in "sensors" mode. This will tell you exactly the power consumption of your components (better than messing around with multimeter).

Once you've established the power hog in your system (CPU, GPU, something else), we could look into how to reduce power consumption. It's a worth of shot before buying new build.

 

[hotfusion]

If you'd factor in PSU's inefficiency, your PC actually consumes 111.6W. Your PSU's efficiency, at 20% load, is 90%. Meaning that 12.4W of total max, is wasted as excess heat by PSU.

Now, if you'd have 80+ Titanium PSU (like i do) with 94% efficiency at 20% load, only 6.7W would be wasted as excess heat, making total power consumption 118.3W. That's a diff of 5.7W.

For reference, my Intel build (6th gen), Skylake, full specs with pics in my sig, currently consumes 70W, while i type this. Including my monitor which is 28W monitor.
How i know mine? Well, i have true/pure sine wave, line-interactive UPS, which displays the output wattage (among other things). At max load, i've seen ~212W out of my setup (during benchmark).

On paper;
* your GPU consumes 30W more than mine (RX 570 is 150W GPU, while i have GTX 1660 Ti, which is 120W GPU).
* your Ryzen chip is rated for 65W. Probably consuming less due to under voltage. My i5-6600K is rated for 91W and currently consumes ~20W (source: HWinfo64).
* you have two HDDs in your build. HDDs take quite a bit of power. I've discontinued all HDDs in my build, by keeping only: 2x M.2 NVMe SSDs, 2x 2.5" SATA SSDs.
* fans wise, i have more. Got 6x 140mm (running ~1100RPM), 3x 120mm (running ~700RPM). All my fans have LEDs. Three of them have ARGB LEDs.
* PSU wise, i have 80+ Titanium unit, you have 80+ Gold unit.
* i don't have RGB RAM. Nor has my MoBo any RGB on it either.

Alright, enough of my build, since you won't be getting the same build as i have.
But, i suggest that you download and run HWinfo64 in "sensors" mode. This will tell you exactly the power consumption of your components (better than messing around with multimeter).

Once you've established the power hog in your system (CPU, GPU, something else), we could look into how to reduce power consumption. It's a worth of shot before buying new build.

I already checked the individual CPU and GPU power consumption. CPU consumes around 30W on idle, it goes up to 45W when playing Youtube videos for example, max is 75W during Cinebench run.

GPU sits at around 35W on idle, and 110-130W on Unigine Heaven Benchmark run.

I feel like my CPU is one of the culprit. While my i7 4th gen can sit at lower than 10W on idle, this Ryzen CPU never dips below 25W.

Also, would you please check how much your GPU consumes on idle?

I have also checked it during load, here is what I found :

(There are all including monitor)
1. During playing Genshin Impact = 305w
2. During Forza Horizon 5 = 280W
3. Cinebench = 218W
4. Unigine Heaven = 299W
5. Unigine Heaven + CPU-Z stress = 340W

 

[Aeacus]

Also, would you please check how much your GPU consumes on idle?

Short answer (while typing this), ~7.5W.

Here's also a pic of my HWinfo64, showing power consumption of my hardware (including what my UPS is delivering to my PC);

Also, i'm running "Balanced power plan" and i haven't OC'd anything, instead running stock clocks on my CPU and GPU.
Btw, i have MSI Gaming X version of a GPU. Sure, it costs premium, compared to other GTX 1660 Ti GPUs, but it also has fine tuned power consumption, superb cooling and 0 dB(A) noise when GPU temps are below 60C.

 

[hotfusion]

Short answer (while typing this), ~7.5W.

Here's also a pic of my HWinfo64, showing power consumption of my hardware (including what my UPS is delivering to my PC);

Also, i'm running "Balanced power plan" and i haven't OC'd anything, instead running stock clocks on my CPU and GPU.
Btw, i have MSI Gaming X version of a GPU. Sure, it costs premium, compared to other GTX 1660 Ti GPUs, but it also has fine tuned power consumption, superb cooling and 0 dB(A) noise when GPU temps are below 60C.

Damn, those are very low compared to mine, I guess it's just an AMD thing even though my CPU is supposed to be more efficient.

Your CPU - 15W, mine 30W
Your GPU - 7.5W, mine 35W

The difference is too huge. I guess I will just look for an i5 10th or 11th gen to exchange it with. And change my GPU to nvidia.

Btw, thanks a lot for the detailed answers.!

 

[Aeacus]

I guess it's just an AMD thing

Well, i know that Radeon GPUs, compared to the same performance Nvidia counterpart, are rated for higher power draw and also consume more power as well.
Haven't looked Ryzen CPUs closer, about their power draw.

even though my CPU is supposed to be more efficient

Efficiency matters only when looking how much power is wasted as excess heat. This doesn't tell how power saving the CPU actually is.

Your Ryzen chip is rated to draw less power than my 6th gen Core i5, but completely another thing is the minimum operational level and the power draw at that point. E.g my i5-6600K, when idle, down clocks itself up to 800 Mhz for all cores (aka 0.8 Ghz), rather than running all cores at 3.5 Ghz (default speed). <- That neat ability saves a lot of power, when CPU idles around.
Turbo speed of my CPU is up to 3.9 Ghz, whereby my CPU has a dynamic clocks, ranging from 0.8-3.9 Ghz, depending on actual load on a CPU.

What Ryzen CPU frequency range is, and if it ever down clocks itself automatically (like Intel does) - that i don't know, since i don't have Ryzen build to test it out on.