PSU Standby consumption

Apr 3, 2018
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I have bought a new fully modular 650W power supply to build a new system. First, hooked it up to an old system based on 2nd generation i5 and after to a new Ryzen 7 rig with the same hard drives and etc. In both cases the power supply draws 70-80W when the computer is running for web browsing, which is fine.
What I do not understand is why after the operating system (Windows 10) has been shutdown, the power of 50W (~0.2A current on 240V) is drawn and does not reduce below this figure even when all cables from the power supply (including the motherboard) were disconnected. When the power switch is turned off, the power consumption does go to zero. I have measured power using powermeter PM230. One of the old and much cheaper power supply under the same conditions takes ~17W, while another system was showing near zero, could not measure how much was consumed.
I have bought one of the power supplies (650W gold 80%) reviewed here and puzzled why the standby consumption is nowhere near what was achieved in the reviews here. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.
 
Solution
Yep this is called parasite power consumption. My PCs draw between 8-12W in sleep according to my Kuman wall power meter. But 50W in sleep is not right. My guess is something is not fully going into "sleep" mode on that PSU and it's still sucking power. Not good. All PSUs should be "hot" when not in use but not at that level.


so what i'm gathering from what you are saying is that the standby power consumption is to high, and you don't understand that.
it sucks power even if it not connected to any peripherals inside the computer.

imho think that it is not suppose to suck anything with no chords attached to any peripherals, and therefore the 650W psu is failty, you should go down to your retailer or where ever you bought it and get a RMA for refund.

Though one could argue that you could just pull the power plug out of the wall socket when you don't use the pc.

everything that is electronic has a standby power consumption.
PSU have it because the thing has to stay "alive but sleeping" for it to register a "on /wake up" signal from the motherboard even if it isn't connected to anything.

BUT i totally agree with you that it is a high consumption rate, 50 watts for standby power is way beyond what it is suppose be consuming. like 5-15 watts would be normal for a standby power rating.

cheers! 😀
 
Yep this is called parasite power consumption. My PCs draw between 8-12W in sleep according to my Kuman wall power meter. But 50W in sleep is not right. My guess is something is not fully going into "sleep" mode on that PSU and it's still sucking power. Not good. All PSUs should be "hot" when not in use but not at that level.
 
Solution
Thank you for replies. It does confirm what I have thought, it must be faulty. I would be happy to allow for 5-10W of parasitic power consumption as described above. What makes it worse, that I have received the replacement unit and it has an identical fault. It also consumes 50W with no cables plugged to, or when the computer is shutdown. Must be a bad batch. Will look at a different make.