I recently finished an i7 build at work and we wondered what kind of power it was using at full load. At the wall we measured about 2.4 amps at 120v, meaning 288 watts. This was with both prime95 and furmark running their tests. At idle it was running in the <200 watt watt range.
Here are the specs:
i7 920 @ 3.11Ghz
EVGA GTX 260
6 GB DDR3
620 GB Western Digital Caviar HDD
6 120mm fans
SATA DVD Burner
650 watt Corsair Power Supply
Granted you want to stay in the middle of your power supply's rated power but in this case I should be fine with a nice quality 500 watt supply. My question is, what are people doing to make realistic use of a desktop 1000w supply? Most of the time this computer will be using just 1/3 of the supplied power. Are these massive power supplies just for people who want bragging rights or is there some legitimate reason for them? I can't imagine 2 more hard drives and 2 more GTX 260's adding 400+ watts.
Here are the specs:
i7 920 @ 3.11Ghz
EVGA GTX 260
6 GB DDR3
620 GB Western Digital Caviar HDD
6 120mm fans
SATA DVD Burner
650 watt Corsair Power Supply
Granted you want to stay in the middle of your power supply's rated power but in this case I should be fine with a nice quality 500 watt supply. My question is, what are people doing to make realistic use of a desktop 1000w supply? Most of the time this computer will be using just 1/3 of the supplied power. Are these massive power supplies just for people who want bragging rights or is there some legitimate reason for them? I can't imagine 2 more hard drives and 2 more GTX 260's adding 400+ watts.