Theoretical Max for current hardware
Posted by John-Erik | Filed under Uncategorized
Now that’s giving a theoretical max for current hardware and its unlikely that you will be using all these devices at once, but extremely high end gaming rigs can easily consume more power than a dual CPU server, depending on how its built, used, accessories, ect..
Even a high end graphics card can use as much or more power as an extra CPU, and should you consider SLI, well you can figure for that much more.
Even a high end graphics card can use as much or more power as an extra CPU, and should you consider SLI, well you can figure for that much more.
That’s why I didn’t quote a dual CPU server, I quoted a dual CPU workstation with the most power hungry graphics card available, the two most power hungry CPUs available and four of some of the most power hungry hard disks available consuming at peak forty watts each.
Servers are a whole different can of worms. Usually a 550W supply would be used on a system with >8 SCSI or FC-AL drives, two processors, a hardware RAID controller, et cetera. 400-350 is pretty common on a rackmounted 1U ro 2U dual processor server with half a dozen disks.
And you must also take into account that power supply effeciency, VRM effeciency, et cetera. Power supply effeciency actually gets gradually better up to 90% load at which point it is at its most stable.
And I think you’ll find that at 0.4 watts per MHz a 4 GHz CPU would draw 1600 watts. 0.040 watts per MHz on an AMD CPU (which run at lower clock speeds) is about right, Intel draws about 0.035 per MHz, including VRM ineffeciencey.
The fact of the matter is though that if you’re looking at a packed to the gills gaming rig with SLI in the future you should not be looking at ATX power supplies but going rather to the EPS power supplies with multiple 12V rails and so on. Without SLI, then go with ATX.
