[GTALUG] Power Supplies & Video Cards

[David Thornton]

Some bioses (bioii?) will tell you about consumption, if that's any help.

The software package lm_sensors might be able to help you see what data is
made available but YMMV as there is no widespread "standard" for access to
power consumption data as far as I know.

Expensive servers have polished aps for acessing that sort of data....

ha! I googled "measuring  pci card power consumption" and the first hit was

"How We Measure Graphics Card Power Consumption ..."
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-performance-benchmarks,3784-3.html

Very sexeh setup.

David


david

On Tue, Jan 6, 2015 at 2:18 AM, D. Hugh Redelmeier <hugh at mimosa.com> wrote:

> | From: Kevin Cozens <kevin at ve3syb.ca>
>
> | Any spec for a video card as to power supply wattage would be a minimum.
>
> Not in my (limited) experience.  I have bought cards that wanted to
> specify how big my system's power supply was because the actual
> required arithmetic is too hard for customers.  They just guessed at
> what the rest of my system would require and left a margin for error.
>
> The real specs are a little tricky in theory (I don't actually know
> what things are like now).  The power supply supplies various
> voltages, each with its own current limit.  Each voltage is provided
> on one or more "rails", each with its own limit.  But sometimes a
> maximum draw on one reduces the limit on another rail.
>
> You need a power supply that has enough oomph on each rail.  So you
> want a requirement specified for each voltage.
>
> And generally you don't know how much power the rest of your system
> uses in aggregate.
>
> Usually when you build your own system you buy more power supply
> capactiy than you need.  It doesn't cost too much more and you don't
> really know what's needed.
>
> I imagine that common garden variety computers from big manufacturers
> tend to size their power supplies with smaller margins.
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