for a long time I was very proud of my PC because it is fully capable of gaming and can even run the flight simulator without a graphics card.
I always thought Nosferatu (this is the name of my mysterious night-black PC) has a maximum power consumption of 65-70 watts because this is the maximum power draw of the Ryzen with Vega GPU and it is therefore a master of power saving. A gaming machine only being in need of 65 watts!
Well this is unfortunately not true… Yesterday I read that high end mainboards eat 80-100 watts and every single bank of RAM needs 15 watts (which makes 90 watts for the board + 60 watts for the RAM + 65w for the CPU.)
215 watts for the PC + 175 watts for the monitor is not that cool anymore to run it almost 24/7!
But I assume that these 215 watts of power draw are only needed when the system is running at 100% while gaming.
Does anyone know how much power a mainboard and the RAM banks need when being at idle or doing light desktop apps like watching movies with VLC player?
Why does a mainboard even needs ~100 watts?
It´s chipset needs 12 watts and the soundchip and other systems only a few w.
The VRM`s don´t consume any power on their own - they just ready the voltage for the CPU.
What exactly is it that needs so much power in a mainboard?
I cannot do anything against that anyway because I only build ultra high end components - but I am curious
SODIMMS and laptop processors actually are super efficient. A laptop I9 12900HK has a max turbo power draw of 115 watts versus the desktop Core i9-12900K peaking at just over 300 watts and that is before overclocking.
I would not say this is “super efficent” , Its just a marketing gag because 12900HK sounds same as 12900K , but get much less performance.
All what they do today ( mainboard, RAM, cpu, gpu, … ) is to get more performance at coast of more energy consumption. Starting with better hardware design done e.g. apple with its new chips and hopefully this will be the future ( they drive with 100W all full system for 8k video editing ). A current Intel High-End PCs can consume easily 1000W and more ( without the monitor ).
My first MSFS-running laptop had a little power supply like that. It would get pretty hot running the game as did the laptop itself. My new HP Omen laptop has a huge heavy 330W supply. The good news is, it only gets a little warm running MSFS. The bad news is, it is much more difficult to travel with the laptop because of the massive power supply.
Laptops are highly efficient. The last ship I had was a MSI GX70 Destroyer with a power supply rated with 120 watts - and it was a very good gaming laptop.
Having an illuminated keyboard nowadays is not that special anymore but getting a good gaming laptop with illuminated keyboard was very special in 2013.
Some time ago (I guess a year ago or so I had this program installed while running the previous hardware configuration) HWinfo said the CPU is idling with 25 watts, mainboard 12 watts, no information about the RAM, and the graphics card idles with 8-12 watts.
But even after changing every component but the mainboard the power consumption should not have changed much.
But I have never checked how much power draw the mainboard itself has while doing intense gaming.
And I have never calculated any mainboard power consumption into buying the perfect PSU, only CPU (65 - 145w) + graphics card (209w) + 100 watts for fans and drives because I simple did not know that the mainboard also is in need for serious power (I always thought a board maybe uses a few watts just like a casual mechanical harddrive)
, Its just a marketing gag because 12900HK sounds same as 12900K , but get much less performance.