Real-world example of cpu and gpu power consumption

namffuak

The questions "Is my power supply capable of running a new GPU" or "What size power supply do I need?" come up fairly frequently, so I thought a real world example might help.

This snapshot was taken about ten minutes into a twenty minute render. I'll describe what the snapshot shows first and then cover the system configuration.

Starting in the lower right corner - this is the PowerChute monitor showing the current status of the 1350 VA APC UPS the system is plugged into. The bar graph shows a quickly read relative power usage; the text below shows that this UPS was providing 518 Watts at the time of the snapshot. Note that this UPS cannot provide more than 810 Watts total.

The task manager view shows overall cpu usage - the cpu is not in use by Iray for this render, but the processes running are still effectively using three of the twelve threads at near maximum.

The first GPU-Z monitor to the left is a 1080 TI running with factory settings with the exception of the fans - I use a custom fan setting that gets the fans to maximum speed earlier on the tempperature curve. The gpu is pulling just under 141 Watts; the gpu load is 95%, and the card is at 75 degrees Cenlcius. In addition to participating in the render this gpu is driving two 27-inch 60 Hz monitors, one HDMI and the other Display Port.

The second GPU-Z monitor is a 3060, again factory settings with the exception of a more agressive fan profile. This board is consuming 135.2 Watts, the gpu load is 99%, and the ccard is at 71.3 degrees Celcius.

And finally, the Core Temp monitor shows that the cpu is using 50.5 Watts. This only totals to 327 Watts, so where is the rest of the power going?

This ups also provides power to my fiber to ethernet converter for my internet connection and my wi-fi router - around 10 to 15 Watts. The rest is consumed by the remaining components of the system

The case is an Antec 1200 V3 with six fans. There are three 120 mm intake fans on the front, stacked from the bottom to about the two thirds point. There are two 120 mm exhaust fans on the back of the case, stacked just above the PCI slots to just below the case top. And there's a 200 mm top mount exhaust fan.

The motherboard is an  Asus X99-E WS with 64 GB ( 8 stcicks of 8 GB each) memory. The cpu is an Intell I7-5930K; the cpu cooler is a Noctua NH-U12S with a 120 mm fan clipped to the front of the heat sink. This fan, by coincidence is in line with the top most intake and bottom most exhaust fans.

All my internal drives are SSD at this point - one 500 GB for the system, four 2 TB, and two 4 TB drives. In addition, I have eight external USB drives - four 4 TB and four 5 TB.

The power supply is a Cooler Master V1200 Platinum 1200 Watt; it is bottom-mounted and has a 120 mm top-mounted intake fan that exhausts out the back.

The system is Windows 10 pro; the only application running besides the monitors,  Daz Studio, and the 'normal' Windows stack is Crystal Disk Info - configured to collect the SMART data from all the disk drives every 10 minutes. The box does NOT have internet connectivity.

As a side note - the C drive (500 GB SSD) has had 12.5 TB written to it over the 8 years, 297 days that it has been powered on (I only shut the system down for power failures, hardware upgrades, and to pull the filters off the intake fans for cleaning - a total of 146 times since I had it assenbled).

namffuak

Just for completeness - the same render, with the cpu added. Note that the cpu is now close to maxed out, the total power consumption is 550 Watts - and the GPU loads are well below 99%. The various loads shifted during the render, but the power draw never went over 550 Watts.

WendyLuvsCatz

I just look at board power draw

on my PC with the 2080Ti if it goes over 350w my PC will blackscreen so I set the power curve to flatten in MSI Afterburner

I believe that's called Underclocking and it really reduced my electricity bill too