Until recently, there were no special problems with choosing a power supply for the computer . Bought, set and forgotten before the breakdown. After it failed, a new source was bought, which successfully replaced the previous one. This technique worked in those cases when nothing else broke in the computer, except for it. But now the situation has changed dramatically, the choice of such an element must be very thoroughly approached. Through scientific research, to date, a lot of techniques have been developed that allow calculating the power of the power supply.
The main consumers of electrical energy in a computer are a processor, a graphics card (sometimes also called a graphics accelerator), coolers (fans for cooling, there are several of them in a modern gaming system unit), RAM (it consumes a little, but this also needs to be taken into account), mother board and hard disk drive. Each of these elements has its own energy consumption, and when carrying out an operation such as calculating the power of the power supply, these indicators must be taken into account.
Let's start with the processor, as this is one of the most energy-intensive parts. For example, the most powerful Analog Micro Devices FX series processor with an index of 8350 has a TDP of 125 watts. This does not mean that it consumes 125 watts. Its cooling system should be designed to remove just that amount of heat. The second, the main consumer of energy in a computer is a graphics accelerator. Not the most productive, not the hottest today, the AMD Radeon 6990 series graphics card in peak mode is capable of consuming 450 watts. The motherboard at maximum load consumes an average of 75 watts. Next, add 60 watts to the hard drive, and if there is a DVD-RW drive, then we also increase the power by 30 watts. At the end, we take into account 20 watts per cooling system and 10 watts per memory modules. As a result of the summation, we get 770 watts of such an indicator as the power supply unit. It is recommended to take a source of electrical energy for a computer with a margin. In our case, it is best to purchase at 800 watts.
In the simplest case, the power supply capacity is calculated by summing the energy that each individual component consumes individually. At the next stage, this number is rounded to the nearest available value, as in our case 770 W was obtained, and the result was rounded to 800 W.
The logical conclusion to this course of things was the complete automation of such a process as calculating the power of the power supply. Now many programs have been developed, which include databases with detailed data for each device on the market. The end user simply selects the components for his computer, based on this configuration, the calculation is made. The program gives the minimum permissible value of this parameter for such an electronic computer.
In conclusion, it is worth bringing the simplest way to check the power of the power supply using a multimeter. To do this, you must first check the voltage value in the outlet by direct measurement. At the next stage, we switch to the current measurement mode and determine its value in the maximum PC load mode (for this, we force the computer to start by running as many programs as possible). We multiply the obtained values and obtain the
power consumption. If this number is less than the nominal, then everything is in order. Otherwise, a more detailed diagnosis and clarification of the causes of improper operation of the device is necessary. All this can be done only in the service center.