CPU Watts Usage
January 25th, 2020
Should show on HWMonitor by CPUID. Your system will have to have the sensors of for it to work of course.
Aida64 gives me Voltage, Current and Power values under “Sensor”…
As said, it would depend on sensors though.
And only servers will give you the actual amount of power they are using
Power usage is very crude on software. It doesn’t take into account of Power Factor and power supply efficiency. You need a wattmeter, only one as your doing single phase only. There are those mini plug in kill a watt meters, not sure how good they are.
Yes, if you want to measure power consumption of you whole PC, then a power meter is the go..
http://steplight.com.au/monitor/plug-in-electricity-power-meter/
No software will show you this information!
It’d only show you the vcore voltage, Which is not the same thing.
But I don’t see a need to purchase a power meter, As there are easier ways to calculate
it. Generally speaking, The most important (And most used) rail in a computer power supply is the +12V one.
On your PSU sticker, You should see something like “+12V1+12V2 max power cannot exceed 360w” indicating
it’s maximum +12V power in watts, Or sometimes the watts can be listed under the ampere rating.
The most power hungry components in a computer are the CPU & Video card, To determine the maximal
power they can use, You should Google it along with the term TDP (thermal design power)
I.E “i3-3220 tdp” Do keep in mind that if you overclock your CPU/Video card, It could consume even more power!
Also, If you have an SLI/CF setup, Double that TDP x 2!
Apart from that, The rest of your components (Such as Fans/HDDs/Optical drives) shouldn’t take more than 20-40w combined.
Do note that PSUs only provide as much power as required by the components, So for example, If your PC requires only 300W, But you got a 500W PSU, Your electricity bill will NOT get inflated.