PSU Efficiency Confusion

[Apollyon2020]

Sort of wondering what this really does? Normally when the PC sits idle, I see it sit at 89%. When playing a game and I alt + tab, I see it go up to 92%. What does this mean actually? Is the higher the % better or no?

 

[WhitetailAni]

Higher percentage = more power efficiency, meaning less of the power consumed from the wall is turned into heat.

[Apollyon2020]

So I guess more the % the better? Does the % actually drop in time? Lets say, is it possible for it to drop to 50% in a few years?

[monjessenstein]

Just now, Apollyon2020 said:

So I guess more the % the better? Does the % actually drop in time? Lets say, is it possible for it to drop to 50% in a few years?

Yes, higher % is better. It might drop like 1 or 2 percent but considering most PSU's nowadays have 10+ year warranty's I doubt it'll be anything noticeable

[minibois]

your wall power is a different voltage compared to what your PC needs.

wall power is usually somewhere between 110 - 240v (depending on where you're from), while your PC parts use 12v, 5v and 3.3v (mostly the first one).

 

the efficiency is how efficient it is, with turning that wall power into PC power. 100% efficient would be no loss of energy at all, lower percentage of course indicate some level of power lost due to inefficiency.

differences in this number are usually because a PSU is most efficient at certain levels, but nothing wildly different.

 

efficiency could drop in the future, but really not to a notable degree.

[Apollyon2020]

Ah I see. Yeah my 3090 is an animal for power sadly. I had the global settings on nvidia to 'prefer max performance'. With the amount of heat/power the card demands and puts out... I put back that setting to power management to 'normal'. Tried out the 'prefer max performance' for 2 months of owning this card, but the heat is too much when the card sits idle lol. The power efficiency never dropped from 92% until I set the nvidia power management to 'normal' lol.

[OrionFOTL]

If you're idle (and using let's say 40W) and the efficiency is 89%, that means you're pulling 44.94W from the wall.

If you're gaming (let's say using 250W) and the efficiency is 92%, you're pulling 271.73W from the wall.

 

Here's the efficiency chart for your PSU, from https://www.techpowerup.com/review/corsair-hx1000i/6.html:

[Apollyon2020]

How low should the % to the efficiency start to raise a concern? I'm sure as the % starts to drop to a certain point, the PC will start to have issues? Maybe random restarts?

[Apollyon2020]

2 minutes ago, OrionFOTL said:

If you're idle (and using let's say 40W) and the efficiency is 89%, that means you're pulling 44.94W from the wall.

If you're gaming (let's say using 250W) and the efficiency is 92%, you're pulling 271.73W from the wall.

 

Here's the efficiency chart for your PSU, from https://www.techpowerup.com/review/corsair-hx1000i/6.html:

Yeah when I'm gaming, the power in/power out reads almost 300w lol. This card is hungry! lol

[OrionFOTL]

1 minute ago, Apollyon2020 said:

How low should the % to the efficiency start to raise a concern? I'm sure as the % starts to drop to a certain point, the PC will start to have issues? Maybe random restarts?

Efficiency has no effect on parts connected to the PSU.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, Apollyon2020 said:

How low should the % to the efficiency start to raise a concern? I'm sure as the % starts to drop to a certain point, the PC will start to have issues? Maybe random restarts?

Never.

 

All efficiency is is the ratio between the AC being puled from the wall and the DC being pushed to your parts.