Any free power consumption monitor?

[Maxinfamily]

HI everyone!

 

I do know how many peak watts my system drains from the wall, bu I was wondering what happens with that number when It is at idle. I'm just wondering how many watts It drains from the wall when not in load. Ive done a couple of google searches but everyone talk about a HW device which you plug to the wall and then you plug your pc to it so It can monitor how many watts you are draining which is not what I am looking for. I am looking for a SW which monitors the power consumption, if it does exist. If anyone know about such SW I would appreciate It!

 

Thank you guys in advance!

[RuLeZ]

4 minutes ago, Maxinfamily said:

HI everyone!

 

I do know how many peak watts my system drains from the wall, bu I was wondering what happens with that number when It is at idle. I'm just wondering how many watts It drains from the wall when not in load. Ive done a couple of google searches but everyone talk about a HW device which you plug to the wall and then you plug your pc to it so It can monitor how many watts you are draining which is not what I am looking for. I am looking for a SW which monitors the power consumption, if it does exist. If anyone know about such SW I would appreciate It!

 

Thank you guys in advance!

Doesnt exist, its impossible to do it.

[jools]

yep power gotta be measure from plug when idle and at load

 

you can estimate it by adding what power usages given by vendors of pc parts

 

eg 10w for hdd plus 5w for ssd plus 30w mainboard etc

 

but figures given by parts suppliers under load and idle are generally fickal

[Maxinfamily]

11 minutes ago, RuLeZ said:

Doesnt exist, its impossible to do it.

I was thinking about that possibility, and since every component is connected to the mobo and the psu I thought maybe It was still possible, but they to be connected that doesnt mean they are sharing power consumption data with each other, they are not design to do that I guess.

[Maxinfamily]

1 minute ago, wrathoftheturkey said:

That's TDP, which isn't the same, and only works as an estimate under max load

Yep, as I said, thats the peak watts, but I want to know the idle/low load consumption.

 

Thank you everyone anyway for your quick answers!

[RuLeZ]

2 minutes ago, Maxinfamily said:

I was thinking about that possibility, and since every component is connected to the mobo and the psu I thought maybe It was still possible, but they to be connected I guess that doesnt mean they to be sharing power consumption data with each other, they are not design to do that I guess.

The Mobo doesnt become the information abou the effiency of the PSU, and also doesnt know how much energy the SSDs, HDDs and other peripherals use.

You can however knows how much energy the MB, the CPU, RAM and GPU consumes.(excluding the efficiency ratio)

[jools]

Just now, wrathoftheturkey said:

That's TDP, which isn't the same, and only works as an estimate under max load

totally agree , which is why I said fickal...

 

or OP can just get an ampmeter and place in series on power lead and record amps under load and idle amps THEN

W=VA

[Maxinfamily]

Just now, jools said:

totally agree , which is why I said fickal...

 

or OP can just get an ampmeter and place in series on power lead and record amps under load and idle amps THEN

W=VA

Hahaha, I thought about It but Its too much work, isnt worth the effort I think. Thanks again!

[jools]

add up tdp's(all parts have this data available, just gotta search) should be close enuff but gives a total peak 2 peak wattage ,which should give you a rough idea of psu size (total*1.2)

 

as for effiency of psu ....that is just how effient the psu is in converting mains power to pc power....in other words how good it does its job and save you electric bill money

[jools]

I think peak watts * 0.7071 gives RMS watt value(ones peak others flat value)

[mariushm]

It's not impossible, but it can only happen if the power supply has built in circuitry to determine those things and send the information to the computer in some way.

 

These days, some components (video cards for example) can measure and report exactly how much power they consume at a particular moment, and you can sort of figure out how much the processor consumes at a specific time, so that gives you about 90% of the power consumption of your pc (all that's left is the motherboard, fans and hard drives but these generally use a constant amount of power, they don't vary a lot depending on what you do with the pc)

 

However, those numbers are how much your power supply produces and delivers to the components, you have no idea about how efficient that power was produced by the power supply. The efficiency is not constant throughout the output of a power supply, the conversion efficiency varies with the amount of power the power supply sends to components.

 

It looks sort of like these (gold and platinum efficiency power supplies reach the peak efficiency much faster and stay at high efficiency for a longer percentage of their output power) :

 

 

So notice how a high wattage power supply (like the 850w power supply in the picture above) is fairly inefficient at less than 100w which is normal when computers are idle, and the efficiency peaks at more than 300w and then decreases again when it goes over 600 watts. So you can't just say "power supply is 90% efficient" and divide the power measured inside the computer by 0.9, it won't be a correct result.

Like I said, the curve will be different for power supplies with different maximum output power, and the efficiency will also be a 1-2% lower throughout the whole output power if your mains voltage is 110v AC.

 

So hopefully that makes it a bit more clear why there's no universal software that would guess how much power the system takes from the wall, because the software can't know if you're powering the power supply from 110v or 230v (maybe it could try to detect the country you're in based on your internet connection, but that's hit and miss), or the maximum power output of the psu and it's efficiency (in order to estimate or guess that efficiency curve) or at least to pick the best curve based on an internal database of power supplies tested beforehand by software developer (but there's no way for a power supply to send information about itself like brand, model number, maximum power, efficiency etc to the computer, so user would have to pick the brand and model from a list in the software, and most users have no clue or may be too afraid to open their computers to determine that..

 

Easiest way is to actually use a voltage monitor and current monitor between the mains socket and the power supply and have those measurements send through some safe way to the computer, from where software could process those numbers.

 

Cheaper devices don't have logging capability or ways to send the information to a PC, you can just see the information on a lcd screen. But there are more expensive power monitors / meters which send the data through an isolated serial/usb connection or through wireless to a receiver / computer.

 

 

 

[Maxinfamily]

20 hours ago, mariushm said:

It's not impossible, but it can only happen if the power supply has built in circuitry to determine those things and send the information to the computer in some way.

 

These days, some components (video cards for example) can measure and report exactly how much power they consume at a particular moment, and you can sort of figure out how much the processor consumes at a specific time, so that gives you about 90% of the power consumption of your pc (all that's left is the motherboard, fans and hard drives but these generally use a constant amount of power, they don't vary a lot depending on what you do with the pc)

 

However, those numbers are how much your power supply produces and delivers to the components, you have no idea about how efficient that power was produced by the power supply. The efficiency is not constant throughout the output of a power supply, the conversion efficiency varies with the amount of power the power supply sends to components.

 

It looks sort of like these (gold and platinum efficiency power supplies reach the peak efficiency much faster and stay at high efficiency for a longer percentage of their output power) :

 

 

So notice how a high wattage power supply (like the 850w power supply in the picture above) is fairly inefficient at less than 100w which is normal when computers are idle, and the efficiency peaks at more than 300w and then decreases again when it goes over 600 watts. So you can't just say "power supply is 90% efficient" and divide the power measured inside the computer by 0.9, it won't be a correct result.

Like I said, the curve will be different for power supplies with different maximum output power, and the efficiency will also be a 1-2% lower throughout the whole output power if your mains voltage is 110v AC.

 

So hopefully that makes it a bit more clear why there's no universal software that would guess how much power the system takes from the wall, because the software can't know if you're powering the power supply from 110v or 230v (maybe it could try to detect the country you're in based on your internet connection, but that's hit and miss), or the maximum power output of the psu and it's efficiency (in order to estimate or guess that efficiency curve) or at least to pick the best curve based on an internal database of power supplies tested beforehand by software developer (but there's no way for a power supply to send information about itself like brand, model number, maximum power, efficiency etc to the computer, so user would have to pick the brand and model from a list in the software, and most users have no clue or may be too afraid to open their computers to determine that..

 

Easiest way is to actually use a voltage monitor and current monitor between the mains socket and the power supply and have those measurements send through some safe way to the computer, from where software could process those numbers.

 

Cheaper devices don't have logging capability or ways to send the information to a PC, you can just see the information on a lcd screen. But there are more expensive power monitors / meters which send the data through an isolated serial/usb connection or through wireless to a receiver / computer.

 

 

 

Yeah, we know, but I think that what @RuLeZ wanted to say is: "with the build-in HW components that a regular system has nowadays, Its impossible to do It". It obviously not impossible if you install/use other kind of devices to get some amps and volts readings... GPUs can measure the power they are draining because the are meant to do that, they have been design and build with some specific HW components to make those readings, but soundcards, SSDs, HDDs, optical readers, card readers, peripherals, fans, etc they are not design to measure their power consumption, they dont have the specific HW to do that, so that leads us to everyones conclusion, the best way to achieve It is to design a PSU with a ammeter and voltmeter and allow It to send the data to the mobo so we can monitor those readings...