Are Wattage Calculators Accurate/Legit?

[MultiMigo]

Out of curiosity. Tested this sample build

 

Corsair Hydro H100i V2

i7 8700 (Stock)

GTX 1080Ti (Stock)

16GB DDR4

1SSD

2 HDD

4 140mm Case Fans

 

Recommended PSU is 488W, let's say a good 500W PSU. Is that even okay? Please let me know your inputs on this. I'm still a new guy so enlighten me.

 

PS: Tried calculating with the K version of the CPU and overclocked it and also overclocked the 1080Ti in the calculator. Load wattage is 511W, recommended PSU is 600W. I really have a hard time believing since most builds with this kind of hardware get 850W PSUs or something

[Electronics Wizardy]

Yea thats right. Most people get overkill psu's. New systems really don't pull that much power.

[LienusLateTips]

You'll need like 420-430W for that, I would just get a 650, but don't go that far with a PRIME Titanium. FOCUS Plus Gold/Platinum is enough.

[MultiMigo]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yea thats right. Most people get overkill psu's. New systems really don't pull that much power.

So this means that these sites tell the truth (It's from Seasonic so it should be legit) 

[MultiMigo]

1 minute ago, JDE said:

You'll need like 420-430W for that, I would just get a 650, but don't go that far with a PRIME Titanium. FOCUS Plus Gold/Platinum is enough.

Yeah. Just tested it out of curiosity. It tells me that these kinds of specs don't need much wattage versus the PSUs people are going for. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, MultiMigo said:

So this means that these sites tell the truth (It's from Seasonic so it should be legit) 

Yep, there fairy accurate. More on the higher side normally and you will almost never see that much power usage as your not running gpu + cpu workloads at the same time.

[MultiMigo]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yep, there fairy accurate. More on the higher side normally and you will almost never see that much power usage as your not running gpu + cpu workloads at the same time.

Looks and feels right to me. Thank you for the information. 

[LienusLateTips]

3 minutes ago, MultiMigo said:

So this means that these sites tell the truth (It's from Seasonic so it should be legit) 

Nope, they overestimate by quite a bit, 50-100W. That doesn't mean you can cheap out on a PSU and get a CX450M either. 

 

(better than they used to be, when i was a noob i used one and it told me i needed 671W for a R7 370 and i5 4460, which uses like 200W)

[MultiMigo]

Just now, JDE said:

Nope, they overestimate by quite a bit, 50-100W. That doesn't mean you can cheap out on a PSU and get a CX450M either. 

 

(better than they used to be, when i was a noob i used one and it told me i needed 671W for a R7 370 and i5 4460, which uses like 200W)

Yes. You still shouldn't use cheapo power supplies and you also shouldnt spend too much for too much wattage

[Enderman]

No, they are never correct and usually overestimate.

You should never pay attention to wattage calculators, find a reviewer who has done power consumption tests on a system with similar hardware to yours and follow those numbers.

This is easy to do, just go to google images and search up "GTX999 i7 power consumption" and search for a PC with specs similar to yours.

[STRMfrmXMN]

Wattage calculators are always BS and typically have monetary incentive to exaggerate to you, esp. the Cooler Master one.

 

Just give us your specs and you'll hear back from us. If you were to OC a 1080Ti and 8700k, then yes, 488W wouldn't be too far off, but it's still an exaggeration. My guess is about 450W.

[Damascus]

I'll be running an overclocked 10c/20t and 980 ti soon and have a kilowatt, I'll let you know how much it consumes and we can punch it in to a calculator to see how close they get.