Computer

In addition to GPU and CPU, what components of the PC have the highest consumption?

We live in an era in which there is nothing to waste; the electricity price it continues to rise, and now that billing by time slots has been implemented in Spain in which electricity costs more than double what it used to cost at peak times, it is worth knowing which are the PC components that consume the most to be able to act accordingly.

The graphics card and the processor, the hardware that consumes the most

TFLOPS GPU Speed

By now we all know that the CPU and GPU are the two components that consume the highest consumption of all PC hardware, and that is that the manufacturers already give us TDP values ​​that although they do not indicate the electricity consumption as such, Yes, they are used as a guide because consumption usually yields quite similar values.

In this way, a modern mid-range processor usually has a consumption of up to 95 watts at maximum load, although at rest its consumption can be approximately 20 watts, while a high-end CPU can have consumption peaks. 150 watts or even more depending on whether it has been overclocked.

As for the graphics card, a low-end GPU that does not even need extra power from the power supply can consume up to 75 watts, although higher-end models can shoot this figure up to more than 400 watts. in some cases of graphics with Overclock. The consumption of the graphics card depends a lot on the model, since although it is true that at rest its consumption is usually about 40 watts more or less regardless of the GPU you use, the GPUs for gaming can have consumption under maximum load that goes from 90 to almost 400 watts that we have already mentioned before.

Of which there is no doubt is that the graphics card and the processor are the hardware components that have the highest consumption, and usually in that order.

What hardware components have the highest consumption?

Interior PC hardware consumption

Leaving aside the CPU and GPU, which, as we have already mentioned, are the hardware elements that have the highest consumption, and which vary a lot between models, the rest of the PC components also consume energy and, in this case, usually have a considerable variation. smaller.

After CPU and GPU, the next most power consuming component is the motherboard, whose consumption can go from 25 to 100 watts in the highest-end models; Keep in mind that the motherboard already supplies power to the PCI-Express sockets (up to 75 watts) even though it does so through by-pass (this means that it is only an intermediary, since what really consumes is the GPU connected to the socket ), but it is also responsible for powering the USB ports, the chipet (which is still a kind of processor), the integrated sound card, the integrated network card, etc. In addition, the VRMs that filter and power the CPU and RAM also have some consumption that is lost in the form of heat.

If your PC still uses optical drives, you should know that these are the next components in the consumer classification since a DVD drive can consume up to 15 watts when in read operation, and even reach 30 watts consumption when burning a DVD. Did you know this information?

Hardware consumption

The next hardware component with the highest consumption are the mechanical hard drives, since although when they are at rest they barely consume 0.7 watts, when they are at maximum load their consumption can reach 9 watts, 12 watts if the hard drive is high performance (10,000 RPM or more). The hard drive is followed by the RAM, which in the case of DDR4 can consume between 2 and 5.5 watts depending on the speed and voltage, and keep in mind that we are talking about consumption per module, so if you have 4 modules installed, you have to multiply their consumption by 4. Oddly enough, 4 high-performance RAM modules with overclocking can get to consume more than 20 watts.

After these elements, we have the fans, which depending on the size, speed and others, can consume between 1 and up to 6 watts on average; As with RAM, this figure must be multiplied by the number of fans you have on your PC.

Finally, the hardware component that consumes the least is the SSD, whose consumption ranges from 0.6W idle up to 3.5W at full loadAs long as they are not SSDs with a PCI-Express connection, then their consumption may be increased.

Obviously, there are other less common components in the PC that also have some electrical consumption, such as a card reader (from 0.5 to 2 watts), a RAID controller (from 5 to 15W), a dedicated sound card ( 5 to 45 watts) or a PCIe WiFi card (up to 10 watts), but as we have said they are less common and not everyone has them on their PC.

PC peripherals also have some consumption

Mouse latency

Obviously, up to now we have only dealt with the internal hardware of the PC, but it is impossible to use a PC without its peripherals such as the mouse, the keyboard and of course the monitor, so in sum the consumption of the entire equipment is much higher.

As a general rule, USB peripherals have a fairly low consumption; for example, a full-size mechanical keyboard with LED lighting on all keys works at 0.9 amps and 5V voltage, which gives us a consumption of 4.5 watts; with the lighting off, this same keyboard works at 0.7A and 4.9V, so its consumption drops to 3.43W. For its part, a gaming mouse with RGB lighting usually has a fairly similar consumption, of about 3-4 watts.

What consumes the most of the PC peripherals is undoubtedly the monitor, and again we enter a field in which consumption differs a lot depending on the model, size and type of matrix used. For example, a Dell UltraSharp U3415W monitor that has a 34-inch LED-IPS matrix (it is ultra-wide) has a typical consumption of 40 watts, but a 24-inch Full HD monitor could consume only 30 watts while a monitor of 32 inches and 240 Hz can consume up to 100 watts.

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