Estimating System wattage

[Wolfgang S. Rupprecht]

"Rich Emberson" <emberson.rich at gmail.com> writes:
> My question is: whats with the online wattage estimators?
> Are they all implemented by folks selling power supplies
> who want to sell users bigger ones than are needed?

The estimate you found for 650-750 watts for your 70-140 watt system
does seem a bit much, no matter how you slice it.  Maybe they thought
you were using an overclocked system that could double as a room
heater in the winter???

As for the UPS, I have no problem overrating the UPS.  UPS's often
beat up the batteries quite a bit more than I'd like to see.  If you
see the run-time gets much more than 2x longer when you reduce the
load by 2x you can tell that the batteries were asked to put out more
current than they wanted to.  For the way APC rates their stuff,
running at 25%-50% of rated load doesn't sound that extravagant.
(I've got the Back-UPS RS 1500 and am running at 29% with the monitor
on and 20% with it off.  That feels about right.)

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht              http://www.full-steam.org/  (ipv6-only)
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