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Bob Engelhardt Bob Engelhardt is offline
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Default Desktop PC power supply

I have an old PC that recently lost its PS. An identical one was hard
to find, but I didn't know the PC's power requirements, so I couldn't
use a generic PS. I should say that I thought I couldn't use a generic one.

I measured the PC's power use so next time I'll be ready. It was quite
surprising - the PS is "400W", but the PC only uses 54W. And there's
40A of 5V available, but only 5A are used. Etc.

The biggest surprise was the PS's efficiency, or lack thereof. A
Kill-a-watt on the input showed 200w being used, and 54w output. 25%
more or less. I thought that a SMPS would be way more efficient than that.

Bob