"Ian Stirling" wrote in message
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This may be inaccurate.
How are you measuring the 150-300W?
My PC also read 150W+ on a plug-in power meter, but a proper power
reading (using a scope) revealed that the plug-in power meter was
overreading by a factor of 2.

300W is very, very unlikely, unless you have a multiprocessor PC
with terabytes of storage, or you use a projector for your monitor.

Custom PC recently ran an article on power supplies. They estimated a fairly
modest desktop machine as needing 280W without reserves, 295W with headroom.
Admittedly, you probably would not often need to use the DVD drive (25.5W)
and the CD-RW drive (19.88W) simultaneously when also running everything
else at full chat. However, they were the only significant power users that
you might not want to use together. My CPU, graphics card and memory would
need about 60W more than the ones they used in the example, so it is not
that hard to top 300W on a home machine working flat out.

Colin Bignell