The first time I know how to build a pc, a 500W power supply was pretty much an overkill to anyone building any pc. Now, though, you can find 1 KW+ power supply in the market. Those things are, again, far above anyone sane’s need.

How much power does your pc consume, and how powerful a power supply you need?

Let’s start with the motherboard. It is the main component of a pc, and should draw a huge amount of power, right? Nope, mother board should only consume roughly 30 watts. No further explanation.

The processor is one of the most power hungry component in a pc. It can use up to 100W of power on heavey load. on everyday use, though, it won’t reach that high.

Memory modules, on the other side, only cost you about 10W of power. Surprising, I know. 

Graphics card is another monster. If you’re using any *800-series cards from either AMD or Nvidia, you should expect more than 100W of power consumption. But if you’re using a lower series, the power consumption will decrease significantly to only about 50W.

Hard drive uses a lot of power when spinning up, but it drops pretty quickly. We’ll use 20W per harddrive to make calculation easier. Use the same number for optical drives too. 

You can ignore fans, as they only consume very little power, unless you’re using LED-litted fans. Add another 5W for each of them.

With the above calculation, I can presume that my pc is drawing around 210W when everything is working. Playing games, for example. Now, a quality 350W power supply should be more than adequate for this pc. But there is a problem.

Quality power supplies are expensive.

But then again, if you can afford it, buy it. If you can’t, get yourself a cheap, famous brand. Simbadda  is a pretty well known in the business here. They make cheap-ish power supply that works nice with me and my friends’ pc. A 380-Watter from Simbadda will only cost you back around IDR 135.000 (around US$15). If it doesn’t work for you, you’ll need to step up a little and buy a better one. US$30-50 should get you a pretty good one.

For most people, though, 380-Watter from any brand that doesn’t invite ‘huh?’ when people hear it will do.