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Pastimes : Dream Machine ( Build your own PC ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nick Morvay who wrote (12993)	11/26/2001 7:00:54 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 14778

Nick, yes, you are missing something. The CPU is now the biggest power hog in a PC. At the same time, great strides have been made in reducing power usage during idle time. (Without these innovations, modern high-speed notebook computers would be impractical. Try running SETI on a notbook, and let me know how long your battery lasts!) The current drawn by your PC (and, thus, power used) will more than double during heavy activity vs. when idle. It is probably more like 4X. There is a BIG difference between a CPU sitting there idle and one that is computing at full bore. The P4 is MUCH more power-hungry than the P3. They had to increase the size of the power supplies in PCs to accomodate the P4. Not only is the P4 itself more power-hungry than the P3, but the memory bandwidth utilization is much, much higher. So, the memory is also drawing a much higher average current.