how to determine PSU wattage

[E.S. Rosenberg]

2013/7/31 shimi <linux-il at shimi.net>:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2013 at 7:35 PM, Oleg Goldshmidt <pub at goldshmidt.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is there a way to determine the nominal PSU power without taking the
>> computer apart (actually, preferably without powering it down)? Is there
>> any vendor information that Linux could in principle read? It's a
>> vanilla home desktop, not a brand name server.
>>
>> I know of dmidecode and lshw, but neither returned anything for
>> PSU. There is nothing on the outside of the PSU that I can find (well,
>> it does say "220Vac").
>>
>> Can acpid help? Am I out of luck?
>>
>>
>
> Assuming you can indeed measure the consumption of ALL the components on
> your computer (which I believe you cannot) - you still need to account for
> energy being converted to plain heat inside the PSU itself. This can easily
> get to 20% or even more on lousy PSUs.
>
> Products such as this:
> http://www.powersaver.co.il/pl_product~EM-IL-01~3~0.htm will tell you how
> much the device really takes from your wall socket (not including heat
> wasted on wires resistance from IEC's meter to your socket ;))...

And if you are already plugged in and don't want to unplug you can
always get something like this:
https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11005
(There are also more "finished" versions available from different vendors)

You could even use that to determine how much current is passing over
the different outputs of the PSU if it's a normal desktop.

If you just want to determine poweruse of you device, under load and
idle then the device shimi recommended is what is generally used by
reviewers.
Regards,
Eliyahu - אליהו
>
> HTH,
>
> -- Shimi
>
>
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