Holy fossil fuels Batman! 500W power supply?! Why such a gigantic power supply?

I have never owned any computer with a greater than 350W power supply, which is huge.

My current, power-hungry, electricity sucking, global warming inducing, environment destroying Bill Gates Compatible Personal Computer (bgcpc) with 2 Hard Drives, 1 CD drive, 1 DVD R/W Drive, 1 Floppy drive, onboard ethernet + an extra ethernet PCI card with 3 fans (PSU Fan, CPU Fan, Case Fan) + 1 GB RAM with 1.5 Ghz cpu overheats the room it is in every summer. In winter I never have to turn on a "heater". The computer itself is a giant heater.

This bgcpc used to have a nvidia gfx card installed. That had yet another fan, and it used a LOT more electricity. But I kept almost passing out from all the heat so I had to rip it out and use the onboard gfx instead. This cut the heat in half approximately.

All of that runs on a 250W power supply. That is two-hundred and fifty watts. Half of the Ares-One.

As an American who cares about the environment I would never ever purchase any 500W pc.

Is there some technical reason that AROS needs more electricity than Windows XP?

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Wanna try a wonderfull magical Amiga strategy game?
Total Chaos AGA

Aros does not need that power, Pascal is just allowing Aros to have access to high performance 3D cards as Gallium comes on line with further support of 3D hardware.

The Ares range is aimed at people who want a very high performance version of Aros and maybe dual booting with Windows/Linux that tends to use a lot for Games etc.

The iMica range is for those who are happy with Atom based computing with maybe an ION chipset later for Gallium again in a dual booting scenario.

Have no fear I am sure he can supply a more realistic PSU for anyone who prefers it.

Last edited by clusteruk on 29-Nov-2009 at 11:53 AM.

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Amiga 1000, 3000D Toaster, Checkmate A1500 Plus
http://www.checkmate1500plus.com/

Ok. I didn't realize that "modern" gfx cards were burning 250 watts all by themselves these days. That is really scary. Thanx 4 the info.

/me happily continues with his onboard gfx

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Wanna try a wonderfull magical Amiga strategy game?
Total Chaos AGA

Thanks Steve for your answer. 500W could be even to low for modern cards, some of them have a own powersupply ; ) Its a compromise. But you should now that the PSU is capable to deliver 500W(not exactly becuase it depends on the efficiency) this does`t mean it consumes it all the time.

Regards,

Pascal

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AROS Broadway - AEROS - Aminux - AmiCloud - indieGO! Appstore - AmiWallet - VAN lossless video codec - AMC Amiga media Center -KrypUnite - LibertyNet - MinX - amigaNX

Good work!