New Monitors, Video Card, and oh no Power Ratings
I have some 5 year old CRTs and decided to make a jump into the LCD world. The two major factors that have kept me from buying LCD’s have been screen resolution and price. These are related because I have become accustomed to 1600×1200 or higher resolution for the past five years and didn’t think I could go lower. The nice 1600×1200 LCD’s go for nearly $550-$600, but in the last month a ViewSonic 20″ widescreen native 1680×1050 went down in price enough to lure me into LCD land. (I also live in a very hot place, Vegas, and the big 24″ widescreen CRT and 21″ CRT was putting out a lot of heat in my small room).
So I bought 2 VX2025wm, if only I could afford some 30″ apple cinema displays. Well, another foil of mine is that I play games. My current 6600GT 128MB (work/game machine couldn’t go crazy a year ago) only had one DVI, and I wanted to use the DVI connection on both the monitors, so I went ahead and bought a 7600GT 256MB to get my upgrade and be ready for my 2 new monitors. The funny thing is that my computer is a Shuttle (the one with the 3.8Ghz intl HT overclocked to 4.0Ghz) and only has a 250W power supply. The power requirements on my new video card is 400W (or +12V minimum of 18A). Well, I got to thinking I made the wrong decision. I was talking with a friend and he introduced me to a device by the name of “Kill-A-Watt“.
These devices are cool, not only could I check out if my new video card in the shuttle box was over loading the power supply but I could see how much running my computer, monitors, speakers, whatever is costing me in the electric bill. Its alway fun learning new stuff and explore the world around us. Needless to say my new setup works just fine and at the peak while playing games it only pulls 210W 16.5A 120V and costs me 2 cents an hour to run, lol.
Little did I know a simple power rating (requirement) on a new video card would take me for such a learning experience.