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I got the power & am not afraid to use it! 

What we always do with new graphics cards is we measure the wattage peak with the help of a wattage meter. Slight side note, you are looking at the overall usage of the entire PC. The meter is placed between the power connector and the PSU. So please understand that using a Wattage meter is not the most reliable way of measuring power consumption. This is how much power is being consumed, taking the measurement from the wall socket, and you need to look at the results as being an indication and not an exact science.

Let's have a look at some X1000 products and specifically the X1950 Pro product in regards to total PC power consumption:

	Videocard 100% load System Idle X1300 XT 193 133 X1600 XT 211 140 X1800 GTO 219 138 X1950 Pro 219 139 X1800 XL 229 155 X1900 GT 232 158 X1800 XT 273 160 X1900 XTX 290 165 X1950 XTX 293 166

I suggest you use a 420 Watt PSU minimum but better is always recommended especially if you keep SLI or Crossfire in mind as a future upgrade. When you buy a new PSU then look at the packaging and check the 12 volts rail for the amperage, 20 AMPS should be fine.

Here are some indications on what would happen if your PSU can't cope with the load:

• unusual fluctuating 3D gaming performance
• crashing games
• spontaneous resetting PC
• freezes during gameplay
• PSU overload can cause it to break down or shut down.

Noise Levels coming from the graphics card

When graphics cards produce a lot of heat usually that heat needs to be transported away from the hot core as fast as possible. Often you'll see massive active fan solutions that can indeed get rid of the heat, yet all the fans these days make the PC a noisy son of a gun. I'm doing a little try out today with noise monitoring, so basically the test we do is extremely subjective. We bough a certified dBA meter and will start measuring how many dBA originate from the PC. Why is this subjective you ask? Well, there is always noise in the background, from the streets, from the HD, PSU fan etc etc, so this is by a mile or two not a precise measurement. You could only achieve objective measurement in a sound test chamber.

The human hearing system has different sensitivities at different frequencies. This means that the perception of noise is not at all equal at every frequency. Noise with significant measured levels (in dB) at high or low frequencies will not be as annoying as it would be when its energy is concentrated in the middle frequencies. In other words, the measured noise levels in dB will not reflect the actual human perception of the loudness of the noise. That's why we measure the dBa level. A specific circuit is added to the sound level meter to correct its reading in regard to this concept. This reading is the noise level in dBA. The letter A is added to indicate the correction that was made in the measurement.

	TYPICAL SOUND LEVELS Jet takeoff (200 feet) 120 dBA   Construction Site 110 dBA Intolerable Shout (5 feet) 100 dBA   Heavy truck (50 feet) 90 dBA Very noisy Urban street 80 dBA   Automobile interior 70 dBA Noisy Normal conversation (3 feet) 60 dBA   Office, classroom 50 dBA Moderate Living room 40 dBA
Bedroom at night	30 dBA	Quiet
Broadcast studio	20 dBA
Rustling leaves	10 dBA	Barely audible

We startup a benchmark, we take the dBA meter, move away 75 CM and then aim the device at the active fan on the graphics card.

We measure roughly 42 dBa on the PC, which is to be considered a quiet to moderate noise level coming from the PC, lovely. The artic cooler might be a whale, but it does work for sure.

A reference shot of how we measure in the Guru3D lab.