When the power supply suddenly switches off: Load peaks of graphics card and CPU measured together and counter-tested with power supplies | Basics & Practice

1 - Introduction and Technical Background 2 - GeForce RTX 3070 without and with OC - Gaming 3 - GeForce RTX 3070 without and with OC - Torture (Max. Load) 4 - Radeon RX 6800 without and with OC - Gaming 5 - Radeon RX 6800 without and with OC - Torture (Max. Load) 6 - Radeon RX 6800XT without and with OC - Gaming 7 - Radeon RX 6800XT without and with OC - Torture (Max. Load) 8 - Summary and Conclusion

Torture loop in factory state

The stress test shows a completely different peak load behavior. The total load here is reduced to a maximum of 384 watts on average and the highest load peak sum measured over 30 minutes was just under 468 watts. That’s significantly less than gaming. AM EPS I measure an average power consumption of 140 watts, with a little less going directly to the CPU here. That’s significantly more than gaming.

We can see very nicely from the following graphic how the graphics card “pulsates”, i.e. the telemetry repeatedly pulls the emergency brake. Therefore, the load peaks are also lower.

This is illustrated much more precisely by the detailed graphic, where the intervention of the protective mechanisms can be seen very clearly.

Torture loop with overclocking

Now, the GPU load in particular increases significantly and the total power consumption averages 449 watts, of which the CPU now accounts for 195 watts. However, the CPU spikes up to a whopping 221.4 watts in extreme cases! However, the spikes of the GPU also increase neatly.

The presentation of the 2-minute excerpt shows the rule frenzy of the system:

This is then also reflected in the high-resolution graphics:

Power supply test