Theocacao: Power Consumption in Game Consoles

Power Consumption in Game Consoles

I found this story at Digg, which suggests that the PlayStation 3 will consume 380 watts of power when active. That's just the box itself, not the TV or stereo system it may be hooked up to. Sure sounds like a lot, doesn't it? It is.

The Xbox 360 is said to consume 160 watts when active, compared to PS2's 45 watts. Just out of curiosity, I wondered how much an iMac eats up when it's active. I found this article at AnandTech which says a Core Duo iMac (not the newer Core 2 Duo) as whole takes about about 64 watts when encoding video.

Is this right? A PS3 takes 380 watts and a general-purpose computer with monitor takes 62 watts? This article at InfoWorld says that with the two cores maxed out, the machine jumped up to 95 watts. If you subtract 32 watts for the display, the contrast with the PS3 is even more pronounced.

I haven't been able to find any specs for the Wii, yet, but I'm guessing it will be a bit more modest. Yes, I understand the PlayStation 3 has a bazillion cores which all do very important things, but wowzers. That's a lot of juice. Am I missing something here?

Power Consumption in Game Consoles
Posted Oct 30, 2006 — 15 comments below

Carl — Oct 30, 06 2241

You have to understand that 360 of the 380 watts will be spent searching for baby doll toys in the vicinity to make cry. That's a feature the competition just can't match.

lone — Oct 30, 06 2242

It's very likely, if the rumors stand, that the Wii may be in the same power consumption bracket as the GameCube, if a little higher. Not by much, I think.

Scott Stevenson — Oct 30, 06 2243

You have to understand that 360 of the 380 watts will be spent searching for baby doll toys in the vicinity to make cry

I need to start a comment of the week award.

Ciaran Rowe — Oct 30, 06 2246

Can someone explain the current comment of the week to me? I don't understand.

Scott Stevenson — Oct 30, 06 2248

Can someone explain the current comment of the week to me? I don't understand

I'm so thrilled by Carl's comment that I want to make up an award for "best comment of the week."

silvarios — Oct 30, 06 2249

Can someone explain the current comment of the week to me? I don't understand

Or maybe he Ciaran mean he doesn't understand the current comment of the week which would be:
You have to understand that 360 of the 380 watts will be spent searching for baby doll toys in the vicinity to make cry.

I suppose it depends on how you read the sentence.

silvarios — Oct 30, 06 2251

Wow, I sure didn't proof read that post. Sorry. The sentence between the quotes should have said, "Or maybe Ciaran doesn't understand the current comment of the week which would be:"

As to the PS3 sucking up the juice, yeah 380 watts does sound like power consumption may be a tad high. I'm thinking the Wii may be the way I am leaning. I should let you know that this dooms the Wii to a distant last place in the console race and possible hardware abandonment by the company. See my previous hopes held for the Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, and the Nintendo GameCube. Sorry.

Jeroen Leenarts — Oct 31, 06 2253

Ah, so since silvarios is has his hopes up for the Wii. We can basicly expect the Wii to fail miserably. :P Would be a shame though if that happens.

Lynxpardinus — Oct 31, 06 2266

So I am guessing that silvarios has a BetaMax machine and a couple of Commodore Amigas in a closet along with those Sega consoles and the GameCube? :)

About the PS3, 380 watts is a lot of heat to be dissipated for such a small appliance. I haven't pay too much attention to the photos of the PS3, so I don't know how big of a fan it has, but it sounds like cooling may be an issue

Scott Stevenson — Oct 31, 06 2270

I did some checking on the GameCube. They've sold 21.2 million. Compare that to 24 million of the first-generation Xbox and 6 million of the Xbox 360. Those are pretty decent numbers.

TC — Oct 31, 06 2271

I've read a couple of interviews with the wii designers where they say they chose to use new processor technologies to shrink their chip & reduce power consumption:
Mr Takeda also mentioned this, but normally when you decide to use new semiconductor technology, you do so solely for the sake of more extravagance and higher performance. In the case of the CPU, you try to progressively improve its processing power, which in turn raises its power consumption and increases its size. Sophisticated semiconductor technology is required to realise this goal. While you could use such cutting-edge semiconductor technology in order to facilitate this kind of extravagance, you can choose to apply this technology in other ways, such as making chips smaller. We have utilised the technology in this way so that we could minimise the power consumption of Wii. If the chip becomes smaller, we can make the size of the console smaller. With a smaller chip and minimised power consumption, Wii can be left on 24 hours a day. This is what I meant when I said that the way Wii makes use of state-of-the-art technologies is completely different from the way in which they are used in other devices.

Scott Stevenson — Nov 22, 06 2467

Looks like the Wii hits 17 watts while running, 10 watts when idle.

Joost Thijssen — Dec 17, 06 2734

Noo 17 watts sounds way to less, the powrsuply takes 52 wats max according to the information printed on, the wii itself takes a maximum of 3.7 amps at 12 volts thats 3.7*12= 45 Watt max

Scott Stevenson — Dec 17, 06 2735

the wii itself takes a maximum of 3.7 amps at 12 volts thats 3.7*12= 45 Watt max

That's just the capacity of the electronics, correct? It doesn't mean the internal hardware is actually eating that much juice. At least that's my undestanding.

If what you say is correct, a Wii would eat just as much power as a dual-core 64-bit iMac with display, which doesn't sound right to me.

lol — Dec 26, 06 2877

That's just the capacity of the electronics, correct? It doesn't mean the internal hardware is actually eating that much juice. At least that's my undestanding.

Exactly ... as PS3 power supply can put out 360watt but real consumption data is very far from it ... real consumption is around 180watt with some peaks around 190-200watt

If you see x360 power supply data and not real consumption it is very very much more than 160watt

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