John said:
I hope not! That's 330-360 watts alone at 3 volts, and up to 1440 watts at
12V! You'd need some awfully heavy-duty wiring for that kind of amperage...
I don't know how you're deriving your numbers but they don't add up.
The current she's talking about is Vcore, which would be 1.5V, or
significantly less for a 'future' processor. Actually, even for a 1.5V core
P-4 it's already significantly less as Vcore drops with current draw and at
70 amps it's supposed to be down by .15V. So, we can safely presume only
1.35 volt, or (more likely) less, Vcore at 110 amps for 149 watts.
Now, Vcore is feed by the 12 volt line but through a switching regulator
so, to get current draw on the 12 volt rail, ignoring regulator efficiency
for the moment, we use the voltage ratio as power is constant (power in HAS
to equal power out or else something blows up, which adds to the power out
and we again have power in = power out). That is 1.35/12 for 0.1125 and
then times the 110 amps for 12.375 amps on the 12 volt side. If we assume
regulator efficiency is 95% (the rest goes to heat) then the 12V current
draw becomes 12.99375 amps; might as well say 13 amps.
This, btw, is why they switched to using the 12 volt rail for the core
regulator instead of the 3.3 or 5 volt rails: to lower the current on the
PSU wires/mobo connector as they have resistance that introduces losses
proportional to the current.
Note that the 12 volt wattage is the same, plus the regulator loss.