Bolt PSU Load Results - With Kill a Watt Meter

We noticed a lot of customers had questions and concerns about how much power the Bolt uses since it comes with a 500W unit. The 500W unit that powers the Bolt is a high-quality Gold rated efficient power supply with a single rail design. It was custom built for the Bolt system as it was normally a 1U server rack mount based unit. The Bolt chassis also has a dedicated side vent to help ensure the power supply stays nice and cool under even the most intensive tasks.

Let's dive into testing. To really challenge the power of the Bolt, the team decided to run the stress-tests using the most extreme configuration possible, which is the Bolt Level 4 with NVIDIA's fastest single GPU card, the GTX TITAN 6GB. This configuration is fully decked out with an overclocked CPU, SSD, mechanical hard drive, 16GB of memory, optical drive, etc...

To measure power draw, we used a "Kill A Watt" unit that was directly connected to the Bolt's power supply cord and AC power outlet.

(1) The first test was running the Bolt system under a gaming stress-test, we ran Unigine's Heaven benchmark at a resolution of 1920x1080 with all visual settings maxed. Results on the Kill A Watt meter were at a highest rating at 301 watts of power draw.



(2) The second test included running a CPU stress-test and a gaming stress-test at the same time. A torture test that practically no level of PC gaming would ever reach. We ran LinX which stressed both the CPU and memory at the same time and ran the Heaven benchmark at the same time with all visual settings maxed. Results on the Kill A Watt meter were at a highest rating at 350 watts of power draw.



(3) In addition, Tweak Town reviewed the Bolt Level 3 configuration and reported a maximum power draw of 286 watts.

In conclusion, these results should show how the Bolt's 500W power supply has plenty of head room, even in the highest level of possible configurations.

Good info.    Should put minds at ease. Nice.   

azza21,

It could be a few different things. Looks like your using the system in the UK? The 240V might be creating the electrical while noise.

You'll hear the Bolt running if you're in a very quiet room and if you're right next to it (within 2 feet). It won't be loud, it's more of just the noise from the fans spinning and hard drive, etc...

Try using a standard power supply by hooking it up externally to see if the power supply really is the reason or the video card. From our experience it's usually the video card making a coil whine.

Also, we're currently not planning to extend the 500W as it already provides more than enough power for a GTX TITAN and with room to spare.

Edited by Alex - 24 Mar 2013 at 3:06pm

Sounds like a plan. They say 600W+ because they want to have a buffer for low spec power supplies that do not have a strong single rail design.