BluBawx Mod by E.E.L. Ambiense

PSU Testing

In order to finalize my design on the case proper, I needed to verify that the PSU I chose is going to work and stand up to the beating the system is going to give it.

I acquired that PSU candidate and actively tested it prior to drilling any holes. I also finally purchased a copy of Vista Home Premium SP1 32-bit for use with this HTPC build (this was before 7 was available mind you!). I installed that and all the software for it, aside from Windows Updates, because I could set up everything next to an Ethernet port, unfortunately.

I was also presented with a problem that the LG drive needing a firmware update in order to allow the only BD software I had, play my copy of Ghost In The Shell 2 on Blu-ray. It was kind of expected, since the Blu-ray was just released, and the LG drive is a few months old, so I'm sure the shovelware with it was a bit out of date.

Anyway, I hooked up the system itself to the Kill-A-Watt at the wall socket in order to answer some questions I was asking myself; just how much juice does this sucker need?

My impromptu 'test-bed' set-up and here's the system on the desktop and idling for a while:


Now the system running with Prime95 torture-testing: both cores saturated as well as memory. Finally, the system running with Prime95 torture-testing and the Blu-ray playing in full-screen over the top: this means the AMD 780G northbridge UVD and LG Blu-ray drive are also fired up.


I was off a bit on what I was expecting, but I also rounded up on power requirements anyway: paranoia and padding the amps, if you will. I'd expected Blu-ray playback to be slightly more overall, but I will never Prime95 as well as Blu-ray playback anyway under normal use.