PC component power logging

[colsandurz]

I am a student majoring in electrical and computer engineering and for a class I had to build a device that logs electrical power. So for my team's device we chose to build a device that would monitor power that an individual component with in a PC uses. We just used the molex interface for our project but it would be real easy to expand to sata, 20 and 24 pin connectors too. So, we've completed our project and I am a little curious, would anyone here actually e interested in something like this? We say it could be used for troubleshooting a non-functional PC, but I can't really think of any reason I would want this. I'm just curious, so any feedback would be appreciated.

[squaregoldfish]

If your device tells you how many watts an individual component is using, I'm sure some people would be interested, especially for low-power-draw junkies.

Steve.

[colsandurz]

Yes, that's the idea, so you can see how much power you CD drive or hard drive is using. It would update in 'real time' (whatever that means... with minimal delay) so if you fetch a file on you hard drive you could see how much power that would take. I don't think it would sell well in the marketplace, but most teams did power strips (like Kill-A-Watt), so I wanted to at least to do something original.

[SoulinEther]

If your device tells you how many watts an individual component is using, I'm sure some people would be interested, especially for low-power-draw junkies.

Steve.
I agree. It can make diagnosing the "trouble" parts that draw too much power easier.

[warbread]

I would be greatly interested in something like this, as I am a low power draw junkie. However, I'm mostly interested in how much power my video card draws, as it gets its power from the PCI bus and I can't measure that. The only two sata connections I have are the hard drive and DVD drive.

[colsandurz]

Well, adding in the PCI bus power consumption would be pretty easy if you're talking about the supplementary cable used to power the video card. However adding an interface to sit in between the card and the motherboard would be a little more work and money, but still do-able.