The 2 best ways to find out how much power your Windows PC consumes

In this article

Whether it’s your computer or your laptop, your personal computer needs some optimum power to work at the best capacity. While computers get their power from direct supply, things are more flimsy in the case of laptops, where you will be generally relying on a battery. In fact, if you’re running your PC on an inverter or battery, something similar might be the case for you here, too.

Indeed, knowing your power consumption beforehand is crucial in many cases, such as building a new PC, your new office, or even doing personal use if you’re using local power sources. So let’s look at all the ways to figure out your Windows power consumption needs.

There are a slew of ways to go about it. We will, of course, limit ourselves to Windows, in which you have third-party tools and a hard, physical one to help you out of this problem. Let’s look at how it works in the case of a third-party app.

OuterVision Power Supply Calculator is one of the most popular consumption calculators for figuring out your PC’s power consumption state.

All you need to do is enter the information about a few parts of your PC into the website, and the app will give you a correct estimate of its power consumption.

There are two modes for getting information about your computer: Basic and Expert. 

For the Basic mode, you just have to put in details like Motherboard, CPU, Memory, Storage, and so on—and hit Calculate.

The app will run the computation and give you the information in a few seconds.

While the method is particularly the same in Expert mode, the only difference will be the amount of details you will have to put in. It’s suffice to say that the final calculations will also be more precise in this mode as well.

A Wattmeter is an electronic device used to measure and estimate electrical power. And, while some of you might have used it for other purposes, many users need to be made aware of how handy a tool it is to keep around the house for checking power consumption on Windows.

Of course, you’ll need to have a Wattmeter first. If you have one, great. Just plug it into your computer and wait for the measurement. Otherwise, you can choose the best Wattmeter from the many options that are available online and then make a purchase from there.

Knowing how much data your PC consumes will be helpful in various ways. For one, any sudden changes in power can indicate problems with your PC; a Wattmeter can quickly warn you about that right away.

Similarly, knowing your PC’s power consumption can also help you during Overclocking (so you don’t push your PC into a state beyond a safe limit), as well as during buying or setting up any new hardware components for your PC.