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Removing the CPU while the power is on [closed]

What will happen if I remove the CPU while the power is on?

Does anything happen to the computer?

Has anyone tried this?

When do I need a pure sine wave UPS?

I would like to buy a rack UPS that would support all the IT related electronics in a SOHO room. This include switches, routers, PCs, servers, NAS. During my research I found out that there are different types of UPSs and the ones that generate pure sine wave are the best. However they are also much more expensive then for example modified sine wave UPSs.

What is the application of a pure sine wave UPS? Will it provide any advantages in my use-case or is it an overkill?

Does a computer use more electricity when charging USB devices?

Something I've always wondered. If I constantly hook up cellphones, hard drives and the like via USB to my computer, will it eat up more on the electricity bill? Or are the USB ports using up electricity by just being enabled anyway, thus not affecting the power usage?

Is it safe to power on a motherboard outside of its case?

I have a new motherboard which needs a BIOS update to support a new CPU.

Thankfully I have an old (compatible) CPU handy. My plan is to install the old CPU, update the BIOS, then install the new CPU.

I'd prefer not to have to mount the motherboard in a case just to do the BIOS update bit.

Is it safe to power up the motherboard outside of its case? My understanding is that the case provides grounding for the motherboard – could the lack of grounding be an issue?

Is it bad to leave your computer on during a thunderstorm?

Generally when I hear the crack of thunder, my PC goes off immediately. Today I'm working though, and wondered - how bad is it to leave it on? If the power goes out, will it kill it?

I use a power strip - that protects it, right?

Prevent Windows 7 PC from sleeping while a download is in progress

While I'm downloading a large file on Windows 7 using Google Chrome, my computer goes to sleep. I could obviously set the computer to not sleep at all (or change the interval before the computer sleeps).

What I want to know is: Is there a way to make Windows 7 not sleep as long as a download is in progress? (perhaps when any network activity is going on?). I've looked in the Advanced Power settings, and haven't seen any obvious setting.

Buying A Computer "Case" Fan... Does It Always Run At 100% Unless Told Otherwise?

What happens if I do not plug it into the motherboard and it does not have a switch?

I have seen fans before with an "off/low/high" switch that allows you to manually set their speed.

I have seen fans that plug into the motherboard and are controlled by the OS.

I am curious... what does a fan do by default when plugged into a PSU? Does it run at 100% unless otherwise told to go slower? This is what I would expect...

Power consumption: SSD vs HDD

In questions like this one and in websites everywhere it's noted that SSDs use much less power than HDDs... usually citing ~2 W vs ~6 W for HDDs, my question (and sorry if its stupid just need to be exact) is that per hour? Need to calculate costs savings in power consumption if we switched all our workstations to SSDs

Can I safely charge my laptop with a non-standard, third-party charger?

I have a Toshiba Satellite laptop. My charger has stopped working.

I have access to a Lenovo charger. Can I use this charger on my laptop?

How much power the system is REALLY consuming?

I suspect that my ATX case's power unit from China provides FAR LESS power than it's supposed to. Is there a way to see (in real time) how much power the whole system is trying to consume and how much is it really getting? Maybe, not in watts, but the voltage is not enough, say, 4.5V instead of 5V. What I really need to know, is should I return the power supply to a shop and buy another one.

Just in case (I don't know, do the following components support power consuming feedback):

• PCI-E 2.0 PALIT GTX550Ti, NE5X55T0HD09-1061F, 1Гб, GDDR5
• ECS H67H2-M3 LGA 1155, mATX
• INTEL Core i5 2300, LGA 1155

NO FORMULAS, PLEASE. I can calculate the summary power on my own. I need REAL TIME consuming data.

NO KILL-A-WATT LIKE DEVICES, PLEASE. I need power consuming data AFTER the power supply, not of the (system + power supply itself).

UPDATE

This is my HW Monitor Screenshot:

UPDATE 2

What I've learned from the answers. This problem is not solvable by people like me. I'm not kinda electrician man, and I have no multimeters/testers. It's too much for me to buy one just for this private task. (Though, I have to, maybe, to be able to solve such tasks in future). Without hardware, I can control voltage only, that can prove the suspicion but not refute. To make the things worse, software like HW Monitor is buggy, since it shows VIN1 values instead of +3.3V like in my case.

P.S. Since I've replaced DDR3 memory, no more BSODs, so I think, the power supply is OK.

Do SSDs “turn on”?

Hard-drives have a definitive “on” status (they spin up, the heads move, and they use more electricity than when they are “off”). The same goes for a computer (fans and lights activate), monitors (relays click, electron-guns fire/LEDs light), and so on. But what about SSDs?

A hard-drive requires the disk to be spinning and the head to have power in order to read or write, but an SSD is more like RAM when it comes to reading and writing; it requires no movement, just a direct electrical write. Further, unlike RAM which needs to be continually refreshed to retains its contents, SSDs retain it after one write like hard-drives (SSDs are the best of both RAM and HD).

Therefore, do SSDs have a definitive on and off state or are they just a lump of electronics that sits there doing nothing until an actual read or write operation, and only use electricity then?

(Power-management may complicate things a bit since most devices are “turned off” while they still retain a trickle charge. Therefore, most devices are either “on”, “off”, or in “standby”. This doesn’t change the question though, since I’m asking about normal “on” usage, not standby.)

Update:

Thanks for the responses (I’m familiar with how electronics work; I recall all too clearly some of my uni exams), but all the current answers miss the crucial point to the question: a device (eg HD, monitor, etc.) that is “on” uses significantly more power than when it is off (or even standby).

Does this apply to SSDs as well?

Note: I had the thought that SSDs (including regular flash drives and memory cards) do seem to be “always on” in that they are immediately accessible. That is, unlike a hard-drive or optical drive which can spin down or at least take a moment to access when they reduce power, files stored on a flash drive are always instantly accessible no matter how much time has passed without it being accessed. (I suppose that could lead to the question do SSDs turn off (eg to conserve power) instead, but that would be a separate question, if even required—which it is not).

Why does pulling the power cord then pressing the power button fix a non-booting PC?

I've been working at this institution for about 6 years. One thing thing that I've always found curious is that sometimes—especially after a power outage—we find a PC that won't boot when the power button is pressed. Usually, the fans will spin up, but it won't POST. Our solution is to pull the power cord, press the power button with the computer unplugged, then plug it in and turn it on. It seems more common with Gateway brand PCs than the Dells or HPs that we have around.

Does anybody know what pressing the power button does when the computer is unplugged? I have some vague notion that closing the power button circuit allows some capacitors to discharge or something, but I'd like a firmer answer to offer my users when they ask me what I'm doing.

My best guess as to why fans can spin but it can't POST is that the BIOS is in some non-functional state. I don't know how BIOS stores state, but my best guess is that there is some residual garbage in its registers or something, like the stack pointer isn't starting at 0 maybe?

Does a power supply draw only as much power as it needs?

I recently built a small mini-itx Intel ATOM-based Ubuntu home server. The case I choose is a small case but only a full size ATX power supply would fit it. I choose a mid-grade OCZ 500 watt modular power supply for it and it works great. I could not find a modular ATX power supply out there that was less than 450W.

So my question is, does my 500W power supply draw 500W just because thats what it is? Or does the power supply only draw as much power as is needed to power the computer components?

One mini-itx ATOM board + two SATA HDDs = less than 100W I figure. My goal was to build a low cost, low power consumption server, so hopefully the 500W power supply isn't drawing 500W.

How much power does a hard drive use?

This is not as straight forward as it sounds.

Specs from Western Digital's site for a WD 3TB Green Drive:

• Read/Write 6.00 Watts
• Idle 5.50 Watts

Looks fine right? Look at this part of the spec: "12 VDC" and "Read/Write 1.78 A".

It was a long time ago, but when I was in college that would mean the drive uses 21.36 Watts (12V x 1.78A). 21.36 Watts is a lot more than the claimed 6.00 Watts.

I want to put four of these in a RAID 10 array, so I want to know the actual max power requirement.

Thoughts? Is this a simple typo? Do I need to plan on ~85 Watts of power to support four drives?

Is a UPS a good investment for a home machine?

Is it worth the money to invest in a battery-backed UPS unit for a home machine? Or is it a waste of money? The purpose of the UPS would be to prevent a "meltdown" of the computer due to bad power in the area, i.e. it's toast(tm).

With the cost of some computers, the UPS approaches half the replacement cost of the machine, which is why I'm asking.

Clarification: This answer is for the United States. Each country has their own power grid schema and have different levels of service. Here in the States, while power is plentiful and adequate, there are segments of the national grid that are getting old and are, at times, overburdened, leading to the occasional brownout. This is a rare occurrence but it is a concern.