The original Phat PS3 was an absolute tank in many ways. Power consumption was one of them. The thing produced more heat than an actual heater. The PS3 slim was launched with a better design that fixed the Phat systems over heating issues. It also came with a smaller cell chip which should result in lower power consumption. So lets put it to the test. What is the power consumption of the PS3 Slim.
How Energy Efficient Is The PlayStation 3 Slim
The PS3 slim gets pretty hot during peak game sessions. It doesn’t get as hot as fast as the Phat PS3, but you will still hear your PS3 spinning up like a Vacuum cleaner now and then. What impact is this having on power consumption? Well, not as much as it might seem. I wasn’t able to get the fan to kick into full turbo mode for these tests. I would suspect the motor that spins this fan would consume quite a bit of power when it is running in high gear. Generally, it is only the high tier games like Uncharted that really push the system to these levels anyway.
You are here to see the wattage of the PS3 slim, so to cut a long story short, here are there numbers! Not the most energy efficient machine in the world, but it is most definitely an improvement.
Main Menu: 65-70 watts
In Game: 90-110 watts.
Test 1: Main Menu
Once the main menu was fully booted up the power consumption settled down and seemed to stick around the 60-70 watt range. High enough considering the system was idle and doing absolutely nothing that would be pushing the system too hard.
Test 2: In Game
LittleBigPlanet 2 was installed on the system already, so I used this game as a test subject. Power consumption jumped immediately and was hovering around the 100 watt region. I didn’t spot it go over this but Im sure once the fan kicked into full gear this would shoot up quite a bit. The consumption still wasn’t too bad though.