How much power does your PC actually use?

Again today, Xbitlabs has a nice little article on the power requirements of several different computer configurations.   From a light duty office computer all the way to a dual gpu performance gaming computer.   It goes to show how even with the most exhausting test programs even the highest spec and energy hungry configuration in their test only consumed a hair over 500 watts and a average gaming computer with a respectable ATI HD 4850 was pulling under 200 Watts under full load.  This will poke a hole in the misconception balloon presented by some enthusiasts that argue a 1000 watt power supplies is needed these days for a gaming rig.  Sure it is nice to have some headroom, so a 650 or 750 watt PSU might be a good idea, but anything beyond that is overkill.   Of course there are some people that do run 3x or 4x graphics card setups, then a 1000 watt PSU would make sense, but seriously, who really runs those.   Anyway, the article is here.