We analyze the energy balance of clumps and cores in two SPH simulations of collapsing clouds. We find that: (i) the set of clumps with low column-density shows a large scatter around equipartition which, in more than half of the cases, is dominated by external turbulent compressions that assemble them, (ii) clumps lying in filaments tend to appear sub-virial, (iii) high-density cores that exhibit moderate kinetic energy excesses often contain stellar particles, and (iv) cores with kinetic energy excess but no stellar particles are in a state of dispersal.