How much electricity does my computer use?

bothyhead · 19-01-2012 9:32pm #1

Our ESB bill arrived today and was about 310 eur :eek: Can anyone give an estimate on how much my PC is using?

Dell Precision 490 (750W Power supply)
2 x 19" LCD Monitors

It's on for about 13 - 14 hours a day. The machine is used for development and general use; it's not a gaming machine.

I'll buy one of those plug in analyzers, but in the meantime a rough estimate will do.

Thanks a mil

sh1tstirrer · 19-01-2012 9:34pm

Very very little. Even if it is on all day.

bothyhead · 19-01-2012 9:48pm

Yeah, I'm guessing about 20 quid .. it all depends on the average current drawn.

kleefarr · 19-01-2012 10:21pm

bothyhead wrote: »

Yeah, I'm guessing about 20 quid .. it all depends on the average current drawn.

A Day?? :eek:

bothyhead · 19-01-2012 10:23pm

A christ no, per billing period!

kleefarr · 19-01-2012 10:25pm

bothyhead wrote: »

A christ no, per billing period!

Ah per bi-monthly. Phew.

bothyhead · 19-01-2012 10:28pm

Follow up: An ex-colleague of mine, who has an idenetical machine, has calculated that his uses 50 eur per billing period. I believe he used a plug-in meter to determine this (he's very eco-aware). That's a lot more than I expected.

bonzodog2 · 19-01-2012 10:44pm

750W is 3/4 of a kW. On for an hour & 20 mins would be 1 billing unit, IF it used 750W the whole time, which it won't. Last time I looked (which is a while ...) a unit (kWH) was about 12-13 c

I'll let you do the rest of the sums.

deconduo · 19-01-2012 11:02pm

bonzodog2 wrote: »

750W is 3/4 of a kW. On for an hour & 20 mins would be 1 billing unit, IF it used 750W the whole time, which it won't. Last time I looked (which is a while ...) a unit (kWH) was about 12-13 c

I'll let you do the rest of the sums.

An office computer won't use more than 100-200W, even with a 750W PSU. Maximum of €20 per bill, but probably more like €10

TsuDhoNimh · 19-01-2012 11:07pm

bothyhead wrote: »

An ex-colleague of mine, who has an idenetical machine, has calculated that his uses 50 eur per billing period.

Just for the PC? Or did they have a dual screen setup similar to your own as well?

19-01-2012 11:33pm

bothyhead wrote: »

Follow up: An ex-colleague of mine, who has an idenetical machine, has calculated that his uses 50 eur per billing period. I believe he used a plug-in meter to determine this (he's very eco-aware). That's a lot more than I expected.

That sounds a bit much

truedoom · 20-01-2012 10:16am

Yeah...see the 750W powersupply.... that'd be it. For 13-14 hours a day, adds up to about 70-90 euro a week.

Most likely cause.

unless you boil the kettle a LOT.

also this:

http://www.esb.ie/esbcustomersupply/residential-energy-services/reduce-your-costs/web-calculator.jsp

partyatmygaff · 21-01-2012 3:32pm

truedoom wrote: »

Yeah...see the 750W powersupply.... that'd be it. For 13-14 hours a day, adds up to about 70-90 euro a week.

Most likely cause.

The PSU's rating isn't the amount of power it uses. It's it maximum capacity.

To begin with, workstations like a Precision 490 aren't known for their low power consumption. Couple that with two monitors and you have the potential for a lot of power usage.

I know you said the computer is on for 13-14 hours a day but what is it doing? What do you mean by development? Software development? If it's compiling code for all those 14 hours it's going to use a lot of power. If you're working with graphics you'll also be loading the GPU and using even more power.

kirving · 21-01-2012 4:49pm

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

That should help figure out what the computer is using. The two monitors might use 40W each.

Says my computer uses about 200W on it's own(just filled out the form quickly), but that wouldn't be all the time. You have to balance the power consumption with the amount of work do you get done.

imitation · 21-01-2012 6:43pm

My PC has a wattmeter built into the PSU, not exactly confident its super accurate, but it reads about 100 most of the time, not too bad considering its got zero eco cred with a quad core processor and a radeon 4850 (twas good back in the day. The PSU is rated at 750w also, but a PC would never use that amount, I believe the reason its so high is just for occasions where there is a spike in power usage when its turned on or during something particularly intensive.

If you left a 300w pc (probably around what a pc with a monitor and a few external hard drives, printers etc) on for 2 months straight it would be about 50 euros. If you turn it on and off like most people then the cost is going to be way less. I think the real cause of your high bill is possibly somebody with an electric heater during the cold months. Just have a hunt around for any high usage offending items, like Heaters, Cookers, Vacuum cleaners, hair dryers, kettles (anything that produces alot of heat when used) etc that may have been used too much.

bothyhead · 22-01-2012 2:33pm

TsuDhoNimh wrote: »

Just for the PC? Or did they have a dual screen setup similar to your own as well?

I'm not sure if he's running dual screens, but it's definitely a running system with at least one screen. The PC is the same as mine - two by dual core xeon processors.

bothyhead · 22-01-2012 2:41pm

partyatmygaff wrote: »

The PSU's rating isn't the amount of power it uses. It's it maximum capacity.

To begin with, workstations like a Precision 490 aren't known for their low power consumption. Couple that with two monitors and you have the potential for a lot of power usage.

Tell me about it. The heat given off the back of this beast is something else altogether. If I leave it on over night, the room is quite warm the next morning.

I know you said the computer is on for 13-14 hours a day but what is it doing? What do you mean by development? Software development? If it's compiling code for all those 14 hours it's going to use a lot of power. If you're working with graphics you'll also be loading the GPU and using even more power.

Yes, I am compiling some code, but mainly I RDP to my development machine. I probably have 2-3 RDP sessions open at any given time, and perhaps a VM image running locally as well. The local VM image puts a bit of strain on the system alright. I'm not graphics intensive.

bothyhead · 22-01-2012 2:44pm

imitation wrote: »

If you left a 300w pc (probably around what a pc with a monitor and a few external hard drives, printers etc) on for 2 months straight it would be about 50 euros.

It's on for half a day, every day, so ... using the above estimate, it's costing approx 25 euro. That's 8% of the ESB bill, which is a fair chunk for a single appliance

bothyhead · 22-01-2012 2:47pm

Kevin Irving wrote: »

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

That's a great site - thanks!

I'm getting a minimum of 402W with a recomended 452W. It's a hungry little fella.

johnny-grunge · 13-02-2013 7:37am

I stumbled upon this thread while pondering how much power my PC uses. Here's some supplementary reading for anyone that's interested.

This show's the test system used and this shows the energy consumption when different GPU's are tested in the system.

Based on the information contained in the above links I've estimated that my machine uses approximately 100w during light use i.e. surfing, watching videos etc or approximately 250w during heavy use, i.e. gaming, encoding video etc. Your average LCD monitor will use between 25 - 50w.

All in all, a lot less energy than I would have initially thought given the heat some of the components can give off during heavy use.

> Mainboard : ASRock Z77 Extreme4-M
> Processor : Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3400 MHz
> Physical Memory : 8192 MB (2 x 4096 DDR3-SDRAM )
> Video Card : AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
> Hard Disk : OCZ-AGILITY4 ATA Device (128GB)

That's roughly 4 hours at full steam = 1kWh on the above system.

How much electricity does my computer use?

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