Pc power consumption

irishguy

does any one know of a gaget that can mesure the power consumsion of my pc? my father is complaining about the esb bill i leave my comp on 24/7 with the speakers/perifles and moniter off

phaxx

It's so small you can forget it, I think I worked it out once to be roughly £100 for running it non stop for a year.

irishguy

thats what i taught but i would still like some gaget/program or formemla to work this out

phaxx

Go to somewhere like peats/maplin and tell them that, I'm sure they know of gadgets that monitor the electricity usage.

Red Moose

Well a 300W PSU is like 5 average lightbulbs. Add in the monitor and it's around 6 (I'm too lazy to look at the back).

I remember a sample in some physics book talking about prices being in kW/h. They used a sample value of 8p per KiloWatt hour.

You could ask how much they charge then - even still, judging by my bill, stuff like heating and cookers, washing machines uses tons more power than a PC. Like, a typical vacuum cleaner is say 1-1.4KWatts, an electric heater is maybe 1.5-2KWatts.

Same consumption level for even hot water kettles, etc., . Furthermore, I don't know if that 300W PSU in the comp is used fully all the time. There was a discussion on Moobunny recently on this and whether the high power consumption of Athlon chips specifically compared to Intel's could increase a bill. Not much difference really, maybe £30 or so over a year.

Yup, just checked the ESB site: check here http://www.esb.ie/main/energy_home/your_esb_bill_tariffs.jsp

They seem pretty cheap - £0.0844 per kW used.

So say 400W in total for a big PSU and monitor (given that a lot of general home systems ship with 250W PSUs), that's £0.03376 per hour for your comp (offpeak charges), so it's not too bad compared to the main applicances.

Snowbat

Originally posted by Red Moose
Furthermore, I don't know if that 300W PSU in the comp is used fully all the time

Its not. It can consume 300W continuously at full load which should let you run at least 4 hard drives and the processor flat-out (with a little headroom to spare). When you have fewer than 4 hard drives and the processor is idle, less power is consumed.

The device irishguy needs is called an AC clamp meter. This measures AC current flowing in a cable that is placed within the clamp, and when you multiply current by the mains voltage, you get the power consumption in Watts. Unfortunately those meters are not cheap (last time I checked anyway).

JustHalf

I remember someone was advertising on the Late Late Show a device that you used between a plug and the socket that would tell you how much money you had spent on electricity.

Gerry

On average, since most machines are not using the maximum continuous output of their power supplies, we'll say that a machine is using maybe 200 watts on average. Power supplies are around 60% efficient at converting ac to dc, so that computer would be drawing 333 watts. Just a small point.

trewinnard

Its called an Amp meter. Most multi-meters also have this functionality but only up to 10 amps.

ScumLord

I'm kind of surprised you can't do it with software, doesn't the motherboard monitor it's power consumption, or is that just what the CPU is using?

If you've got a new PC running windows 7 it's using all sorts of power saving tricks, at worst you could set your PC to power saving mode.

How many cups of tea are made in your house? I've heard boiling a kettle can cost a fortune relatively speaking.

trewinnard

Scumlord,
Check out this article on PC power consumption:
http://www.infobarrel.com/PC_power_consumption_explained

I can find out about your average household items if you interested?

Overheal

My UPS reports my average draw as a little over 100 Watts, which includes my LED screen.

Thats on a 95W CPU, 2 sticks of DDR3, 2 HDDs and a GPU. The PC has an overkill 750W Supply.