how much electricity does my pc use?

ok here is my problem, i leave my pc on all day and all night.

lately my girlfriend is complaining about the electricity bil and of course blames it on me having the pc on always.

the only thing is that when she goes out to work she always leaves about 3 or 4 lights on in the house and ofcourse i tell her that is what is causing the higher electricity bill.

while an obvious answer is to turn the lights and the pc off when we go out, i don't have a problem paying more for the electricity than she does to be able to leave the pc on all the time. I do however have a problem with paying more for the bill than she does just so she dosent have to remember to turn the lights off all the time.


so i would really like to know is does 3 / 4 house lights or a pc use more electricity?

 

ok i think that means my pc uses more.

i got 450watt psu and the bulbs are all between 60 and 100 watt.

but the pc is on 24/7 so it looks like i lose this one


any idea roughly how much extra this is adding to my bill? (the pc)

 

i'd have to check my bill for that.

ill find out tomorow cus its time for me to sleep now

 

The price for electricity is different at different times of the year. You are billed by Kilowathours. In other words how many thousand watts you use in an hour. I am in the US so those are the prices I am going to give you. here is how it breaks down for you

You have a 450 watt power supply
in 24 hours you use 10800 watts
in a 30 day month you use 324000 watts
This means you use 324 killowatthours a month to leave the computer on all the time for 30 days.
The average cost per kilowatt hour is 7 cents. Sound cheap? watch this.
324 X .07 =$22.68 Now for a year $272.16. 7 cents adds up.

Now put that bottom jaw back in your mouth. There is a way to slightly reduce this. (Besides turning it off when not in use) Get a UPS. this works because of the battery. The UPS will draw from the house at much lower watt rating and the computer will draw from the UPS. The battery is in constant use. A UPS job is to buffer the power coming out so it is a nice steady 115 or 110 volts. Not to mention power the computer if the power goes out. The math to figure out how much your computer is drawing from your home when a UPS is hooked up is anyones guess. I guess you could get one of those things you hold up to the wire to see how much current is going through. Like I said slightly lower the cost.

Hope you enjoyed my math lesson.
-Del

 

oh man thats bad, especially as i sometimes leave both PC's on and the monitors!

 

ok i just found out i pay about 12p per kwh upto the first 225kwh per quater and 6p per kwh after 225kwh.

 

Quick note on some monitors. Even if you hit the power the button the monitor will still consume power since it is in "Standby" mode. Same thing with some printers and speakers. Also some things in "Standby" consume more power than if they where on. Your best bet it to simply turn off the power strip when not using anything.

-Del

 

Your girlfriend loses, period, stick that to her and tell her to either turn off the lights or lose the hair dryer..............

You will never be pulling as much juice out of the mains as the lights do..........................................................

 

I like that answer BaaBaa. But it depends if they are incandescent or florescent energy saver bulbs. You would need to run 30 15 watt florescent bulbs to equal a 450 watt power supply or 7.5 60 watt bulbs. So tell you G/F to change all the bulbs to the energy saving ones and only power one. As for the hairdryer who needs one. Makes the hair frizzy anyway. That way you can do whatever you want with the computer. And while she is standing there huffing and tapping her foot at you just tell her it doesnt matter anymore.

Oh yeah in case you haven't caught onto this. When watts is written on a device that is the number of watts in an hour that item will use. Some items do not have their wattage rating on them. They tell you the volts and amps. Well Volts X Amps = Watts. A very rare it just tells you amps and nothing else. In that case in USA assume it uses 120v. This will not give you an exact watt rating but gives an idea. Some appliances use 240v. Now you know all you need to figure out how much things cost to run. To bad they never list power consumption for "standby" mode. They should be required to. Any device that runs off a remote goes into "standby" when it is off. Also devices with buttons you press lightly to turn off and don't really hear any click or very faint click.

 

Im going to put in a few energy saving bulbs but not in all rooms because i think the ligh off them can look odd sometimes.

but theres no way my pc is going off every time i go out

 

Tell you what, without going into the fundamental differences between DC power and AC power.

For a one hour period do the following:
Turn off all the lights, leave the PC turned on.
Count what the electricity meter is at before and then after 1 hour.

Then
Turn off the PC and turn on all the lights
Count what the electricity meter is at before and then after 1 hour.

The lowest value will be the winner...............................................

The PC PSU is not running at full load, therefore will not be dissapting 450watts of power, and if it was it would be DC power it would be dissapating and not true AC power......................

 

Yeah, there is no way you are running your PC with all 400+ watts 24/7.

I think I calculated up my old Dell, it had 4 sticks of RAM, a 9800PRO, an audigy 2, of course a Hard Drive, 2 disk drives, floppy drive, and a P4 2.4ghz. I believe that IF everything was running/being used, it used 320 or so watts total power. That's why I had a 350 watt power supply, I'd never need more than that on that old computer.

 

I was working this out just the other day.

My PC has a 400W PSU full load but I estimate I'm using around 250 Watts with the devices and CPU ect..

250 watts x 24 hours = 6000 Watts or 6 KWh per day.

365 days = 2190 KWh per year.

1 KWh = 6p.

2190 KWh x 6p = £131.40p

Shit, I didn't realise it was so much.


4 lightbulbs at 60W-100W (80W average) = 320 Watts.

So it's costing you around £168 a year if they were kept on for 24 hours. Or £84 for 12 hours a day.

If your PC is using 320 Watts it's about the same as the 4 bulbs on all day and night.

 

.

 

I wonder how many people actually realise how much a pc costs just to run.
It's a lot more than i first thought!

 

Yeah I know. I was surprised too. I thought it would be about 5p a day, not 36p. Very surprised.

So it works out at £11 a month for me, and that's on top of the NTL broadband of £25.