High-powered computers and energy bills?

I'm too paranoid to keep my PC switched on when I'm not around. I worry that my PSU is going to explode or spark or something and start a fire which burns my house down. :p
 
I have a 2900xt on my pc but I downclock it to save some energy and turn off the monitor also.

Leaving a pc on is like leaving the lights on all the time, if you were to fit energy saving light bulbs around the house and turn them off when out of the room then you should equal things out overall


If you use EON for your energy bill they'll send you a realtime watt measuring read out so you can measure exactly how much the pc is costing you hourly and monthly.
Also you can get cashback for signing up with them I believe and they do a price cap in case the economy turns nasty, etc
 
Jonny69 said:
I would expect a well specced up PC to be drawing double that, and yes it will run your bill up quite a lot. Leaving it on all day will probably add about £200 per year on the bill.
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bloody hell thats a lot. Gonna have to get into the habit of putting mine in hibernate all the time, hopefully my other housemate will do the same.
 
My kid seems to always forget to turn off the lights, so saving a bit of money by hibernating my PC is small fry compared to what we could save if he turned off the lights when he's not in a room any longer.
 
I dont have a problem with lights, I hardly use mine in my room, the computers fan leds and the monitor are usually enough at night :p
 
Ok so I just tried the hybrid sleep thing. When I woke it up, I was greeted with a blue screen :\ Said something about driver power failure or something like that??

Any ideas?
 
Turned off hybrid sleep and now I have the option of hibernate in my start menu. It works, and runs as normal when the session is resumed However, using that just seems to take as long as a shut down/start up so its fairly redundant :\

I think what I need is Sleep, but for some reason things wont run right when I wake it back up. I guess its a driver or BIOS problem as someone mentioned?
 
Sorry for the bumpage but can someone point me in the right direction? I remember a website where you can enter the different components of your computer to work out consumption. Or if someone could give me an indication please?

C2C Conroe 1.86Ghz @ 3.15Ghz (air)
4Gb DDR 2 @ 450
XFX 4870 1GB @ stock
2 HDs + external
DVDRW
5.1 Inspire speakers
USB Wireless MX700 Mouse (with hub)
USB Hub
Modular 520w PSU + 2 120m case fans
22" and a 17" monitors

Thanks
 
As I am using an electric heater in my room, I just consider this computer an extension of that. A quad core CPU is nothing more than expensive heater with a few extra features.
 
When my power meter worked it said that my Q6600 drew 350W continuously.. I know that running three i920s 24/7 doing SETI costs me an extra £60-70 a month or so.



M
 
find out why your sleep mode isn't working.

set S3 sleep mode in the BIOS, it's better than S1.

what hardware spec do you have?



failing to resume from sleep often means your ram voltage is set too low.
 
dbappa said:
Sorry for the bumpage but can someone point me in the right direction? I remember a website where you can enter the different components of your computer to work out consumption. Or if someone could give me an indication please?

C2C Conroe 1.86Ghz @ 3.15Ghz (air)
4Gb DDR 2 @ 450
XFX 4870 1GB @ stock
2 HDs + external
DVDRW
5.1 Inspire speakers
USB Wireless MX700 Mouse (with hub)
USB Hub
Modular 520w PSU + 2 120m case fans
22" and a 17" monitors

Thanks
Click to expand...

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

New PCs don't use as much power as some would have us believe. My machine ([email protected]@3.6Ghz, 4GB RAM, 8800GTS OC2) draws 180W on idle (less when not overclocked and speedstep enabled) and doesn't go above 290W with me running multiple CPU and GPU benchmarks and that's with 24" monitor and 2.1 speakers.
 
Out of interest, for those who use an energy meter to monitor power usage of their computers, are you able to recommend a decent one? I've been meaning to make some comparisons to prove a point to those people I live with. >.<
 
meghatronic said:
I find this is where tea drinkers win.

Turn on computer, go make tea, come back to enjoy tea and freshly booted pc.
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I can't make a cup of tea in 20 seconds. :(

I only leave my server (Atom-based) on, though. And it has so many uses that I can justify it being on constantly :)
 
_tom_ said:
bloody hell thats a lot. Gonna have to get into the habit of putting mine in hibernate all the time, hopefully my other housemate will do the same.
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Hours in a year: 24*365.24 = 8765.76. Call it 8765.

Cost per KWh is about 15p, so cost per Wh is about 0.015p

So cost per Watt-year is about £1.31

That £200 a year figure would be for a PC drawing an average of 152.7W

That's not much for the average. A PC could use more than that at idle (e.g. neoboy's uses 180W at idle).

So £200 a year is quite conservative for a PC on 24/7.

It's also wasteful to leave a PC on 24/7 just so that you don't have to wait for it to boot when you want it. Regardless of the cost, it's just a waste.
 
Interesting thread

I'm in exactly the same position as the OP. I'm in uni halls so not paying any utility bills at the moment but when we all get a flat obiviously we will have to start paying the bills :(

I know for a fact that my PC draws a lot of power (specs as per sig) and it is never switched off. Just the convenience of just being able to use it (no waiting for it too boot), and my PC generally is downloading over night. Also if i'm using my laptop, i access my printer and all my data through windows 7 homegroup (refuse to keep data on my laptop incase it gets knicked)

Its nots like its folding 24/7 though.

Have considered building a cheap mini-ITX system probably based around a intel i3 or i5 with integrated graphics (which would then be left on 24/7) and only using my PC for gaming when i need it
 
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