Cost of leaving a PC on?

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The reason I ask is that, at the moment I am paying for a vent server to be hosted and I am considering hosting it locally and using the PC as a file server to share media around the house and for me to access while I am out and about, if needed.

The PC I am considering using is an older one now. It is based around the E6550 so wouldn't draw that much power?

My other option is an old Lattitude D630, not sure what processor but its 2ghz dual core with 2gb of ram . . . I am tempted by this as it would be quieter than a smll tower?

So can anyone hazard an educated guess at how much this would cost me to have on 24/7? Once I know roughly I can decide if I want to continue paying hosting or not :D
 
£10 per month would be about right for a 100W idle system.

The laptop would almost certainly be the lowest power consumption though.
 
if it's not doing much it will be using about 100W as a rough guess, so for 10 hours it'll cost you about 15p (depending on your tarriff etc.), so about 36p per day, so yeah about £130 per year, or £10-11 per month

if you specifically built a machine around low power always on you could probably halve that but the cost of building the machine would totally negate the saving on cost of electricity (but think of the bunny rabbits man)
 
£10 per month would be about right for a 100W idle system.

The laptop would almost certainly be the lowest power consumption though.

I missed that bit, according to "the internet" the Dell latitude D630 idles at about 15-20W, so that could be a good choice
so that would cost you £26 a year if it was always idle
 
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I used to leave my main PC on overnight 24/7.

I bought an HP microserver recently. I leave that on 24/7 now and turn the main PC off at night.

I guessed that possibly the Microserver used less power 24/7 than my main PC did for the 8/9 hours it is off at night.
 
I missed that bit, according to "the internet" the Dell latitude D630 idles at about 15-20W, so that could be a good choice
so that would cost you £26 a year if it was always idle

Thats amazingly low :o

Might try it out with home server on it. Or maybe even just XP and setup a share. Will have to see how everyone elses ping is on vent though I guess.
 
One of the reasons I bought my NAS - 17W full load and far less when only marginally busy. :) Does everything I'd ever have my PC do overnight anyway.
 
There's a guy in my adult learning course who claims leaving a pc on 24/7 for a month is like using a washing machine continuously for a month. Although this is the same guy when you say click the start menu (Win XP) he asks where it is.....
 
I worked out that my system folding 24/7 for a whole month cost me around £10

Something like that (idle) but remember energy prices are going one direction - UP

I was hosting from home and estimated the cost last year at being £15 a month which is the same price as a VPS - D'Oh

I also dismantled my folding / boinc farm which with the gpus was pulling in 2kw !!! :eek: Silly me
 
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