Electrical usage of pc per month!!

weehamish

weehamish

weehamish

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20 Oct 2012
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I think ive worked this out right, give or take a few watts, but my pc uses 448 watts on this http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine.

So is that per hour?

So 24/7 it uses say 11 kWh per day

I pay 5.7 per kWh so thats 63p per day to run my pc all day?

So thats say £19 per month?

Does this sound right to anyone?

Has anyone worked this out before?
 
That would be peak power consumption. So gaming, or using the GPU at full blow for say, bit-coining ect... Unless you are gaming 24 hours a day or doing those other things, I wouldn't worry too much.

Your PC would idle under 100W at the plug, maybe higher (130W) depending on how efficient the components are. That's equivalent to an old light bulb. If it's on 24 hours a day, That's be roughly a fiver a month.

Get a plug power monitor if you want to know your power consumption. If you have monitors, these can take a fair whack of energy as well.
 
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Its a 750watt Corsair CX750 PSU so its half decent.

My bill this month is £45 so im thinking its mostly my PCs fault.

My old PC was a 750W PSU too with a GTX 285 and im sure i had cheaper bills!

Q9450 vrs i5 3570K.
 
Just to clarify, the PSU wattage don't matter. It only shows the maximum power the PSU can theoretically deliver.

If it's any good (which it is, since it's bronze certified), then the power usage at the plug will be roughly the power needed by the PC components (~100W at idle). If your new internal components need more power to run (GPU with higher idle power state than the GTX 285), then you will consume more power.

As I said, it's best if you actually monitor how much power you are using straight at the plug instead of second-guessing. These plug monitors cost around £15, and they are very handy. You can probably do a ball-park estimate, but I wouldn't expect your new system to be using much more than the old system (components tend to be more efficient nowadays). As I said, the up-cost or leaving your computer on all day would be under £5, £10 at a stretch.
 
I assume your folding or summat if ya using that much power, an idle pc doesnt use much power especially if ya using power saving features. I barely notice mine on my bill nowadays, everything on my PC seems to have a power saving feature to shut it off when its not been used.
 
My pc pulls about 160watts when just in windows and about 300watts when gaming. Years ago I use to leave pc on all day, but now with crazy price you pay for power , I sleep the pc when Ive finished using it and its set to sleep after 45mins if I forget.
 
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Mines on 24/7 as it's mostly used for XBMC streaming these days and it hardly uses anything. The Plasma TV the files get streamed to costs more to run than it and it's probably only on for 6-8 hours a day on average.
 
So based on some very rough maths your PC is probably costing around £7 a month to run. (Unless your folding or doing similiar on it).
 
First PSU calculators are never accurate.

Best thing to do, if you are that concerned, is to actually monitor the power draw of the PC when it's in use. You can do this with an Ammeter, a multimeter, a plug in wattmeter or maybe even one of those AC clamp meters leccy companies sometimes give customers. The last two suggestions may even log the cost per hour/day or whatever.
 
weehamish said:
I think ive worked this out right, give or take a few watts, but my pc uses 448 watts on this http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine.

So is that per hour?

So 24/7 it uses say 11 kWh per day

I pay 5.7 per kWh so thats 63p per day to run my pc all day?

So thats say £19 per month?

Does this sound right to anyone?

Has anyone worked this out before?
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haud yer wheesht lad, £45 is nothing. But yes, if you assume you are maxing out your kit in a particular game (100% cpu and gpu usage) and add a bit for your monitors, then that figure/hour is a reasonable figure. I think I worked out that it costs me 6p an hour when I'm gaming, but a wall plug is the only way to really know
 
gonna have to get the power meter on my htpc, Just upgraded the apu to hybrid crossfire with a sapphire 6670. it was using just 55w idle in windows :)
 
To give a idea, my PC I s my sig pulled 330w from the mains whilst running Furmark and Prime together.

PSU calculators offer what min PSU is required not actual power draw.
 
Thanks for the replies.

To clarify things, im actually not using my PC 24/7 at all but im just trying to guess the maximum costs.

In fact i probably use it 5-6 hours on games per day and 3 hours just idle or downloading.

My bill use to be like £25-35 nowhere near £45 this is why i am wondering its my PC because its the newest thing in the house. So you can see a tenner has popped on my bill from nowhere and my tarrif is fixed for 6 month.

Another thing my CPU Is fixed at 4.4 it does not downclock on idle i know i can change this in the BIOS but that shouldnt make much of a difference should it?

Its probably not my PC costing me but id like to work it out either way, the plug thing is a good bet but its like paying for something ill use once then put in away forever :P

Also to note is i use my PC more at night then during the day i bet half the usage is past 12 so its a lower cost per kWh, so my guess is my PC should cost around £10 per month?
 
My PC uses about 73w when browsing etc., 200w when gaming and about 320w when benchmarking.
 
ShortWarning said:
Sorry to butt in.

Do laptop power supplies work the same way or do they always pull max power from the socket?
Click to expand...

They pull more when charging the battery than anything. My laptop idles at 15w from the plug, it can pull 60 odd from the wall gaming with an empty (charging) battery. It has a 90w PSU
 
OP, you electric bill is tiny, really. Don't worry about your PC, worry more what your supplier is charging, turn off unused devices/lights and switch to energy saving bulbs if you haven't already
 
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