How much electricity does my computer use?

Its not possible to say as depending on your usage it will change.

When testing 1u servers I use an ampmeter on the socket (to make sure its within data center specs) and the usage from 0% CPU to 100% CPU is huge not to mention GPU.
 
I guess 450W full load. This is mainly because the 280gtx drinks power. No way of knowing without plugging it into a meter though. Cost will vary with load however, perhaps 200W idle to 450W load? That's basically a guess though

If you want a reading in £ rather than in Watts, (cost of one kW/hr)*24*7*(power used in W / 1000) is the cost to run it for a week.

Say 10p per kW/hr and 450W, you get 0.1*24*7*0.45=£7.56 per week, folding/equivalent

Price per kW/hr varies, £0.1 is the right order of magnitude. Is that what you were looking for?
 
Turning things on and off often can have a more adverse affect than leaving them running constantly, due to the hot cold cycle with being turned on and off.
 
I'm siding with jak731 on this one. Thermal fatigue is a bigger risk than running 24/7, though I don't think either is a big risk with a computer. It seems to be what's killing all the 360s though, cycling from hot to cold isn't that good for components.

In terms of electricity bills it's definitely better to turn it off when you're not using it.

Beyond that, you can do various things to cut down on electricity usage. I'm a strong believer in maintaining two bios profiles, one overclocked and one underclocked. Most of the time, when browsing, listening to music etc. I run the computer significantly undervolted. I used my q9550 at 2ghz most of the time. Reading through the manual of my new UD5 board I'm thrilled to see that I can turn off cores entirely, so when browsing and so forth I'm going to use my shiny new i7 without hyperthreading&turbo, and with only two cores, undervolted and probably at 2ghz. It makes it quieter too :)
 
You can buy power meters off ebay which sit between you plug and socket and have an LCD display which gives you loads of info about consumption.
 
jak731 said:
Turning things on and off often can have a more adverse affect than leaving them running constantly, due to the hot cold cycle with being turned on and off.
Click to expand...

This is true, and is one reason why servers last so long. In terms of a home PC it can probably be overlooked though.
 
Use Sleep/Standby, I always use that whenever I'm not at my PC for a long time. Uses virtually no more power than when it's shut-down (a few watts at the most), and resumes instantly. Got no reason to ever use shut-down now unless it's for changing hardware or installing updates.
 
I have never found sleep/hybernate to work too well - not sure about windows 7 but earlier versions its resulted in no end of problems.
 
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