how much power do pcs use?

elite

elite

elite

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mam just got the electric bill in for £240, said it was a lot higher then last months, she now thinks its my pc and my brothers, do pcs really use a lot of power or is there any way i prove or show her somthing on how much they use?

i dont leave my pc on over night, nor does my brother
 
am i right in assuming if you have a 300w PSU thats the same as having three 100w light bulbs on?, or is that complete bs ? :{
 
A 300w psu will not be running flat out / using its full 300w's when it's on, so i think you a re a little of the mark with your statement, but there again i could be wrong :eek:

cheers
deano
 
Check for estimated readings on your previous statements, that's the most likely cause of an unexpectedly large bill.

I run my PC 24/7, live in a 3-bed semi with the wife & use about £30 per month electricity.
 
Running my pc, monitor, cable modem, network switch, subwoofer and speakers, tv, dvd player, video, alarm clock and bedside light off a ups doesn't seem to upset things at all.

Unplug everything, plug one of those electric heaters in, set it to the lowest setting possible and turn it on, and my ups flips out and goes nuts.

Bri's suggestion sounds most likeliest (sp?)
 
elite said:
mam just got the electric bill in for £240, said it was a lot higher then last months, she now thinks its my pc and my brothers, do pcs really use a lot of power or is there any way i prove or show her somthing on how much they use?

i dont leave my pc on over night, nor does my brother
Click to expand...

No way is that down to PC usage! :) Point your mum (mam? :p) at this thread so she can reassure herself.
 
williamw11 said:
Its your dual core!!!!!!!! :D

You can buy plug in thingies (technical term) that will tell you how much power is being consumed.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you can buy a plug that goes into the power socket with an LCD display on it, and it will give statistics on whatever is plugged into it, such as KW/h (kilowatts per hour) iirc you can also include the cost of elecricity and it calculates how much the device is costing to run.

I've wondered about this too, I used to get moaned at a lot about high electricity costs.
 
Completely unscientific test, but get her to watch the electricity meter spinning. Then switch all your stuff off and ask her if she's noticed a difference.

Chances are she will notice a difference, but not the drastic one she was expecting..and the thing will still be flying round.

I've been through this before with my parents and, more recently, with a flatmate (turned out it was the electric water heater being on almost constantly due to us mucking up the settings).

It depends on the PSU you have in your PC. Whatever wattage rating it is is pretty much the maximum it will dish out (and even that assumes 100% efficiency which is pretty much unheard of). As has been pointed out though your PC will rarely be hoovering power for its components all the time.

I think the days of comparing it to leaving light bulbs on are on the way out (with your dual sli machines and multi core cpu's all wanting 400w+) but I'm pretty confident they're still among the smaller power drains in your average house.

Kev
 
elite said:
mam just got the electric bill in for £240, said it was a lot higher then last months,
Click to expand...



not sure who you are with but many electricity companis have recently had huge prices rises southern/scottish/atlantic havehad a rise of around 20% recently and powergen and britisg gas have one imminent
 
It depends on how active your core(s) are. As the cpu is the single component in the PC that uses the most power compared to anything else, If your core(s) are on 100% 24/7 then you might use a fair bit of electricity. However dont think that just because a pc is idle, it wont use hardly any power at all, because that is rubbish. Hard disks, cd roms, ram, fans, motherboard all that other stuff uses a lot of power when combined.

In answer to someones post about PSU wattage, The pus is never 100% efficient, infact apart from the seasonic ones, most are around 60 - 75% efficient. So that means that even on full load, you still are only using your PSU's rated power output, with a percentage loss due to efficiency.

With that in mind, having a more efficient PSU could slightly lower the cost to run the same PC.
 
mums A64 3500/1gig ram, x700, 2 hard drives, 2 DVD drives takes about 250W max (this is actual readings rather than working it out, as shes got a 500W PSU)
 
A fairly good spec machine will use ~250W at full load excluding a monitor which is ~50W for a TFT.

A Idling this is much less and might even be below 100W

So if it is on about 8 hours a day it is 300W*8 = 2.4kWh a day times two computers is ~5kWh
say it is 10p/kWh that means it costs 1 quid to run the two computer one day or 30 quid each month

This figure can be a bit higher if you run the computer longer than 8 hours or when you have a CRT monitor that is on all the time.
 
If your PC needs say 250 watts at full load and your PSU is say 70% efficient, you need to remember to multiply 250 by (1/0.7).
 
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