More energy efficient to leave laptops/desktops on?

If you were a pc would you rather sprint for 30 seconds then jog all day with occasional sprints

or

sprint for 30s, sprint for the same time as above, maybe jog for a short period then have a good long rest (as if you were dead) possibly all day

Scenario one sounds like its more engergy sapping to me and would be provable with a cheap power meter.

Springing would have to be very energy inefficent and jogging very efficient to reverse the above scenario.

Other urban myths include that you should keep the fridge or freezer full as its more energy efficent

and that you should keep your water heating on all day to 'keep the tank warm'
 
errata said:
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Other urban myths include that you should keep the fridge or freezer full as its more energy efficent

and that you should keep your water heating on all day to 'keep the tank warm'
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Especially since modern heating system don't have hot water tanks - the water is heated on demand.
 
yashiro said:
You leave appliances on to minimize them going pop when they're powered up.
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This is the really interesting argument - if you could work out the percentage chance of frying your laptop by powering/depowering it and run that against the cost of the electricity needed to leave it on 24/7 you could work out which was the most cost effective option. No idea where you'd get that kind of data though :confused:

Plus you could use the green argument - most of the carbon emissions are created during production, so you could argue that it's 'better for the planet' to leave it on and not risk damaging it ;)
 
Laptops are specifically designed to be power cycled. It's a non issue. Turn them off when not in use.

Stuff happens, things break (especially nvidia chipsets, hoho) just keep backups of your data and worry less. :)
 
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Heres a thought , youre in a flat right....:rolleyes:

presuming you have a pre payment card meter for your electric , put a tenner on it and leave your computer on all the time and see how long your electric lasts for.:cool:

when it runs out , put another tenner on and turn off the computer when u are not using it...:D

if your second tenner lasts longer , your flatmate wins and you have to pay extra towards the leccy bill cos you leave your computer on :p

if it dosent last longer , check your flatmate aint left the electric blanket on :eek:

The appliance of science :D
 
As an electrician I am staggered by the the lack of attention paid to the obvious here.

When you use electricity, your meter spins.
When your meter spins, you pay for it
NOTHING is 100% efficient when it comes to electrics.
QED: If its on, its using more power than it would be when its off. Full stop, end of story.

If there was that much power "Surge" at start up we'd all need a 3 phase star-delta supply. We don't so the "surge" everyone is banging on about is virtually non existent in the big scheme of things.

Here is a wee toy for everyone to play with if anyone's interested :)

http://www.eu-energystar.org/en/en_008b.shtml
 
cavemanoc said:
This is the really interesting argument - if you could work out the percentage chance of frying your laptop by powering/depowering it and run that against the cost of the electricity needed to leave it on 24/7 you could work out which was the most cost effective option. No idea where you'd get that kind of data though :confused:
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Anything with moving parts has a mean time to fail which is the average time the thing will run before it fails given the inherent flaws of manufacture, power supplies, hard drives and other electrical components also have such a value. Leaving a computer on all the time will burn up those hours more quickly giving you less time to use the PC before something fails. I expect power cycling has minimal effect on anything except the power supply. And these have pretty short MTTFs anyway so it could be tight - depends how many hours a day you use your PC.
 
Why are people still making out booting a computer puts a huge strain on it, I mean look at gaming where you've got double penatration on your CPU and GPU and that can go on for hours and hours. Like I said before the only devices that don't like power-cycling all the time is the hard disk, but I doubt you'd be power-cycling it enough to break it.
 
Hi guys I once investigated how much it would cost to keep the pc turned on 24/7. The answer I got was around £20/£30 a month.

Imagine how much that would cost over the years. I am very guilty as charged I keep my desktop on 24/7.

I reckon we must take price of electricity into consideration. If one keeps the pc on 24/7 they are spending around £360 per year to fun it's electricity supply. Does that sound like a lot to you?
 
Also think about how many other appliances around the house are on stand by.
Well my PC has speakers, monitor, 2 printers, rechargeable docks and maybe more these must add to the cost for sure. With the current economic collapse the price of electricity is propelling upwards at a astronomical rate and we are all left to suffer the repercussions albeit in the form of leaving our desktops turned on 24/7!
 
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psd99 said:
Hi guys I once investigated how much it would cost to keep the pc turned on 24/7. The answer I got was around £20/£30 a month.

Imagine how much that would cost over the years. I am very guilty as charged I keep my desktop on 24/7.

I reckon we must take price of electricity into consideration. If one keeps the pc on 24/7 they are spending around £360 per year to fun it's electricity supply. Does that sound like a lot to you?
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Um, I worked out roughly £12.60/month.

I assumed on idle that a computer would draw 100W (most do), the monitor was off, etc. One kW costs us 17p so to leave 100W's on for 10 hours it's 17p, so in a day that's something like 42p, then 42p x 30 (days) = £12.60. My computer does about 115W idle, that's without a beefy video card, 90nm CPU, 3 hdds and NOT having Cool 'n' Quiet or Speedstep configured (this would reduce your power consumption more.

An XBOX360 (pre-Falcon) pulls about 180W IDLE and about the same in game. A normal Sky box (NOT HD or +) uses something like 23W standby and 25 on, all it does is mute sound and cut out video, the internel processing still continues, HD and + are different I believe.

I think the future of home and bussiness computers will be the eco. ones like ATOM, C7 that can do >30W idle ... they will let you surf the web and play videos, just no games. When you look at a bussiness with 400+ computers you can see how even cutting a small amount of power is a good thing.

Set your monitor to turn off after xx minutes or your computer to hibernate that way you don't forget to leave it on. Don't let Windows switch off your hdd's though, 'cuz they'll power off and then back up all the time and that's no good.
 
It's like the whole leaving a light bulb on uses less energy than turning it of.

all a complete load of ***** turn it of, can't see how anyone can think leaving something on like a computer is more efficient than turning it off.
 
Mmm.. Short mobile "movie" to show how much power is actually drawn at various stages when booting a desktop (in this case Q6600 with 6 drives and ATI 4870) - http://72.9.155.19/flash.php . Word of warning, despite me quickly editing prolonged moments when progs were being loaded at startup etc, it is still a lot like watching paint dry. But at least it gives you an idea of power consumption of windows machine at boot...

If anyone wants 2 minutes of their life back after viewing all in can offer is link to stealth cat on youtube. ;)
 
v0n said:
Mmm.. Short mobile "movie" to show how much power is actually drawn at various stages when booting a desktop (in this case Q6600 with 6 drives and ATI 4870) - http://72.9.155.19/flash.php . Word of warning, despite me quickly editing prolonged moments when progs were being loaded at startup etc, it is still a lot like watching paint dry. But at least it gives you an idea of power consumption of windows machine at boot...

If anyone wants 2 minutes of their life back after viewing all in can offer is link to stealth cat on youtube. ;)
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how does your monitor only use 13W when on :confused: at very least a 17" CRT i'd imagine uses 50w when on.
is that 13W the standby Wattage?
 
It's monitor on (as in - not in standby) with no signal to it and nothing to show.
 
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