PC power consumption:

Soldato
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Stupid question incoming guys, hoping somebody here knows more about than me :D

Here goes,

If you're PC's idle power usage is say 50w, how does this compare to running a 50w light bulb?

Does the PC use more power than other 50w devices or would it draw the same.

Reason I ask is my kids sometimes put a film on in bed at night, fall alseep and the PC goes to idle, would this be similar to leaving a light on overnight or use more power, if both are 50w?
 
Power in watts is the rate at which energy is consumed. 1 watt is one joule of energy consumed per second. So as has already been stated a little more concisely above, the amount of energy consumption doesn't change if the thing consuming the energy changes
 
I see what you're getting at Boomstick.

If say you had a water pump much of the energy input into the device would be imparted to the water to make it move and exit the room with the now flowing water. The water would also absord some of the heat from the motor and also leave the room.

In the case of your computer/monitor all the energy ultimately ends up in your room either directly heating the air or radiated as visible light or infrared.

/edit - in the case of the light bulb all the energy also ends up in the room as heat or light. The only directly lost energy is light flowing out your window if the curtains are open.
 
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The only thing I'll add is that maybe it's 50w when watching the film, but that could fall to 30w when the CPU is idle. It will fall a little more if the harddrive is set to power down after a set time period.

You can tell Windows to put the computer into sleep mode after a specified period of inactivity. This is what I would do if you're looking to reduce consumption of the PC.
 
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