PC running costs

I used to, when I could spend more than an hour a day at my PC.

Then I built three rigs for my kids, which are on whenever they're not sleeping or at school...

...now I absolutely refuse to look at the meter and just silently sob whenever Eon take their Direct Debit.
 
Don't really care about how much power my PC consumes.

I'm in the twilight of my life and have other things to worry about! :p
 
As others have said a smart plug with energy monitoring or a plug in meter connected between your 44way mains adaptor and the PC etc will tell you how much it uses in terms of energy.

My PC tends to use about 95 watts (including monitor) sat on the forums etc and that's an I7 12th gen (about 18 months old), with 64gb of ram, a couple of rusting disks and a trio of solid state drives.
 
Werewolf said:
As others have said a smart plug with energy monitoring or a plug in meter connected between your 44way mains adaptor and the PC etc will tell you how much it uses in terms of energy.

My PC tends to use about 95 watts (including monitor) sat on the forums etc and that's an I7 12th gen (about 18 months old), with 64gb of ram, a couple of rusting disks and a trio of solid state drives.
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The same pretty much (85w-95w); i7 12700k, 32GB RAM, 9070XT, 1x 2TB HDD and 4 NvMEs + a 27" 1440 monitor. Saying that though my electricity bill has gone down recently by a few quid since I have started gaming on a Steam Deck a lot of the time (when the i7 kicks off gaming it can be >350w total load).
 
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Less than it used to be years back. Hardware is much better at conserving energy now and much less reliance on mechanical drives has made a noticable difference.
 
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my UPS says 3.34kwh average since the 1st april.
cummaltive 53.4kwh

2.05kwh per day based on the current year so far, crimson desert pushed me up a lot recently

Pc usually on and idle if I'm awake

thats based on pc+1monitor seems to idle around 150-170watts when I'm browsing the web. (less if I turn my monitors hdr off I think by about 30watt)

Its really not that expensive to leave a pc on.
 
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Werewolf said:
As others have said a smart plug with energy monitoring or a plug in meter connected between your 44way mains adaptor and the PC etc will tell you how much it uses in terms of energy.

My PC tends to use about 95 watts (including monitor) sat on the forums etc and that's an I7 12th gen (about 18 months old), with 64gb of ram, a couple of rusting disks and a trio of solid state drives.
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Thing is, I haven't got a pc yet. Just wondering what the usage is regarding electric.
 
hornetstinger said:
*** do not use imgbb ***



Insert toe ;)
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Can you at least hoover up first, I don't want crumbs or whatever that is under my feet.

Also post a better picture as my Google lens thinks that's an edifier T5.

Anyways enough off topic - post a nice pic in the home cinema thread please
 
Penfold101 said:
See what power supply it has fitted. Convert the wattage to kilowatts.

Assume it’s maxed out for 24 hours at your hourly rate, and then you know it’ll be costing less than that to run.

Quick maths.
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This,

For me, with a 750w PSU at 26.36p/KW, that works out at 19.77p/hour.

Multiply by how many hours/day you'll be gaming and that's your absolute max cost (don't forget to add the monitor and any other external devices you'll be using though).

Of course in reality it will likely be a lot lower than that as you'll almost never be running your PSU at 100% (unless you massively underspecced it)
 
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Haggisman said:
This,

For me, with a 750w PSU at 26.36p/KW, that works out at 19.77p/hour.

Multiply by how many hours/day you'll be gaming and that's your absolute max cost (don't forget to add the monitor and any other external devices you'll be using though).

Of course in reality it will likely be a lot lower than that as you'll almost never be running your PSU at 100% (unless you massively underspecced it)
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Or he’s mining like it’s 2021.
 
Thekwango said:
nope.
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Nor me. Thanks to solar and so on it's barely something I give it any attention. Even before I never did. I have a small IT rack with switch and router and a couple of servers / NAS they probably use more juice than my pc. Base load of the house is a few hundred Watts when nothing is being used other the IT rack and fridge etc.
 
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I know while browsing the net on one monitor and having YouTube/ twitch playing on the other monitor its around 120 watts, then with the games I’m currently playing it’s in the 130-170 watt range. Beyond that I’ve not really bothered to calculate cost.
 
When I had my own home and was working full time I never worried about leccy bills etc...

Now, living in rented accomodation, min wage, approx work 16 hrs a week due to health issues I want to be as efficient as possible with the leccy etc.

Like I said, not had my own PC for approx 10 years. Thinking of building a small PC. I been trying to work out running costs of other items too. With the PC, I won't know 100% until I build/buy one what it consumes.

If I build a PC it won't have a dedicated GPU. Probably a 600w PSU. AMD CPU 8600G I think....plus monitor, keyboard and mouse.
 
The hardware costs will be your initial concern in those circumstances, no? PCs, and electronics in general, are quite efficient these days, especially if you've been out of the loop a while, but the great qualifier that beats all of your efficiency/cost issues is the OFF switch :)
 
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[FnG]magnolia said:
The hardware costs will be your initial concern in those circumstances, no? PCs, and electronics in general, are quite efficient these days, especially if you've been out of the loop a while, but the great qualifier that beats all of your efficiency/cost issues is the OFF switch :)
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I agree about hardware costs but, I miss having a PC. I can manage with the components costs.

The other option was one of those small desktop Geekom type PC's but, I like to tinker, upgrade and be able to change all components....
 
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