The Power Consumption of Modern PCs

janp writes "The power consumption of modern PCs has skyrocketed the past few years. Hardware.Info has done some fairly extensive research on the power usage of various configurations. It turns out the a high-end gaming rig can easily use more than 400 W, and that putting a system in stand-by isn't as saving as you might think. The article has some interesting tips to save on power costs."

Comments

Get Laptops or smaller

[Salvance]

If you're worried about power consumption, you're not going to buy a top of the line gaming rig. You'd probably buy a relatively low powered laptop (or even buy a very underpowered laptop similar to a OLPC machine). Gaming machines will continue to be bigger and bigger power hogs. More power consumption = faster and better gameplay, no way around it.

Re:Get Laptops or smaller

[tomstdenis]

Not really. more crap in game IMPLIES more power, but compare say a 486 to a Core 2 Duo. The latter is much more efficient per MIPS than the former.

To put it another way, to match the power [in MIPS] of a typical 1989 486 desktop, you could do so with far less power consumption today. The problem is few companies write conservative software. Go ahead, make your application inefficient, a new cpu is always around the corner!

What people seem to forget is that we were doing word processing, vector graphics and all that on old school Mac IIs in the mid to early 80s. Those programs certainly didn't require hundreds of megabytes of ram or gigabytes of disk space. Of course people associate numerical requirements with quality. CPU has more megahurts? It must be better! Game needs a faster GPU? It must be awesomer! etc...

I'm personally impress with efficiency not bulkyness. Write me a competent word processor that fits on a floppy disk. That'd be a hoot.

Re:Get Laptops or smaller

[Banzai042]

Not always, granted if you want an 8800GTS/X you'll need a big power supply, but if you go with something like the upcoming 8600 Ultra (not the highest end, but should still have some pretty good performance in dx9 games), which has no PCI-e power connector (draws enough power from the slot), just about any C2D cpu, a single optical drive, and a single hard drive, you'll have a machine that's pretty light on power use. Just because it's possible to get a machine that needs a 750 Watt PSU doesn't mean that's your only choice in a desktop, even for gaming. It's all in the components you choose.

modern PCs or gaming PCs? There's a difference

[grommit]

The summary mentions modern PCs but it seems to be about gaming PCs. Posting a story saying that gaming PCs take up a lot of electricity is pretty much stating the obvious.

I'd be more interested to see the power consumption differences between an off she shelf Best Buy computer of 5-10 years ago compared to one of today. Brick and mortar electronics stores are where a good majority of people buy their computers so as far as home computer power usage goes, that's what matters. I'd like to think that with components like sound, networking and video being put on the mainboard and the ability of major manufacturers to set machines to go into a sleep mode by default that computers of today would actually take up less power than those of yesteryear.

Not having any machine of that type around, I can't really do any testing unfortunately.

Re:No your math is wrong (follow up)

[Darkfred]

Obviously I bought a new refridgerator. A 10 year old refridgerator is just not efficient anymore.

But the scariest thing I found during my power audit was that each incandescent lightbulb was taking more power than my computer at rest. A single chandelier in my house accounted for 1/4 of my electrical bill.
By replacing all the lightbulbs with compact flourescent I was able to shave a 3rd off my monthly bill. (still quite high because of an old ac system).

In conclusion your computer is such a minor contribution to electricity that you shouldn't even be considering it before you fix the big offenders.

Re:No your math is wrong (follow up)

[HappyEngineer]

Using a kill-a-watt I found out that my computer draws 600W. (3 monitors, dual cpu, high end video card, 4 hard drives, 8 fans)

I was able to reduce my power bill from $250/month to $100/month by turning it off every night.

The upshot is that people should buy a kill-a-watt and find out what the big offenders are. Guessing probably won't work.

What are you guys DOING?

[potat0man]

These power bills make me cringe. $100??? $300!?!?!

My one bedroom apartment with its occasionally used dishwasher, electric stove, fridge/freezer, 4 or 5 LED lightbulbs, 25"tv, router, modem, cell phone charger, electric razor, gaming pc & work pc costs me between $16-$24/month.

This is in Albuquerque, NM. I am pretty efficient. I...

1. Never leave things on when not using them and have everything plugged into power strips conveniently placed on TOP of my desks/tv stand so it's easy to flip off the switch so no standby power is ever wasted. It's just a habit now: Shutdown the pc, flip the power switch.

2. Use LED Bulbs

3. Have gas heat/hot water. Don't need AC. The air naturally circulates in the summer due to a heat chimney, plus my part of the building is shaded.

4. Keep my fridge/freezer packed to the brim with old milk jugs full of water.


I've never NOT done any of these things so I don't know what the bill would be if I didn't. Perhaps I should bite the bullet some month and try it out. But I can't imagine having a $100 electric bill. You guys all have hot tubs and the fanciest christmas displays in the county or what? I don't know if my bill would get that high even if I left everything on 24/7 for the entire month.

Am I an anomally? Is my meter broken? I don't know how I'd even get the bill that high if I wanted to.