Power Consumption of a Typical PC While Gaming

cliffski writes "How much does your PC really draw in terms of power when idle, when in sleep, and when playing a demanding game? I don't trust everything the manufacturers of hardware say, so I thought I'd get myself a watt measuring device and run a few tests on some of the gear I leave on all the time, and the gear I go to the trouble of turning off. The Linksys router drew 8 watts, the monitor drew a fairly noticeable 30-31, but what surprised me was how little power the base unit drew, even when playing Company of Heroes. Also, the variance of power draw for Vista seemed minimal, regardless of what you got the machine to do."

Comments

FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Biznitches!

Actually, if you get one of Stardock's utilities it will give you an average cost to run your PC. Running mine 24X7 costs about $200-$250 a year.

Re:FP

[Kuroji]

I don't suppose you would be willing to tell us WHICH ONE IT IS, now, would you?

Re:FP

[Anonymous Coward]

Running mine 24X7 costs about $200-$250 a year.

Is that Vista or XP? I'd be curious to know how much more it costs people to run Vista. Even with its better power management, running the CPU & GPU more will end up using more power.

Re:FP

[Spikeles]

Coz Google is SOOO hard to use.. here you go

Re:FP

[Chonnawonga]

I ran a similar test recently to find out where my electricity money was going. To my surprise, I found that running Linux at idle, my desktop was using 100 watts, but idling on XP, it uses 108 watts! I suspect the difference is, in the end, much greater, because Linux is idle MUCH more often than Windows.

I tried the same test on my girlfriend's laptop. There was no noticeable difference between Linux and Vista.

What I need to do next is try to get more realistic test runs: use each computer for a few hours, running a set list of tasks in a way which is fairly typical, but standardized. As soon as I come up with the time to waste on that, I'll let you know.

By the way, I did find out one other interesting fact: having the computer shut off the monitor, rather than just switching it off manually, resulted in a power savings of one watt. I expect this is because the computer is no longer powering the graphics card.

Re:FP

[PitaBred]

Do both. I turn the monitor off manually when I leave most of the time, but I still have the computer power it off for when I forget to, and to power down the video feed. Best of both worlds.

What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[CambodiaSam]

What about the thermal impact? I live in a hot climate, so leaving a PC on seems to have a big impact on the temperature of the room. Sure, I might use a couple hundred Watts to run the gear, but what about the electricity required for the A/C to cool the room back down?

Hey, when it's 100 deg F outside, I notice the difference.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[AkaKaryuu]

I've had a _very_ notible temperature change in my old apartment when both my friend and I ran our Macbook Pros. Them's hot laptops. Makes you wonder what kind of damage they do to the little friend in your pants.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

So does your computer, powersupplies get less efficeint the warmer the room is. So while your useing only 200 watts, at 70 degrees, at 85 degrees, it's probably past 250.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[SoylentRed]

I totally agree - not wanting to deal with swuts all the time - I use a board under either my macbookpro or my dell laptops...

Basically it's a hard thin board that was a place-mat for a dinner table.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[jawtheshark]

Back in the day, I had my server (an AMD Athlon64 2800+), my workstation (2x AMD Athlon MP 2400+), my wifes computer (P-IV 2.6GHz HT) and a huge Colour Laser printer (Ricoh Aficio CL2000) in a 10 square metre office. All the machines were pretty much on all the time.

We never ever needed to turn on the heating in that room. Even when it was -15C outside. In the summer you couldn't stay there for more than half an hour if you dared to close the door. The machines stayed stable though....

We now cut down seriously on the amount of machines we have in our office. (Let's say that getting rid of the MP was already an immense change...)

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[jawtheshark]

Interesting. Do you have any sources to backup that claim? (No criticism, just curious)

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[mr_mischief]

Any decent electronics project book will verify that any copper or aluminum wire will gain resistance with increasing temperature.

If you want a quick link, though, how about this article at Dan's Data about power supplies which actually gives some basic theory? It's a little suspect in that it's a review of a particular brand of power supply, and Dan's Data isn't as widely known as Tom's Hardware or Anandtech. What do you want from the very first Google result for the search "warmer power supplies draw more current", though? It also happens that he's right (about the issue, anyway -- I've never reviewed or purchased Topower power supplies).

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[mr_mischief]

I used to work for an ISP which was contacted by the natural gas utility company about canceling service. The gas company decided it wasn't doing us as the customer nor them as the seller any good to keep billing us just for the pipe, as we used about 2 units of gas in the five years at our location. With four offices, a lobby, the call center, and the NOC, we were self-sustaining for heat. Cooling, on the other hand, cost us dearly.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[wolf12886]

Depending on where you live, that could work the other way as well, ie, offsetting your heating bill.

My tower doesn't produce much heat, but when I'm gaming with my 360, I swear its like having a space heater on, if you've never felt the air coming out of the exhaust fans, its something like putting your hand at the mouth of a hair dryer.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[QuantumHobbit]

Basically it's a hard thin board that was a place-mat for a dinner table.

Was I the only one expected some kind of innuendo there, or do I just have a dirty mind?

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[argent]

If you can use your Macbook Pro on your lap you've got tougher *legs* than I do, let alone anything you keep between them.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[SoylentRed]

Was I the only one expected some kind of innuendo there, or do I just have a dirty mind?

Dirty mind if I told you I balanced it on only 1 "table-leg"?

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[jawtheshark]

Okay, I could have Googled, yes.... Alas my last physics classes were over 13 years ago... Thanks for explaining though.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[jawtheshark]

And if you got cold, running Seti@Home did the job ;-)

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[bughunter]

No kidding. I bought a MBP almost two years ago, and a few weeks after I bought it, I got into the nightly habit of using it on my lap in front of the TV to browse the web and play games while my wife watched her programs.

A few weeks after that [this is in January mind you] I began waking up in the mornings with an especially acute itchy rash in my groin area, which I had never suffered from before. After a couple of weeks of being unable to cure myself of it, and the rash becoming angry and painful, I finally went to the doctor and was diagnosed with Tinea Cruris . The doctor asked me if I had begun using a sauna or spa regularly, to which I replied negatively...

He then asked me if I had recently purchased a laptop computer. And that's when the lightbulb went on.

After four weeks of twice daily showers, blow drying the affected area, and applying Lotrimin, the rash went away. And I no longer rest my laptop on my lap when in use.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell doesn't sell laptops; they sell notebook computers. Implying to the customer that they should put the computer on their lap is considered to create liability for the company and is a firable offense.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Shivetya]

I moved my office downstairs. Simply put, the lower floor is always cooler in summer and the heat difference in winter isn't justification to have a system upstairs.

As such, the upstairs is left at 82F during the day while not in use, goes down to 78 starting that nearly an hour before expected time to turn in.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[sm62704]

Laser printers are power hogs by the very way they work. They're space heaters! If you have a laser printer running, it most likely consumes more power than all your other hardware combined, and certainly puts out more heat.

The way a laser printer works is that the laser beam puts an electrostatic charge wherever it lands - which wouold be where you want the paper to be black.

The charge on the paper attracts the toner, which is black plastic ground into fine powder. A heater in the unit, at 1800 degrees f, melts the black plastic on to the paper.

If you care about your wallet (let alone global warming from the coal they have to burn for its electricity), you'll keep the laser turned off most of the time.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? http://www.dell.com/

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[imstanny]

but what about the electricity required for the A/C to cool the room back down? The same can be said about the benefits of not having to heat your room if you're in a cooler climate.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[geekoid]

Any first level electronics book will do.

Let's see what the DOE ahs to say, shall we?
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/phy99/phy99x42.htm

IT also discusses current; which is what we are really talking about here.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[WK2]

Unless you checked to make sure the batteries were not Sony, you shouldn't be resting a laptop on your lap anyway.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Kingrames]

You might be a geek, if your laptop gave you the itch.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[antdude]

Yep, same here. My upstair room can go up over 85 degrees(F) with a fan and central unit AC running! I have a bunch of electronics in my tiny room. I try to unplug stuff I don't use like TVs and printer. I also try to use AMD Cool'n'Quiet on my AMD systems. I also turn off machines that I don't use, but Linux/Debian box and wired network devices stay 24/7. Same for my old VCR (yes, still use one for recordings). :(

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[BlackSnake112]

Should that be the other way around?

If you laptop gave you the itch, you might be a geek.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[OglinTatas]

you're lucky it was just crotch rot. Dell laptops have the dubious distinction of being the first such devices to cause penis burns.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/11/22/man_burns_penis_with_laptop/

I _always_ use a lap "desk" (a flat board on top, some padding on the bottom) when I use my macbook pro, to prevent just such a thing. As you know, it gets pretty warm.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[camperslo]

Any decent electronics project book will verify that any copper or aluminum wire will gain resistance with increasing temperature.

While what you say is true, there is no reason to believe that resistance losses are a significant portion of the total losses in our power supplies or that it that those losses increase by a significant percentage over the temperature range seen. Without proper analysis, facts can be used to jump to the wrong conclusions. (compare with dangers/effects of high power microwaves and discussion of WiFi for example)

In power supplies I've built that were similar but not identical to PC supplies, most of the losses were switching/conduction losses in the power transistor(s) and in the rectifiers. In the case of the rectifiers the conducting voltage drop actually gets SMALLER at higher temperatures.
In practice, the main concern about elevated temperatures in a PC is an increase in the failure rates of components. Some simply fail if too hot. Thermal cycling can also cause cracks in solder connections over time. That means high temperature operation elevates failure rates both when it occurs and to a lesser extent later.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Kneo24]

That gives a whole new meaning to VD!

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Bob-taro]

Back in the day, I had my server (an AMD Athlon64 2800+)

To me, "back in the day" implies more than 3 years ago.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Macman408]

Typical air conditioning can remove heat from your house with a 30-45% penalty; eg running a 100W appliance might cost another 35W in air conditioning. Incidentally, at least for air conditioning planning, I've seen a human listed as producing about 600 BTUs per hour, or 175 Watts. So your room might be warming up as much from you using the computer as it is from the computer itself.

Also, some people seem surprised that their computer has a 450W power supply even though it is only drawing 150 Watts. This is because a power supply needs to supply the peak power for all accessories that might ever be installed. If you buy a computer from Apple or Dell, the power supply needs to have enough capacity to handle not only what you're getting, plus power for extra hard drives, PCIe cards, USB devices, FireWire devices, and anything else that might be added later. Furthermore, the power budget that they work with during design likely takes into account the maximum power specified for every single chip on the motherboard, even though it is unlikely that any one of them could reach that limit, much less all of them at the same time. The CPU's specifications might require 80W, even if it's only for a few milliseconds, and for the worst combination of operating temperature, manufacturing variance, and CPU load. There's a large margin built in to the design to ensure that your computer's power needs won't exceed what can be supplied.

In my case, my Dual 2.7 GHz PowerMac G5 has a 600W power supply, even though the peak usage I've measured is around 250W. Another 90W or so is reserved for PCI/PCI-X slots that I don't use, plus there's capacity needed for another hard drive, and 4 more sticks of RAM. Add in 15W available for bus power on FireWire, 2.5W for USB bus power... Then there's the difference between the actual sustained peak usage and the specification's instantaneous peak usage, which increases the requirements significantly. Pretty quickly, it adds up to something pretty close to 600 Watts.

I borrowed a Watts Up meter from the local library (the local power company supplies them to area libraries). I'd suggest that those interested in learning about their power consumption check if there is a similar program in your area, or ask if the power company, library, environmental group, or other organization would be interested in starting one. Or, offer to buy one and donate it when you're done, and encourage others to do the same.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Khyber]

"the toner, which is black plastic ground into fine powder."

you forgot the iron and carbon black. Also, it's not really a plastic, it's more like a wax. You can use a block of it at room temperature just like a crayon.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[CodeBuster]

You could have negotiated to keep the gas line open and use the gas to run sterling heat pumps to cool the server room rather than using electricity from the grid to run conventional air conditioning units. It probably was or is worth looking into.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[greed]

Watts are heat. Any watt that is consumed inside your house is eventually dissipated as heat. Sound makes thins vibrate which warms them up by friction. Light warms things up when it is absorbed. Thermal losses are, of course, the heat created when we're trying to do something useful. Anything rotating causes friction in the bearings, and in the air.

Find the average watts used, and you can calculate BTU/h equivalent. Once you have that, you can find your cooling load. Say, using my house, which consumes about 500W at baseline:

500W * 3.41 BTU/h/W = 1705 BTU/h

Given my central A/C is a small system, 1.5 tons, which is 18,000 BTU/h, that leaves... oooh... most of the unit's capacity for cooling the effects of the sun.

(Wikipedia on BTU for conversion factor.)

Once you know the cooling load, you can use the EER or SEER of your A/C to calculate the approximate power use.

So, my A/C has a SEER of 13 (I'm in Canada, 13 is plenty). SEER is BTU/W*h, so if we divide the cooling load by the SEER:

1705/13 = 131. W

So, that 500W adds another 131W of A/C. One could put that all together and come up with a percentage scale factor, like... oooh... I'd use 30% for my system. (Got to power the air handler inside also, after all.)

(Wikipedia on SEER.)

Guess who knew exactly what he wanted before calling the heating & air conditioning contractor?

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[mollymoo]

So does your computer, powersupplies get less efficeint the warmer the room is. So while your useing only 200 watts, at 70 degrees, at 85 degrees, it's probably past 250.

Resistance does increase with temperature and a thermally controlled fan will spin faster and draw more current. But enough for a 25% rise in consumption from a 15 degree (in unspecified units, I guess you mean Fahrenheit) temperature rise? That's seems like a hell of a lot for a fairly modest rise in temperature.

For an 80% efficient power supply, an increase of 25% overall consumption is more than double the power loss. The reality is very complex, but we can pick out a few relevant numbers to get a feel for the magnitudes involved. Empirical testing would be easier than an analysis, but here's some food for thought:

For copper, the resistance rises by about 0.4% per degree Celsius rise. Your roughly 7 Celsius rise would increase it by a whopping 2.8%. You'll have melted the insulation well before even a 50% rise in the resistance of your copper wire.

If you look inside a power supply, you'll see a big fat heatsink. Attached to that are rectifiers and switches - diodes and FETs. That's where a big proportion of your power supply's inefficiency comes from. Looking at the first power FET datasheet I have to hand (for a Fairchild HUF75337P3), the on resistance increases by something like 1% per degree Celsius rise. For diodes because the forward voltage drop actually decreases with increasing junction temperature - they get more efficient. For an International Rectifier 12CWQ03FN it looks to be about 0.2% lower per degree Celsius rise.

The YS-Tech 80mm fans in this box next to me consume 0.84W at full speed. That's a slow fan though, I wouldn't be surprised if more typical ones used 2-3W at full speed.

Hardly a complete analysis, but just can't see where you're getting this additional 50W from. I think you're out by an order of magnitude.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[drinkypoo]

the real problem isn't the fact that they have a corona wire, though, the problem is that most of them don't do enough power saving. The HPLJ5550n (terrible PITA, but beautiful output, very expensive to operate as well I'm afraid) will shut itself down so far it takes as long to start up as from a full cold boot. My HPLJ2100 (much older, B&W only) cycles its fan somewhat frequently because it generates too much heat even in standby.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[billcopc]

Actually, Dell uses the term "laptop" on official communication, including the front page of their web site.

The whole "don't call it a laptop" scare is pure nonsense dreamt up by some ignorant middle-manager or escalation expert. I didn't work there long, just long enough to realize I didn't want to be that escalation expert, so I turned down the promotion and left shortly thereafter. Like any call center, the rules are mostly made-up on-the-fly, and the people making the rules are usually the least technical in the building.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[billcopc]

Dan's Data was around back when Tom's Hardware was just a bunch of teenagers chipping at the Berlin wall with claw hammers.

He's got an odd personality at times, and is anything but objective, but the man tends to know his facts.

And yes, a power supply's efficiency and load capacity are adversely affected by temperature. That's partly why the better ones weigh a ton : big bad-ass heatsinks.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[billcopc]

If you buy a computer from Apple or Dell, the power supply needs to have enough capacity to handle not only what you're getting, plus power for extra I don't know about Apple, but I can tell you that Dell, IBM, HP and probably most other big-name vendors tend to use the smallest possible power supply that can keep the machine running, with just enough headroom to outlast the warranty (power supplies get weaker with age). The same is often true of local shops.

I've got an IBM P3 with a 100w power supply, from a decade ago when 250w was standard, and 300w was l33t. I've worked on countless P4 Dells where the power supply was either 150w or 220w. Just a few months ago, my buddy nearly fried his year-old MDG machine by adding a mid-range video card. Most vendors are bastards, plain and simple!

There are two main reasons for them to use these puny power supplies. #1 is cost, of course. #2 is repeat business, because when their shitty power supply blows up, there's a good chance the client will go back to the dealer and buy a new one. It's usually not covered by the warranty, because they lay fault on the client for adding hardware and overloading the lame-o PSU.

Well I've seen OEM power supplies sell anywhere from $40 to $150 plus labor, and it's 95% profit. Most OEM's garbage costs between $3 and $10 - I used to have a half-decent chinese 450w unit that cost me $6.50. The real junky ones were $3.50 and came with a flimsy ATX case, and I'd say one in 10 died on the first boot, often frying the board with it. Absolute garbage!

To put it all into perspective, I'll quote numbers from my own builds. For a low-end office desktop, my latest model draws 50-65w. It briefly peaks at 90w during POST, then goes back down. I still use a 380w Antec (Seasonic) power supply, which doesn't break a sweat, runs near-silent and gives my users the option to add a bitchin graphics card later on. The other great selling point for the Antec is the 3-year warranty.

At the other end of the spectrum, my bat-shit insane SLI design draws 450w at idle, 600w while gaming. It eats babies for breakfast, and rapes nuns for dessert. That one has 1200w via dual power supplies. It is also whisper quiet. I could shave $150 off the price and use a single 700w power supply, but it would likely die within a year, possibly taking out the board, Ram and/or graphics card with it.

Needless to say, I rarely sell replacement power supplies because the original units tend to outlive the remaining components. Maybe I'm leaving money on the table by not screwing my clients with shitty power supplies, but I'm just quirky like that.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[NovaHorizon]

I remember being scolded back at Dell for essentially making a joke to a Naval Officer about the overheating batteries simply being portable anti personnel bombs if nothing else.. lol

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[EvilIdler]

I miss my old 360 in the winter :P
The Falcon Elite I have now is a huge improvement in cooling, but no longer a space heater.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[iamlucky13]

I've noticed this too.

Assuming adiabatic conditions (Not typical, but can occur) and walls with a specific heat of zero (obviously bogus) in a 12 x 12 x 8 foot closed room, a system drawing 200 Watts will raise the temperature of the air by over 30 degrees F per hour (further assuming I didn't totally botch the math).

Of course, even if you were adiabatic to begin with, raising the temperature is going to undo that (thankfully), meaning your computer just keeps things a few degrees warmer than if it were off, but it can definitely have a noticeable effect in the summer. It's like turning on a 1000 W portable heater for 12 minutes out of every hour.

A good air conditioner typically has a coefficient of performance of around 3.5, so the extra 200 Watts of heat from the computer theoretically requires an average of 60 Watts from the A/C unit.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Myrddin Wyllt]

I'd never heard of SEER before, very informative.

I did smile a little at the units used (BTU/W*h), and the added conversion stages; it reminded me a little of my father calculating the size of motor required to lift nest-box lids on a chicken farm.

Foot-pounds, horsepower, watts, hours, minutes and seconds... took about two pages.

I did the same calculation in SI units in two lines and he looked at me as if to say "Where's the challenge in that, ANYONE could do it".

I didn't realise Canada still used BTUs, or is that just because the A/C equipment is American?

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Anubis350]

I do all the time actually, but I ahve a high burn threshold

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't have a friend in my pants. It is my enemy. I try to choke him whenever I can. Unfortunately even when I think he is dead for a while he will wake up again and I will have to fight him again.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Your Pal Dave]

True, but your computer's a pretty expensive heat source, compared to gas or an electric heat pump.

If you have resistive central heat in your house, it would be a wash. And, of course, if you keep it on the floor under your desk it is in a good position for space heating.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Monsuco]

Them's hot laptops. Makes you wonder what kind of damage they do to the little friend in your pants.

Computer manufacturers now refer to them as "notebooks" instead of "laptops" now for exactly that reason.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[billcopc]

Yeah, that's a bit too risqué for Dell... management is very "holier than thou", which I guess is a requirement when your business model revolves around hiring freshly landed unskilled immigrants while juggling the role of top PC vendor.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[NovaHorizon]

eh. I was a skilled technician, just had only high school and personal experience.. But yea.. Never was good at avoiding jokes and comments that didn't insult people and didn't give out confidential info xD

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Asphyxium001]

There was a heat wave here in southern California recently, and I couldn't stand being in the room with my Core 2 Duo E6750 running at the standard clock speed (2.66GHz). I underclocked it by 20%, which helped *tremendously*.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[SacredByte]

The Q&D calculation I was told by an EE I know is thus: For every 10 C cooler you keep a(n) [electronic device] the life expectancy doubles. The reverse is also true. I'd take this with a grain of salt (the engineer in question had his degree from M.I.T., but hadn't been employed as an engineer for over a decade), but it seems to fit close enough with the observed lifetime of my electronic devices.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[jhanderson]

My wife bought me a lapboard to use with my laptop and it has made a huge difference. There are plenty of different ones out there, but the one she bought is the Laptinator Plus

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd say that Dan tries his best to be objective and very clearly states when he's not. I trust the guy more than anything else on the web

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, I might use a couple hundred Watts to run the gear, but what about the electricity required for the A/C to cool the room back down?

In the USA, the minimum SEER (Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio) for all central A/C units is 13 (as of Jan 2006). When I built my home 9 years ago, it was 10. So using 200W of PC power consumption and 10 SEER A/C, on average, you will use 20W of additional cooling.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[bluefoxlucid]

That's Apple's marketing scheme, not Dell's.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[muniak]

It's funny, I actually use mine to keep my room warm.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Macman408]

I don't know about Apple, but I can tell you that Dell, IBM, HP and probably most other big-name vendors tend to use the smallest possible power supply that can keep the machine running, with just enough headroom to outlast the warranty (power supplies get weaker with age). I'm sure they're all more or less the same. My G5 is, of course, on the high end of power consumption (the CPUs are horribly power-hungry, as is the memory controller and video card - which alone calls for 105 W peak). Often, each model of G5 would have a different power supply, depending mostly on the needs of the CPU. Some of the PowerMac G4s I fixed at an Apple Service Provider did have power supply problems - they were the ones that used the ADC connector to supply power, USB, and DVI video signals all in one cable to the display. The extra draw of the monitor was sometimes too much for the power supply as it got older. Not a common problem, but not rare either. In any case, at least Apple's designs account for any upgrades that one would be expected to perform. I imagine Dell and other venders do the same, though in efforts to cut cost, the extra capacity might get lowballed.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[jawtheshark]

Well, I bought it in March 2005. So, by now that's more than three years ago ;-)

But you're right: I'm usually one of the guys that keep hardware quite long. The components were on sale and I had spare cash and couldn't wait to try out an 64-bit operating system.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[Anonymous Coward]

The link you give explains that it's not a problem, because it's such a tiny effect. If fact the conclusion of the article is that people who worry about it are the same kind of morons who buy monster cables.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[mr_mischief]

The way I read the article is that with any decent power supply you buy it's not a problem. "Decent" is a key word there.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[linuxpyro]

My old workstation was a dual MP 2800 box. That thing by itself would actually heat up a room quite well. I measured the power consumption once with a multimeter, and found that the tower itself drew about 280 watts with both CPUs fully loaded. Interestingly, it was about 220 watts with them at idle. (I should try it again and compensate for power factor.) I ran BOINC on the machine to keep it working most of the time. It had two hard drives and an nVidia MX 440 video card in it, along with two sound cards.

I haven't yet gotten around to testing my new machine, which uses an Intel Core 2 Quad.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[lazlo]

Very simply, if your gear is using 100 watts of power, then it's producing a maximum of 100 watts of heat. I'd guess that the EM radiation, sound, etc. that's making it out of the room is fairly negligible, most likely the difference between energy use and heat produced is smaller than the measurement error in how much energy is being used, so I'd just use that number.

Now, as far as the power required for the AC, that depends on the efficiency of your AC unit and the outside temperature, but my recollection of the EER of modern air conditioners under reasonably normal conditions is that one watt of air conditioning can move somewhere around 10 watts of heat from inside to outside. As a note of comparison, you generate about 500 watts of heating just sitting around. So, if you have a computer that uses 300 watts of power, then adding in the AC cost means that it costs 330 watts total. If you're in there with it, make it more like 380. And if you have a LAN party where a bunch of people bring all of their PC's too, you're just screwed. At least as far as power use goes.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[mr_mischief]

I was working 70-95 hours a week running the network, and I'm not an HVAC technician. Negotiating with the landlords about putting unusual equipment on the roof, locating the equipment, and getting it installed would have taken quite a bit of time away from running the network. It's a nice thought and all, but don't blame me for trying to keep our customers online since that was my job.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[initdeep]

I'd like to point out that many of the ratings on a dell PSU, I've found, to be much "truer" than ,many of the lesser priced aftermarket PSU's.

meaning i replaced a 300w Dell PSU, with a $50 apevia psu from newegg that was rated at 400w and was having problems with the psu not supplying enough power.

this is ESPECIALLY true on anything the classify as a "server" (the old 400SC comes immediately to mind since iirc it had a 225w PSU).

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[initdeep]

the single biggest reason to use more than the EXACT amount you need is to prevent excessive running of the compressor in an outdoor condensing unit. This saves wear and tear on the most expensive component.
this is not to say to have a 4 ton unit instead of a 2ton unit
but having a 2 ton instead of a 1.5 ton isnt a bad idea

also the higher the seer rating, the overall better efficiency the unit has, and the lower your power bill will be over the life of the unit. and since, just like a furnace, the efficiency drops with age, starting out with a higher seer to begin with actually gives you a longer operational window.

throw in that in many places, electric companies give out HUGE rebates to people who put in high seer (14-18) units, and you nearly pay for the actual difference in cost between the high and low seer unit, and immediately start saving money on the power side without needing to recoup the initial investment.

(This also holds true for furnaces using Natural gas in many places)

my local electric is supplied by the city i live in (they own the power plant too) so we dont have any rebates on electric appliances.

thus we have a ton of new houses with 10 or 12 seer a/c and 93% furnaces because the natgas is supplied by a different utility that does give rebates.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[default luser]

Most laser printers have sleep modes that they fall into when idle. This is why it takes so long before that first page comes out - the printer is warming-up the fuser.

Even my ancient Brother HL-1200 (2001) sleeps when idle. Sure, it uses a hefy 340w when printing, but when asleep it uses lees than 5w.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[jawtheshark]

That's indeed quite true: those AMD 2400+ MP CPU's were rated 90C each. I installed a passive NVidia FX5500 in the machine and running a games was 5 minutes okay, and then the graphics card started overheating. Never had that problem with my NVidia Ti4400, but that one was actively cooled.

That machine was one heck of a space heater.

Re:What about my A/C kicking into overdrive?

[cartman94501]

I am not a physicist, nor do I play one on TV, but I can't help thinking that this would be fairly negligible in most cases. I think it would also be fairly easy to calculate if you took the ambient temperature both with the computer on and with it off, while the temperature outside remained fairly constant, and knew the efficiency of your AC unit and the cubic footage of the room. Can any of you smarter people tell me how close I am to reality here?

I love kill-a-watt

[Bandman]

My wife is huge into low-energy tools, and she got us a kill-a-watt to play with.

In my server racks, I've got the PDU equivalent of this from APC. They've helped me many times in load balancing the power draw across our circuits

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[penguin_dance]

My wife is huge into low-energy tools, and she got us a kill-a-watt to play with.

Hey pervert, keep your smutty bedroom toys to yourself! :P

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Capslock118]

I have a kill-a-watt as well. I have been increasingly obsessed with the amount of energy my house uses and I am proud to say we are staying under 440 kWh per month. While I have not tested out my machine thouroughly (I do not have it on much anymore) on Idle i was spending 450 watts. Now, this was between the power supply and the wall, so maybe the machine was using less power, but ultimately thats what it was drawing (the power supply is 450 watts so this makes sense to me). I can hardly believe that the router mentioned was using 8 watts, what is the time period there? I know the power supply on my linksys router is in the milliamps so, basic conversion would indicate to me that is not possible. I am probably thinking of something backwards though. But regardless, wouldnt the power supply dictate the amount of power used regardless of what the computer actually uses?

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[gEvil (beta)]

My wife is huge into low-energy tools

Obviously. She married you.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[bucky0]

>>I can hardly believe that the router mentioned was using 8 watts, what is the time period there?

8 Watts is probably about 8 Joules / Second. You know, in that ballpark.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[ivan256]

I can hardly believe that the router mentioned was using 8 watts, what is the time period there? I know the power supply on my linksys router is in the milliamps so, basic conversion would indicate to me that is not possible. I am probably thinking of something backwards though. Time is a component of the "watts" unit. One watt is one joule per second. So the time period is irrelevant.

8 watts at 120 volts (simplistically speaking) would only be about 66 milliamps.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[compro01]

450W at idle?!

The power rating on the power supply indicates how much it is capable of supplying. it will not draw more than is needed, plus some for the thermal losses in the power supply (a good many supplies are better than 80% efficient).

My fairly powerful system (3ghz core2 duo, 2GB ram, 500GB hard drive, 8800GTS, 700W generic brand power supply, and a 17" CRT from 7 years ago,) draws about 370W running flat out according to my UPS (a 780W/1200VA APC unit) and sits at about 200-250W at idle (for various definitions of idle).

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Amouth]

on top of that the ratings you see on the power blocks is normaly the dc output - the kill-a-watt meausres the power draw on the AC side before conversion - there is no doubt that router is running on less than 8watts as you lose in the conversion and heat. and most bricks arn't what you would call effecient devices they are cheap.

but as the power total isn't much the effeciency isn't that big of a deal

if you are only 50% effecient in conversion but that loss is only say 10 watts no big deal compared to a loss of several hundrad watts with an old AT non switching powersupply

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Endo13]

This is why some posts should be modded to +10.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[sm62704]

Time is NOT a component of the "watts" unit. A watt is current times voltage; e.g. at 100 volts one ampre, you have 100 watts. If you run it for ten hours, you have consumed one kilowatt hour.

The joule is is the SI unit of energy measuring heat, electricity and mechanical work. One joule is the work done, or energy expended, by a force of one newton moving one metre along the direction of the force. This quantity is also denoted as a newton metre with the symbol Nm. Wikipedia may be able to clear all this up for you, but if you check your electric bill you'll see that you aren't billed for watts used, but kilowatt hours used.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[ivan256]

The terminology I should have used was that time is factored out of the watts unit. So from a pedantic perspective (which I appreciate), I misspoke. But from reading the rest of my comment you should be able to tell that I got the math and the definition (which I spelled out right there) correct.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[ivan256]

Incidentally, you talked yourself into the exact same misunderstanding of the data as the parent by latching on to that one sentence instead of reading my entire comment. The whole point was that watt-hours and joules are *not* what he was looking for there.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[SuperQ]

I don't understand why people use such over-rated PSUs. I guess it is just a dick-sizing thing.

My server/workstation at home consumes ~120W at idle, and 200W under full load. I bought a "small" 380W PSU a few years ago when the same machine was drawing ~250-300W under full load. After dumping the dual socket Athlon and switching to a single socket dual core, and turning on cpu frequency scaling my power bill droped $10/month.

I did the math a while back based on my CA $0.12/kwh. Every watt I use, translates into about $1/year.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why some posts should be modded to +10.

Surely GP goes to +11?

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[compro01]

partially efficiency of scale (in general (all other things being equal), a 700W supply running at half-load will be more efficient/last longer/provide more stable voltages than a 350W supply running balls out, not to mention room for expansion.) and partly as that rating falls quickly as the temperature rises (also related to point 1. in general, higher load % = higher temps). going from 40C to 50C internal PSU temp (not unreasonable if the ambient temp is high, like in summer without an AC or simply a room with poor ventilation), you lose about 1/3 of the wattage. not to mention many supplies are deceptively rated at 25C or some other unattainable operating temperature.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[bluej100]

A logarithmic vote count->score scale seems reasonable.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[NilObject]

... wife ... huge ... tools ... play with.

... racks ... load ...

Freud, call on line 2, Freud, call on line 2.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Anonymous Coward]

Time is NOT a component of the "watts" unit. [...] Wikipedia may be able to clear all this up for you,

Right. The first sentence: "The watt (symbol: W) is the SI derived unit of power, equal to one joule of energy per second."

Last time I checked, seconds were a measure of time.

but if you check your electric bill you'll see that you aren't billed for watts used, but kilowatt hours used.

You are billed for the energy consumed, measured in joules (1kWh = 3600kJ). The fact that the energy companies bill you in kilowatt hours instead of in kilojoules is because most people will have an easier time understanding being billed for 60kWhs when they have used a 60W light bulb for 1,000h, rather than being billed for 216,000kJs for the same thing.

I don't really understand where you get the "billed for watts used." That's a pretty weird concept.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[tuxzone]

I have a kill-a-watt as well. I have been increasingly obsessed with the amount of energy my house uses and I am proud to say we are staying under 440 kWh per month. I think that is pretty huge: In the Netherlands, the average household uses about 260 kWh per month. What country do you live? On an average day I do about 7 kWh a day.

I can hardly believe that the router mentioned was using 8 watts, 8 Watts is not much. Maybe even incorrect. My Linksys router does 14 Watts without Wifi, 15 Watts with. That is why I put it behind a timer. I love the idea of being always online, but when I am asleep, the router is now turned off. Saves about 7 euro a year :)

Tuxzone

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Rob Simpson]

There are two "real" reasons for those ridiculously high wattage power supplies:

1)Increasingly power-hungry and inefficient video cards hooked up in SLI (negating the increasing efficiency of CPUs)
2)Crappy PSUs that can't provide their claimed wattage under real-world conditions

The dick-sizing thing probably accounts for most of it, though.

I have a Core 2 Duo at 3.3 GHz and a 8800GT on a Silverstone 300W PSU, and I've never cracked 200W, and the warning light has never come on.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[richard.cs]

Time is NOT a component of the "watts" unit. A watt is current times voltage And ampere's are charge per unit time (coulombs per second). If you work through the units voltage times charge has units of energy so voltage times current is in fact equivalent to energy over time.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Jedi Alec]

Us Dutchies don't have airconditioning in our homes ;-)

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[Anonymous Coward]

This one goes to +11.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[nuzak]

> I don't understand why people use such over-rated PSUs. I guess it is just a dick-sizing thing.

No, it's a gamer thing. Try running SLI 9800's sometime, you need like 800 watts. That's gotta really spin the meter.

ATI's current 4800 series cards consumes something like half that. Smaller dies are nice.

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[initdeep]

try doing that when its 90-105 out with 85-95% humidity.

your electronic stuff wont last long if you do.

thats why i have a/c

not so much for me (it's nice to have though) but more to protect my expensive electronics from the heat AND humidity i see from may - august

Re:I love kill-a-watt

[mcvos]

While I have not tested out my machine thouroughly (I do not have it on much anymore) on Idle i was spending 450 watts.

Idling at 450W? Most PCs shouldn't even reach that kind of power draw under heavy load. Only serious heavy-duty server or gaming machines with ridiculously heavy graphics cards should idle anywhere near that.

Now, this was between the power supply and the wall, so maybe the machine was using less power, but ultimately thats what it was drawing (the power supply is 450 watts so this makes sense to me).

That's true. It's also possible that you've got an extremely inefficient power supply. The rated power of your power supply is the maximum total power it should be able to supply to the components of the PC, and power supplies tend to be most efficient at about 50% of that. Bad power supplies are rarely able to provide their rated power under real-world conditions, however, so a 450W PSU drawing 450W from the socket sounds a bit worrying to me.

My advice would be to borrow a known efficient (80+) power supply and see how much that lowers your power draw at idle and at load. Substract 25% to find the approximate power draw from the components of your machine, and make sure the power use at idle and the one at load are at either side of the 50% mark of the rated power of the new 80+ power supply you're going to buy.

But regardless, wouldnt the power supply dictate the amount of power used regardless of what the computer actually uses?

If the computer doesn't use it, the PSU doesn't have to supply it. Efficient low-power components (an Intel core 2 duo CPU, an ATI HD3x50 GPU, Western Digital Green Power drive, no overclocking, etc) will mean low power consumption by the system as a whole, unless your power supply is crap.

Kicking and screaming

[gearloos]

Personally my I^2 R losses are always better if I'm kicking the box and screaming after a good wow gank.

Just for giggles...

[jockeys]

I'm still using a 19" crt, which pulls a huge amount of power, but for the rest of the system (which is very old) it pulls about 325 watts when playing Warcraft3, unless my meter is calibrated wrong.

For the antique buffs out there, it's an athlon xp with and old radeon 9xxx series, half a dozen optical and hard drives, and a dozen fans. add in the cold cathodes and fancy cooling crap that I thought was neat back in school, and 325 watts doesn't seem all that bad.

Re:Just for giggles...

[0racle]

Athlons are antiques?

Re:Just for giggles...

[DarthStrydre]

I still have an Evergreen C6 in my Overdrive socket.

Get off my lawn!

Re:Just for giggles...

[jockeys]

sure seems that way when I'm looking at the system requirements on the side of a new game

Re:Just for giggles...

[drinkypoo]

This is why I have a laptop. I got it as my severance for being fired for understanding that the boss' son-in-law is an idiot, and probably wouldn't otherwise have one yet, although I am soon preparing to purchase a quad-core laptop with non-quadro nvidia graphics (I am soliciting suggestions, and would like to get the best laptop I can get without getting excessive... 4GB RAM and 160+ GB only, please) :P My nw9440 requires substantial hacking for proper operation and I want something that's designed to the actual specifications. But the point is, the power supply specifies 2A peak input at 120V and supplies a maximum of 6.5A at 18.5V. At idle the system is allegedly under 30 watts! It's a core duo with 2GB RAM and an nVidia Quadro video card, so it's no slouch. Of course, kick in the 3D applications and you can cook on the keyboard...

Re:Just for giggles...

[PitaBred]

As a happy customer (bought a Compal HGL30 a while back, 2.16GHz Core 2/2GB RAM, GeForce 7600GT), I like these guys: http://powernotebooks.com/

I don't have any financial interest in it, they're just very competent, knowledgeable and friendly ;)

Re:Just for giggles...

[Wolfrider]

Sorry to hear about your job situ, mang... Hope you're doing all right!

Re:Just for giggles...

[drinkypoo]

Oh, that was quite a while ago. I'm doing fine - there's plenty of freelance work floating around if you're willing to do it... But thanks! I am accepting high-dollar contract work, though... :)

Little information

[Kelz]

All he talked about with regards to the PC was the processor and video card. What power supply was he using? A super efficient one or a super stable one? How many peripherals were hooked in? Hard drives? Fans?

Re:Little information

[cliffski]

Hi. Theres a single hard drive in there. a typical 'shipped with the box' PSU, no wireless card or anything fancy.
The PC is from mesh Computers, about a year old.

Re:Little information

[Anonymous Coward]

You make it sound like efficient and stable excluded each other. That is not the case - If you chose one of those newfangled >80% efficient power supplied with a maximum output just slightly larger than the maximum draw of you PC, you'd probably get a well engineered, stable and efficient powersupply.

Re:Little information

[mollymoo]

That's dangerously bad advice. In addition to the headline power rating, PSUs are rated per rail (5V, 12V etc.). It's extremely unlikely that your computer would draw power from the various supply lines in exactly the proportions the supply can provide. Most notably, older systems drew CPU power from the 5V rail. Boards for the P4 and other more modern boards use the 12V rail for CPU power. (In both cases there's a switching regulator which coverts this to the CPU's actual supply voltage.) PSUs, at least those sold to home users, are designed to handle either situation, so you may approach the limits for one rail or the other, but rarely both at the same time. Unless you're an OEM who can control the entire design, you are very unlikely to be able to run a system which requires 200W from a "220W" PSU - you'll be over the rating one one rail or another.

All PSUs are not created equal. Those gold 550W PSUs which were popular a few years ago provided less power on the 5V line than the 300W Antec I went for in the end. If you were overclocking an Athlon (as I was) that difference was make-or-break.

Worth the cost

[wolf12886]

Where I live we pay $.08 per kilowatt hour, so running my computer 24/7 costs me (assuming 190 watts at idle) $11 a month, which is not nothing, but is certainly worth the convenience.

Also, I doubt the leds on any of the devices mentioned account for nearly any of the measured current draw, 20ma at 5v is .1w, so you'd have to have to have a hell of alot of leds to make a noticeable difference in power usage. most of that current is probably being burned up in the wall wart, linear regulators or transmitters, if I had to guess.

Re:Worth the cost

[Anonymous Coward]

And if I pay someone $11 a piece to shoot every idiot like you, it will save us your food consumption and far more CO2 exhaust than that produced by powering PCs.

Re:Worth the cost

[hurfy]

lol, haven't gotten around to plugging the meter yet but i count 59 LED between my computer/hub/modem plus the 3 little blacklight bulbs :) Doesn't run them all the time and most of the fan lights are off or very low. Full power looks and sounds like a 747 on takeoff but not needed for cooling.

New project is now to test out my vintage iron. Note to check max rating on kill-a-watt first before trying the mini-computer with the 5 digit BTU rating ;)

I did find that my desktop uses almost the same power 'off' as in standby tho :(

Re:Worth the cost

[RoverDaddy]

Wow, what pompous, righteous indignation over 190W! You have no idea what this person's lifestyle is, whether they do lots of other things to help the environment and keep their energy costs low. My PC is on 24/7 too, for several reasons:

1. I frequently access it from work over SSH.
2. When I'm home, somebody in the family is using it nearly all the time (instead of TV which is constantly in use in plenty of other homes)
3. When nobody is using it, it's running BOINC on behalf of World Community Grid doing useful things like cancer/AIDS research.
4. My life experience with computers indicates that a computer running all the time will live longer than a computer switched on and off.

Maybe my opinion on PC life is bunk, but overall I don't think I'm killing off the ecosystem by keeping my PC on. I've replaced every incandescent bulb I can with compact fluorescents. I actually turn lights OFF when I leave a room. I use LCDs instead of CRTs. I recycle. I drive a small car, and keep the speed down and I've cut down my driving considerably.

There are much better targets for your ranting and raving than $11 worth of electricity.

BTW, I'm very jealous of the $0.08/KWH price. Where I live (Massachusetts, US) the cost of electricity is more like $0.20/KWH.

Re:Worth the cost

[CastrTroy]

Both your numbers seemed high, but I don't pay for hydro directly (included in my rent). After checking out the prices in my area, it seems to me like both of you are getting ripped off. If you don't like to follow links, that's 5 cents per kWh, for the first 600 kWh, and 5.9 cents for each kWh after that. I remember a place I was in 5 or 6 years ago, and we were paying under 4 cents.

Re:Worth the cost

[dindi]

Agreed.

Pretty much do the same, however I replaced 3 large Linux/Windows/BSD pcs with a MAC mini and a Macbook. Both go to sleep quite fast, and last long on UPS.

In Costa Rica there is only 1 power company : the government, so there is nothing to do there.

I also agree with not judging people over one thing they do.

It is like my colleagues telling me why I leave the office computer on (BTW it goes into sleep when I press the button, and draws very little (MAC G5)........ then they go to Mac donalds while I drink a Soy yoghurt and an organic pita sandwich (vegan).....

Also riding a bike instead of driving a car can help to offset all these which I try to do (unless it is rainy season and is pouring)....

Then again, the "shit in the garden" thing is kind of a good analogy, but I really wonder what else the person does besides turning off a pc....

Re:Worth the cost

[Anonymous Coward]

National Grid in western NY:

Delivery: $0.041767
Delivery Adj: -$0.0009 (discount for having the same supplier as the people who deliver it/own the lines)
SBC/RPS: $0.002263 (mandatory tax to pay for low income people to receive discounts)
Transmission Revenue Adj: $0.00086
Total pretax delivery: $0.04399
Tariff Surcharge: 2.04082% = $0.00090
Total delivery per kWh: $0.04489

Supply: $0.08362
Total delivery + supply: $0.12851

So, just about 13 cents per kWh here... and that's with NatGrid buying hydro power from Niagara Falls as part of the supply.

Re:Worth the cost

[Anonymous Coward]

I second your rebuttal and add that my power is around 6 cents/kilowatt hour. It's because I live in BC (Canada) and HYDROELECTRIC power is available. Not too much in the way of CO2 emissions from draining a lake.

I think the GP's post follows the analogy it contains: full of shit, and annoying in large quantities.

Re:Worth the cost

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, my prices don't include the 13 extra surcharges that they stack on.

Re:Worth the cost

[Anonymous Coward]

You are worried about the life of your computer... sheesh it will be obsolete before you break things in it.

Re:Worth the cost

[afidel]

The national average is just over $0.10 per kWh. At our headquarters campus we pay just under that for mixed service when all charges are included. I pay almost twice that at home when you include all the freaking fees. I wish I lived near cheap hydro power, but since I don't I bought a super high efficiency AC unit that the installer said would never pay off vs a less efficient cheaper model. I've also gone all CFL for lighting. My PC uses a 45W TDP CPU and everything is energy efficient heatpipe cooled. There are 3 fans total, a 120mm in the front, a 120mm in the PSU and a 92mm on the cpu. I do all that and my summer electric bills still top $200 for an 1,100 sq ft house.

Re:Worth the cost

[PitaBred]

If you're testing your vintage hardware, it'd be really interesting to see the performance/watt as well. Do a quick benchmark with bc for CPU performance (assuming you run a *nix)

cat /proc/cpuinfo | egrep "model name|MHz";
time echo "scale=5000; 4*a(1)" | bc -l -q;

That'll tell the CPU name and then calculate Pi to 5000 places (feel free to scale that however you feel appropriate).

Here's mine:

Pitabred@Pitabred:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | egrep "model name|MHz"
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz
cpu MHz : 800.000
model name : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7300 @ 2.00GHz
cpu MHz : 800.000
Pitabred@Pitabred:~$ time echo "scale=5000; 4*a(1)" | bc -l -q

<snip>

real 0m38.603s
user 0m38.498s
sys 0m0.000s

Re:Worth the cost

[prelelat]

can you pay the guy to come by my garden too? The ground in my garden has lost alot of it's nutriants and I need some cheap fertalizer. With better soil you get more plants which reduce the amount of CO2 in the air. Also the amount of water your saving by not taking a dump in the toilet would be substantial.

Did you know that water could be used to give to a dehydrated child that only drinks mud? Each flush uses aprox 3.4(1.6 if you have one of those low flow things) gallons of water! So you would be saving 6.8 gallons a week. Thats about 354gallons of water a year or 166 with low flow.

So next time you make a smart ass comment about taking a shit on the neighbors lawn think about it? It migth actually be good idea. Because if we have learned anything today is that we should all shit in the garden(helps if you work in the ground).

Re:Worth the cost

[mcvos]

Wow, what pompous, righteous indignation over 190W! You have no idea what this person's lifestyle is, whether they do lots of other things to help the environment and keep their energy costs low. My PC is on 24/7 too, for several reasons:

There are plenty of legitimate reasons to keep your PC on 24/7, but if you do so, it'd be nice if you made sure your machine idled at less than 190W. A modern, well-designed PC should be able to idle at less than 100W. A good CPU (like the latest 45nm processors from Intel) can idle at 3W, an efficient harddisk (the WD GP line) at 5W, an efficient GPU (ATI HD3x50) at 10-20W (I'm not sure about motherboards, though).

A power hungy GPU on the other hand (like the 8800GTX or even worse, the 2900XT) can draw nearly 100W on its own. And produce a corresponding amount of heat, all of which needs to be cooled somehow.

I need one of those

[legoman666]

I have 4 monitors on my machine. 3 19" LCD's and 1 22" LCD. The PC itself is a Q6600 @ 3.1ghz and 2 HD3870's, also overclocked. The CPU and 2 GPUs are watercooled. There are also 4 hard drives and a sound card.

I've think I've estimated the power draw at around 450w under full load (not including the monitors. 3 of them are turned off when I play games).

Luckily I don't pay my electric bill.

Re:I need one of those

[Holi]

Luckily I don't pay my electric bill.

A true slashdot stereotype.

Let me guess, late 20's and parents basement.

Re:I need one of those

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have busted a huge nut after submitting this one...

Re:I need one of those

[legoman666]

21 and the cost is free with my rent. Along with internet, water, and gas. And no, I don't rent my parents basement. I live in an apartment near campus.

Re:I need one of those

[MMInterface]

Most of the places (all of them in Japan)that I have rented have included utilities and internet service in the rent. Maybe this is a new phenomenon. I'm not sure but it seems fairly common to me.

What about life consumption?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few watts here, a few watts. They add up to massive amounts of life consumption.

Re:What about life consumption?

[JCSoRocks]

Only thing consuming my life is slashdot. I gotta get outta here... *drops keyboard*.

been wondering about this also

[800DeadCCs]

been wondering about this also.
mainly due to having only one 20A outlet, and the building is old enough I don't want to risk that much.
looking to build a new system, I want to make a strong but low power-draw system (gonna use a 45nm intel chip). Looking at specs on various parts suppliers sites, I come across numbers like "total thermal dissipation", or things like the notes on Intel's ATOM board: "fully populated board with accessories uses 75W max"

Where do I find out exactly how much wattage I need?
A lot of the calculator sites seem to be either a tad old, or just give info on a few select parts.

on a note about the article,
I'd rather see what the power usage is while starting up (seems that's when the biggest drain usually is).
as for the printer, OK, it's just a deskjet, but show the drain on a laser warming up (for B/W, you're better with one of those).

Re:been wondering about this also

[SiriusStarr]

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

This is the calculator I've used for past builds. It does seem to estimate on the high side, though. It recommends a ~650 watt PSU for my computer (with aging taken into account), but I've never seen mine draw more than ~350 when gaming.

Re:been wondering about this also

[Amouth]

kinda simple

watts = amps * voltage

if you are in the US normal AC is between 110-125v

at 20 amps that outlet can provide 2,200-2,500 watts before the current load flips the breaker

unless you have alot of computers all on the same circute you don't need to worrie about the draw on the outlet

at home i have 2 computers 1 lcd monitor 1 crt monitor a laser printer and networking stuff.. constant draw is about 250 watts (at 124v that is 2 amps) when the printer fires up it draws 10 amps for a second but other than that power is normal

if you are looking to make a strong but lower power comp.. the ATOM will give you the extream low power but the strong isn't there - the ATOM is made for simple tasks at low power availability

Re:been wondering about this also

[mshannon78660]

Technically, for AC it's watts=amps*voltage*.707 - that's why you often see both watts and volt-amps ratings on UPS's.

Re:been wondering about this also

[mollymoo]

Only if you use the peak-to-peak voltage. For AC, the voltage everybody quotes is the RMS voltage. For a sine wave, the RMS value is 1/(root 2), about 0.707, times the peak value. With the RMS voltage it's just P=VI, which is why it's the RMS value which is quoted. The reason for the VA rating is more to do with power factors - how close to a resistive load the actual load is. A very basic switching supply will only draw any current at all close to the peak voltage and will draw nothing the rest of the time. If you're designing generators, inverters and transformers it matters a lot if your 5A average load is spread out over the cycle or if the load is zero 99% of the time and 500A 1% of the time.

Re:been wondering about this also

[triso]

Buy a laptop if you want low power usage. Don't plug in a laser printer to that 20A line, either.

Re:been wondering about this also

[PitaBred]

High side is more efficient. A bigger PSU than you need won't hurt... it won't draw any more power than it needs to to supply the components unless it's an absolute piece of crap, and it's better to run a high power PSU at 50% than to run a lower power PSU at 100% load.

Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how accurate those readings are. Cheap power meters often only produce correct values for purely resistive loads. Everything uses switching power supplies nowdays (they're very efficient compared to linear power supplies), and they draw current in peculiar ways (some have power factor correction which improves things). Does anyone have a Kill-a-Watt vs Oscilloscope accuracy comparison for different kinds of loads?

Re:Accuracy

[dpilot]

My kill-a-watt can also display the power factor. That doesn't say anything about how accurate it is, but it does say that it knows something about non-resistive loads. Incidentally, the switching supplies in the PCs I've measured have a power factor of about 67%.

Re:Accuracy

[Trogre]

My cheap power meter displays power factor, but not very accurately. It will tell me an AC fan has a power factor of 33% (correct) and an early-model switch-mode PSU has a power factor of 100% (wrong).

After seeing the effects of several hundred inductive loads on an AC grid, I now only buy PSUs with Active Power Factor Correction. It costs less in the long run.

Re:Accuracy

[Quelain]

I don't think they are accurate at all on switch mode power supplies. I have one which is definitely wrong when measuring a PC PSU.

I think they expect to see peak current at the peaks of AC voltage, but a switch mode PSU will take small bites of current which may or may not coincide with the voltage peaks.

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Very sad to see you are the only person in this thread even mentioning power factor. Most likely the figures given are off by around 20%!

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that EU regulations require any PSU over 75W to conform to EN61000-3-2, which specifies the minimum power factor for a PSU of a given rating. In practice, any PSU over 75W will require at least passive power factor correction (PFC), and larger ones will require active PFC.

Re:Accuracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Most likely the figures given are off by around 20%!

So what? If you are right, do you really think that changes the conclusions drawn?

Re:Accuracy

[afidel]

Those are some seriously crappy PSU's! All good PSU's have power factor correction and will be in the 90% range. My datacenter averages 91% and that includes some big equipment that knows nothing about PFC.

rimshot

[Anonymous Coward]

ba-dum pssssh

Vista increases the wattage

[mariushm]

Note that he uses Vista and he says his computer doesn't need more watts when playing games compared to normal usage.
Maybe this is because Vista's 3D interface already taxes the video card and forces it to draw a lot of power?

Re:Vista increases the wattage

[Fazeshift]

Sounds plausible to me. On my XP box, I see a 40-50 watt increase in power consumption whenever running a game/3d video mode.

Re:Vista increases the wattage

[Anonymous Coward]

Entirely possible. If I run Aero on my laptop, it isn't noticeably hotter, but it does burn the battery down about half an hour to an hour quicker.

Re:Vista increases the wattage

[Anonymous Coward]

Partially, Aero functions by rendering each window to a texture in a 3d back buffer and then overlaying them to create the 2d image, this is far more graphics intensive than say the 2d back buffer that xp has. However I'm tempted to say that the side benefits, using a 3d back buffer in this manner means no single process should at least in theory be able to freeze the interface, outway the costs.

The other part of it is the graphics card the 8800 series has no power throttling like the ATI cards do, so they draw alot of power all the time. For example my 8800 GTS's draw 120w baseline all the time and more when gaming; a comparable ATI card would draw far less, both are good cards but if your looking for cool, quiet and efficient ATI is the way to go.

Re:Vista increases the wattage

[kantos]

Which is why the Vista power settings turn Aero off if set to 'Power Saver', among other things in this case the culprit is the graphics card itself not Aero the 8000 series has no power throttling.

Re:Vista increases the wattage

[dave420]

It doesn't tax the 3D card a lot at all. Considering it's performing all the GUI in hardware, it's drawing a lot less power than if it was being rendered in software.

Re:Vista increases the wattage

[elhondo]

From my own experience, MMO's don't draw a lot of power. WoW wasn't a problem on my crappy laptop. But CivIV causes that same laptop to become uncomfortably hot.

Re:Vista increases the wattage

[mcvos]

Note that he uses Vista and he says his computer doesn't need more watts when playing games compared to normal usage.
Maybe this is because Vista's 3D interface already taxes the video card and forces it to draw a lot of power?

That could deifinitely be the case. 3D rendering often costs a lot of power. Although some high-performance graphics cards still draw a surprisingly large amount of power to draw a simple 2D desktop. As far as I know, the ATI HD3xxx line is the only one that seriously cuts down of power use while not doing any 3D.

Video card reviews

[Xelios]

Most graphics card reviews these days test total system power consumption during idle and load. A sign of changing times I guess. Here's an example from Anandtech's review of the Radeon 4870. Pages 2-10 also have some very technical information about the architecture on ATI's new line of cards, for anyone who's interested.

Consoles

[ucblockhead]

For comparison sake, this is similar to the power requirements of the XBox 360 and PS3.

The Wii takes much less than either.

Re:Consoles

[CastrTroy]

Here's a comparison that shows XBox 360 vs. PS3 vs. Wii vs. PC in many different areas including standby, idle, gaming, and movies (Wii not included in movies).

Re:Consoles

[homer_ca]

The 360 and PS3 have both had 2 die shrinks since release. The newest ones should use about 60W less than the earliest. Judging from the 30W difference between the 360 and PS3 in TFA, the 360 was probably one generation newer than the PS3.

Re:Consoles

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, your parent already told us...

Provisioned power vs. used energy

[tepples]

Time is NOT a component of the "watts" unit. [...] The joule is is the SI unit of energy measuring heat, electricity and mechanical work. The watt is a unit of power, and power is the rate of energy transfer. A watt is one joule per second (1 J/s); there's a time component on the bottom of the fraction.

A watt is current times voltage; e.g. at 100 volts one ampre, you have 100 watts. Right, but voltage itself is derived from power. A volt is a watt per ampere, or a joule per ampere-second, or a joule per coulomb.

but if you check your electric bill you'll see that you aren't billed for watts used, but kilowatt hours used. I seem to remember reading that electric companies bill for both provisioning and usage: one rate for peak power (in watts) that could be used and another for energy (in kilowatt hours or megajoules) that is used. I will grant that some electric companies don't show provisioning as a separate line item on single-family residential accounts.

Re:Provisioned power vs. used energy

[slash.duncan]

[Replying mostly to GP, extending the ideas in parent]

Watts are energy per unit time (as parent stated). The electric company charges you (in the simple case) for energy used, so time must appear as a multiplier as well (thus kilowatt-hours), in ordered to get energy used.

Conversions of that nature, knowing your units and what you needed, thus allowing one to figure out whether the quantity went above (multiplied by X units) or below (divided by X units), while at the same time telling you which of several supplied figures you needed to plug in, instead of rote-memorizing arbitrary formulas, was basic high school physics and chemistry, where I went to school.

Put a different way, taking that 1 joule per second figure for a watt, times 1 hour which is 3600 seconds, and factoring in 1000 for the kilo in kiloJoule, and you have (imagine this in pen on a scratch paper, show your work and all that, with a line between the top and bottom that I removed due to the lameness filter, seconds and hours cancel so imagine them crossed out...):

1 J | 1 hr | 3600 s | 1 k = 3.6 kJ.
1 s | | 1 hr | 1000

So 1 watt (1 joule per second, energy per time) used for a period of one hour (time, multiplier) equals 3.6 kJ, (plain energy).

As for the electric bill, FWIW, here in Phoenix, AZ, using APS (two electric companies in Phoenix, APS is one), residential users get a choice of three billing plans.

Standard is a simple per-kW-hour charge. Nothing fancy. Easy to calculate. No particular worries about timing your usage, but comparatively expensive if you can manage your usage using either of the plans below.

Demand based calculates the kW-hour rate based on the peak usage. This is what commercial rates commonly are in much of the country and what makes sense for those who can manage their peak usage, putting say the water heater and A/C on an interlock so the water heater kicks off if the A/C comes on, thus keeping their peak usage low.

Time based changes the rate based on the time of day -- the meter will track usage based on multiple time periods, with a rate for each. Here in Phoenix, peak/expensive usage is day-time and into evening, 10 AM to 7 PM or so, AFAIK. Those who are out of the house and can leave the A/C off during most of this period for at least six days a week, and/or who have ice reservoir or similar cooling systems (make ice at nite, thaw it during the day to cool the building using only fans and the salt-slurry coolant pumps) can take advantage of this plan to dramatically lower their bills.

Burning Media

[Quantus347]

Most of the running of the operating system is a relatively low watt task. The big things, the last straw on more than one of my aging power supplies, is Burning media. That is where it really needs the extra juice.

Id like to see a comparison of Burning Wattage, and the difference between the needs of CDs, DVDs, BlueRay, LightScribe, etc.

Re:Burning Media

[Fazeshift]

The difference between burning (DVD-R media typically) vs. optical drives sitting idle is minimal when measured on my rig - 10 watts or less.

Multi-head multiplayer?

[tepples]

(not including the monitors. 3 of them are turned off when I play games) I've wondered: Why can't PC games use the other three monitors for three other players' views of the arena?

Re:Multi-head multiplayer?

[legoman666]

A few games can. Supreme commander for one. I believe World in Conflict can also.

A lot of computers all on the same circuit

[tepples]

unless you have alot of computers all on the same circute you don't need to worrie about the draw on the outlet And if you have more than one person in your home, you do need a lot of computers all on the same circuit for a multiplayer game because most mainstream PC games don't have an HTPC mode that lets players share a single large screen.

News Flash: I'm bored.

[Aphoxema]

Don't ask me how I took my readings, if you don't know you don't need to do the dangerous and downright stupid thing I did to measure. Get a Kill-a-watt.

My computer (measuring off the whole strip, so it includes the speakers and stuff) doing nothing usually draws 1.9 amperes (120/60), when I play Mass Effect, it goes up to about 2.2 amperes.

My laptop (old Compaq 2596us) takes about .6 amperes regardless of what it's doing.

I suddenly realize how much I can save myself using my laptop instead of my desktop for all the things I do in the day I don't need the power hungry, acrylic monolith.

Now I just need to find something better to do with myself when I'm bored.

Re:News Flash: I'm bored.

[Anonymous Coward]

How did you take your readings ?

Watts per player?

[tepples]

For comparison sake, this is similar to the power requirements of the XBox 360 and PS3 How many Xbox 360 consoles do you need for four players, vs. how many PCs?

Your laptop burned your joystick!

[Tragedy4u]

Sorry couldn't resist

No sources needed

[Khyber]

Jut go to any store that sells computer power supplies. Look at the box. Do you see 80 certified anywhere on that (you should see it on most boxes.)

That means the power supply converts at least 80% of the power drawn from the outlet into usable energy for the computer. So, if you have a 200 watt power supply, making 200 the 80%, you would be drawing around 250 watts of power.

Re:No sources needed

[pushing-robot]

So, if you have a 200 watt power supply, making 200 the 80%, you would be drawing around 250 watts of power.

A very common fallacy is that a PSU always draws as many watts as it's rated for; in other words, a 500-watt PSU constantly draws 500 watts or more. This is incorrect; your PSU only supplies (and draws) as many watts as your computer currently needs.

"80-plus certified" means the PSU was tested to be 80% efficient at 25%, 50%, and 100% load. Assuming you have a fairly low-end system, your 200-watt PSU may never supply more than 100 watts, and therefore (being 80% efficient) never draw more than 125 watts. If you added a component to your system that consumed an extra 20 watts, your PSU would supply an additional 20 watts, and draw an additional 25 watts (again, 80% efficiency). Simple as that.

Re:No sources needed

[0111 1110]

A very common fallacy is that a PSU always draws as many watts as it's rated for A testament to the utter stupidity of the human race perhaps? I would like to think that the slashdot crowd would mostly be aware what power ratings are for.

Re:No sources needed

[SacredByte]

A big problem with such "80+" power supplies is that they commonly only have one +12V rail. Generally, power supplies have 2-4 +12V rails.

Re:No sources needed

[Locomorto]

Not really...

The truth about 12V rails is that it is designed to in some way mitigate a failed component drawing tons of power. Virtually all PSUs only have 1 12V, and then just stick current limiters (or just lie), and call them seperate rails. Infact, often having one rail that can supply slightly less current than two is better. This is because your not juggling what components to put on which rails (e.g. CPU on 12V1, GPU + HDD on 12V2).

A power supply with multiple real/faked rails provides little benefit to the end user. All it does it require you to get a higher rated power supply, so you have enough rails + amps so that one does not go over the limit while others have ample extra capacity.

Also, just because having one rail can sound like a really bad idea, after all sometimes it might even be 50+ A, many very good power supplies use this (such as Seasonic) layout.

Re:No sources needed

[Khyber]

Umm, mine has 8 12v rails, two for CPU and 6 for SATA/IDE drives. It's a 700w PSU.

Re:No sources needed

[iwein]

If you added a component to your system that consumed an extra 20 watts, your PSU would supply an additional 20 watts, and draw an additional 25 watts (again, 80% efficiency). Simple as that. Closer, but no sigar. If the PSU is 80-plus certified, it could be much more efficient. The only thing that you know for sure is that you'd be drawing up to 25% more power than your equipment actually needs. Of course most PSUs will be hugging the 80% limit because it's cheaper.

Re:No sources needed

[pushing-robot]

As someone who's spent plenty of time looking at power consumption/efficiency numbers (silentpcreview.com is a great site, btw), I can say that very few PSUs bother to be noticeably *more* than 80% efficient. A small fraction of 80-plus units peak at 85% efficiency, but only under a fairly heavy load. You can count on your fingers the number of ATX PSUs that achieve 85% over their full range.

Of course, the issue is rhetorical. The parent poster referred to a theoretical 200 watt, 80% efficient PSU using 250 watts in normal operation. I corrected him, using his example to demonstrate that PSUs only draw power based on the current system load. The fact that some PSUs might actually be 83% efficient wasn't salient to the discussion.

Re:No sources needed

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I never mentioned capacity, only load. If you have a 400w psu using 200 watts at 70 degrees it will use more at higher temps. That's all I was refering too. I do appreciate your thoughts on this though.

Re:No sources needed

[pushing-robot]

Sorry, I actually was replying to Khyber's post, not yours.

Unfortunately, the current Slashdot discussion system seems to have been written by Hebrew genealogists; when posts in the middle of threads are hidden, grandchild posts are listed as if they were direct children of their grandparent posts. It's confusing as all get out.

Re:No sources needed

[iwein]

I know I was nitpicking, need I remind you we're on /.?

Power consumption of PS3 / Wii / XBOX 360

[IYagami]

You should take a look at http://www.hardcoreware.net/reviews/review-356-1.htm

This is the main information:
Power Consumption in Games
PS3: 185.9 Watt average
XBox360: 176,54
PC (see link for more information): 156,6
Wii: 16.8

Bad Latitude

[argent]

Talk about your latitude adjustment.

Re:Bad Latitude

[SacredByte]

I wonder what gave you the Inspiron for that comment?

Why should Aero change anything?

[westlake]

Note that he uses Vista and he says his computer doesn't need more watts when playing games compared to normal usage. Maybe this is because Vista's 3D interface already taxes the video card and forces it to draw a lot of power?

How often a day do you suppose Aero's DX9 effects are invoked in Vista? I am betting the load on the GPU is trivial when compared to 10 seconds of the gamer-geek's first person shooter.

Power consumption and Vista's Aero interface [October 2006]

"When the UI isn't doing anything, it isn't doing anything. So it's not going to use significantly more more power."

The real question is.

[trashpickinman]

Whats the power draw of a server being slashdotted?

Re:The real question is.

[sa1lnr]

High, for a very short time.

Re:The real question is.

[Midnight Thunder]

Depending on the server it is extremely high or infinitely low ;)

Laptop

[homer_ca]

Unless you're playing 3d games, it might be easier to get a laptop instead of building your own. Don't bother with Atom, it's too underpowered for desktop use.

Power Factor

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, keep in mind that those power meters often measure true power, not apparent power.

Computer power supplies are inductive loads, and can be substantial loads with poor power factor.

Newer power supplies have active PFC but it would be interesting to measure True, and Apparent power, and determining the actual Load power factor of various PC PSUs

Useful, relevant links... for once:

[Ihmhi]

After you figure out your kWh usage for your respective devices, this kWh cost calculator is useful for finding out how much it costs to run it during a period of time.

I leave my computer on all the time. I highballed its power usage at 200 watts to factor in the speakers, monitor, and computer itself (the monitor is not on all the time, but the computer is nowhere near 200 watts - so I just did a rough estimate.

You would also want to find out much a kWh costs in your state to plug in the correct values. I set it up for $0.11 a kWh, also a big higher estimate.

My father insisted that my computer was the reason the power bill was over $200 one month. It's nice to be able to tell him that it only costs about $15 a month to use. (:

Overrated Graphics Cards and PSU

[mea_culpa]

I run a QX9650, had 2 8800GTXs in SLi mode. 1100W Tagan PSU.
Picked up a Kill-A-Watt measuring device and was surprised to see it only drawing 180W in idle, and 400+ while playing Crysis.
The heat was unbearable though. My utility bill went up $100+ more/month than usual (mainly due to the HVAC trying to cool my den) so I ditched the 8800s and now use a single cheap 8600GT. Funny thing is, I see no difference in game quality. My room is much cooler, and my system will peak at 220W when under full load.
Also has 2 WD 150GB Raptors and a Seagate 500GB 7200.11 HD.
Maybe gaming isn't my thing, but to me at 1600x1200 it is good enough. Definitely not enough to justify $100 more in power.

The Kill-A-Watt is a very useful device in finding the power vampires in your house. You would be surprised how much cable/satellite receivers consume even when 'off'

Soft power

[dugeen]

The internal battery on my PC is dead, so I have to leave it soft-switched off but plugged in or it forgets the date etc. It uses 8W in this mode, which costs £0.03 a day (~ 5 cents in your charming currency) so buying a new lithium cell would have been the more cost-effective solution after only 100 days.

PowerMac Quad G5

[Wingsy]

If anyone's interested, here's some power consumption info for a PowerMac Quad G5 (4x2.5GHz, 2 HD, 4.5G RAM, GeForce 7800GT). And after this Monday I'll be able to test a PowerMac V8! Idle: 190W Play 1 Movie: 225W Bittorrent, 50 connections, 200KB/s down, 80KB/s up: 205W Games: Dunno, I don't game Encoding 4 videos simultaneously: 320W (max I've ever seen) Sleep: 28W And the Kill-A-Watt power meter is an RMS metering device so it should be fairly accurate regardless if the power supply is a switcher or not.

Re:PowerMac Quad G5

[Wingsy]

Yeah, shoulda used the Preview button, cause WYSWYG doesn't apply here.

Try a scandinavia price: 0.44$ / kilowatt

[SplatMan_DK]

Where I live we pay $.08 per kilowatt hour, so running my computer 24/7 costs me (assuming 190 watts at idle) $11 a month, In Denmark (central Copenhagen) one kilowatt hour is priced at 0.44 USD (just reduced from 0.49 this month btw). So running a unit with a consumption of 190 watts for a day costs about 2.00 USD and approx 60.2 USD a month. Between 5 and 6 times as much as you pay.

The price is higher than in Sweden (our neighbouring country) but lower than other countries in the European Union.

My DELL XPS gaming rig certainly uses more than 190 watts when playing games. I would estimate at least 500 watts including the screen, and perhaps even a little more. My girlfriends PC uses about 110 watts on average since she doesn't play a lot of games, and when she plays (Neverwinter Nights 2) power consumption is not significantly higher. Still, leaving both machines turned on 24/7 and adding in 3 hours of gaming a day on average, would cost us more than 200.0 USD a month. So we turn them off or hibernate them when they are not in use.

Makes you realize why "green IT" and low-power computers actually has a future - right? ;-)

- Jesper

Re:Try a scandinavia price: 0.44$ / kilowatt

[timbo234]

n Denmark (central Copenhagen) one kilowatt hour is priced at 0.44 USD (just reduced from 0.49 this month btw)

Yeah but you Danish get the majority of your power from wind and over renewables don't you? I'd rather pay the high price for that than the situation we have here in the UK now where we just pay a high price and destroy the environemnt

Re:Try a scandinavia price: 0.44$ / kilowatt

[wolf12886]

wow, even .44 USD/KWH sounds pretty steep, considering here in the states, I could run my house on a gasoline generator or ~1.30 USD/KWH.

Also my towns power comes from a small hydro dam, so its not like my energy's coming from a coal or oil plant.

Re:Try a scandinavia price: 0.44$ / kilowatt

[SplatMan_DK]

I could run my house on a gasoline generator or ~1.30 USD/KWH.

Mjeah, well, the gasoline price in Denmark is currently approx 2.34 USD per Liter (Octane 92).

That is approx 8.86 USD per gallon. For higher octane gasonline (95/98) the price is well over 10 USD per gallon. So I don't think I will be following your example... ;-)

- Jesper

Fix the real problem

[initdeep]

if you live in an area that has high heat lod in summer, simply updating your a/c system to a higher seer rating (or simply updating period if its 10+ years old) and changing your furnace to run on a variable speed dc blower motor (assuming forced air circulation) you will save more per month than the computer requires.

of course the costs to do this are not factored into this, but will affect you for the life of the two units as well.

most compressors (scroll type included) will slowly lose efficiency over their life (all in a/c units im aware of) and the same can be said for blower motors in furnaces.

these are two of the single largest electric users in the average american home.

dad always told me, fix the big stuff first then worry about the little shit.

Sources for PSU becoming less efficient at higher

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

temps...

I learned this from MaximumPC, and was actually suprized at how small a temperature variance can affect efficiency. But I'll direct you to sources so you can read for yourself.

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article814-page1.html

As some of the approved models in Bronze are rated for very high output (750W to 1200W), at 50% or 100%, the heat they're generating is prodigious. Even at 82% efficiency, the heat produced with 1000W output comes to 219W, which will invariably cause an increase in the operating temperature of the PSU and its immediate environment inside a computer. Why does this matter? The efficiency and capacity of electronic components such as capacitors decreases as temperature rises. At high loads with real applications inside a real chassis, a PSU gets hot and its efficiency tends to decline. By conducting the qualifying tests in unrealistically cool conditions, many of the higher power models that fare well in the 100% load test get off easy. A more thermally rigorous test would see fewer high power units achieve such high efficiency numbers.

damn submit button!

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

I couldn't find the MPC link, but came up w/ the one from silentpcreview

Calories

[Databass]

If memory serves, the human brain consumes about 60 watts of power. When I game at my hardest, I'm sure my brain uses more energy than average. It feels intense while I'm playing, but I feel "burned out" when I'm done too.

No Prob, I saw that after I reread the thread

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

post submission.

Why do I need a 400 watt power supply?

[rsilvergun]

OK, I know from experience if I buy a 230 watt power supply & put a nice board/cpu/graphics card in the case I'll be lucky to post much less game. Heck, I just gave my brother an ATI 9800 pro because my Shuttle's 260 watt power supply couldn't run it. So why is it this guy's kill-a-watt reads
Or is it just because there's a power spike needed at boot? I seem to remember reading something like that.

Newer UPS system measure it for you

[Anonymous Coward]

Newer home consumer Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) can measure the wattage load and display it on LCD displays on the UPS itself or transmit the data via USB cable to the PC.

I recently bought two of the APC brand UPS at Sam's Club (USA warehouse shopping club similar to Costco). It is the Back-UPS NS 1250 with the red lcd display. It also has a USB cable by which you can customize settings and read data from the UPS or even record all the power discrepancies. The watt meter displays a rapidly updated wattmeter reading up to 750W (the maximum scale) on a bar graph as well as an exact number. Right now, my PC with one of the big 1680 pixel samsung LCD monitors is 127 Watts. If I connect the old PC and the old monitor, the load of that clunker PC (also much slower) is a whopping 288 Watts.

So, the newer PCs seem to be more powerful and more green - at least on my wattmeter.