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

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: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...)

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

[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: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.

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: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.

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?

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. (: