Hardware Analysis - How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

strontium dog — 2008-02-20T18:35:40-05:00

With the setup im running! it probably could power the street,my bills are huge,about 100 pounds a month/150 dollars .Need to cut back but i use everything im running.Charge my ipod and phone off the pc.also have 4 hard drives running,2 external.

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

strontium dog — 2008-02-20T18:31:36-05:00

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

Gerritt — 2008-02-07T05:28:57-05:00

My test and support LAB and my production environments at least double my power usage in any month. The separate AC unit associated with these systems probably pushes me over the double factor.

Hey, it's a tax write off!

Gerritt

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

Tam the Bam — 2008-02-07T01:30:53-05:00

Bloody good rant!

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

Sean Kendle — 2008-02-07T00:42:42-05:00

First of all, big no no for not turning off your pc. There is no reason you can't wait 40 seconds for your computer boot once a day. Not only should you turn off your computer at night, but turn off the power strip. The strip itself is using power, the monitor is drawing power even if it's off. Same thing with your television and any cellphone chargers you have.

Please please please don't send any more money than you absolutely HAVE to to the coal companies. They're destroying our planet and in 50 years when this earth is nearly unlivable maybe that extra 3 or 4 FPS you enjoyed for a few years won't quite mean so much to you.

If you have the extra money, a good investment would be a solar panel to cover your cpu usage (and more if you have EXTRA extra money).

You can get a pretty big one for around $5,000, and they get cheaper every year. Now I'm sure a lot of people are out there going "5 grand wtf are you kidding me!?" but, trust me, if you own the house you're making a great investment in your property value, especially with home values falling so fast. Every dollar you put into a solar panel will come back when you sell the house.

If you don't own the home, consider buying carbon credits or solar power credits to offset your computer at least.

I myself and starting a biodiesel company by offering to remove small restaurants' waste vegetable oil (read: fryer grease) and using that.

Any small things you can do to reduce your impact go a long way. Americans make up only 5% of the world's population, but we use 25% of the energy and we emit 30% of the CO2 (check those numbers they may be crossed.)

Thanks for reading my rant.

"Remember democracy begins with you. Tag, you're it." - Thom Hartmann

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

FordGT90Concept — 2008-01-04T05:50:14-05:00

They should tell you kW/h usage on your bill. Also consider that the fuel they use to produce electricity will effect how much you pay. If the price of coal fluctuates and most of the power they produced is from coal, you will see the bump in prices eventually.

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

Tam the Bam — 2008-01-03T20:52:39-05:00

Well, lets just say that since i went to Core Duo, and then QUAD, my bills have been
phenomina. For example, if i never had my PC, then in the summer, my monthly
electricity bill was �35. Well this summer, it was about �125. I've complained
to my electricity company, and they are sticking to their guns by tellin me that
the bill is correct. GULP! I've already posted a thread about this. I am gonna buy
a gadget that you plug into the socket of the appliance that you are using (my pc)
to see how much i am using. I'd like to point out, that my CPU, GPU and RAM
are heavily OC'd, and the puter is on 24/7.
My pc specs are listed in my profile if you want to see what I have for comparison.

Re: How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

adam — 2008-01-03T20:36:22-05:00

haha my pc does a decent job at heating our master room of about 200 Sqfoot. Cost me about $43.00 a month to power my 2 desktops gaming systems and 2 laptops. Power bill averages around $87.00 a month. Heat and hot water is propane. My house has about 2400 square foot.

How much DOES a pc hit electricity bills anyway?

andrew kairis — 2008-01-03T20:11:59-05:00

Looking at the maximum power usage for all those components is hogwash man.
The average office PC with a 300watt PSU probably doesn't even use half that 90% of the time.

OF course we aren't talking office pc's but gamers.

Question: Exactly what would a modest PC capable of getting by with a quality 500watt PSU do to an electric bill?

It all depends on usage. I have a pc which can do much much more than web browse but I usually end up doing just that and playing games which hardly tax anything (running 100fps usually and its an old radeon 9500 and northwood.)

I think the vast majority of even the EXTREME!!! pc's aren't running at 100% for a huge amount of time making the perceived effect on bills much larger than actual.

Another good question is with it getting colder out, how much of that electricity is transferred into heat which reduces the heating bill of the property. A good 19inch CRT can heat up a room nicely in the summer... How about in winter?

Dr. Tom always made the joke that the p4 proc generated heat more efficiently than a hot plate, where does it stand as far as keeping a room warm then?