Component Power Consumption

[Stiganator]

So what if I wanted to have enought power to run only a 20 Gb laptop HD, and between 1-4 GB of RAM? what kind of consumption am I gonna have per hour per component? Any calculations examples explanations would be helpful 🙂

 

[imported_rod]

Power isn't measured per hour. Watts are already a rate, and can be taken and compared over any time period.

Why do you want to know?

Also, your CPU and Video Card will take more power than the HDD or RAM.

If you want a basic way to estimate the maximum power consumption on the HDD that's easy. On the label, it will usually say something like (+12V-----0.75A) and (+5V-----0.5A). So you just go (12*0.75) + (5*0.5)= 9 + 2.5 = 11.5W maximum power draw. (BtW: i just guessed at these values, i have no idea what a 20Gb laptop HDD draws).

RoD

 

[Operandi]

Lap top drives draw very little, under 5 watts. You'll have to list the rest of your specs though if you question answered.

 

[Navid]

Power is energy per unit time. Energy is measured in Joules. One Joule per second is one Watt.

A 100W bulb uses 100 Joules per second.
If your laptop uses 100W, it means that it uses 100 Joules per second.

You can find the run time of a UPS unit on the web site of the manufacturer.
This is an example.
http://apc.com/products/runtime_for_extendedruntime.cfm?upsfamily=21

Let's say your laptop consumes 100W. Then, if you have a BE500U unit, according to that chart, you can run your laptop off of your UPS for 26 minutes.

 

[piasabird]

Well if you knew the rating for your batteries and the time it took to run them down you could figure it out for battery use. If you are using an AC to DC adapter, then you could go by that rating as a maximum. When Laptops or components go into sleep mode they dont use less energy. If you use a monitor, then the monitor may use more power than any other component. Even a power supply burns up energy in the power conversion process. It is probably common for a power supply to run at around 75% eficiency.

Watt ratings are normally given in Watt Hours. I thought this was the power consumed in one hour. What does it mean when they say a generator produces 5,000 Kwh?

 

[Navid]

Originally posted by: piasabird
Watt ratings are normally given in Watt Hours. I thought this was the power consumed in one hour. What does it mean when they say a generator produces 5,000 Kwh?

No, Watt is the unit for power. Watt hour is a unit for energy. One Watt hour is the energy that a 1W unit will use in one hour.

5,000kWh is the energy that a 5,000kW unit uses in one hour. Or, it is the energy that a 1W unit uses in 5000000 hours. Or, it is the energy that a 100W bulb uses in 50000 hours. Or .......