FYI: shut off your PC when it's not in use

[KingGheedora]

I used to keep my machine on 24/7. I had similar savings when I set it to go to sleep (or hibernate? I always forget the difference) after 20 minutes of inactivity, and started turning the monitors off when not using them. The saving was more actually close to 50$ a month, but this machine is a monster with like 7 or 8 hard drives. I have to say that at the same time I also started turning off all lights and appliances when not using them, replaced the one or two remaining bulbs in the house that weren't already CFL, and unplugged the toaster when not using it. I didn't really have many things i could unplug when not using them. Everything else thats plugged in is something like a tv or AV equipment that would lose settings or time if unplugged.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
People who leave their computer(s) running 24x7 should be punched in the face for several minutes.

Why? We pay the bill, not you.

Global warm MY planet will you?! :|

Global warming is a scam (the past couple years here have been driving that home and we are set up for another harsh winter from the looks of things). Besides, I heat the room with the PCs, if the PCs weren't on I'd be using electric to run the heater anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, me running a few systems 24/7 isn't going to affect a darn thing.

Complain about global warming? Complain at the sun, it's the source of heat ya know.

Global warming is a reality but electricity is probably a very minor contributor especially when lot of plants are hydro dams, wind mills etc... the main contributor is probably cars. In winter for example when everyone leaves their car running for an hour or two before work. Gas/coal/oil heating etc...

 

[duragezic]

I think that's a bit high $ savings for one PC, but I do understand your point.

I was thinking how ridiculous it is for hundreds of machines and monitors at work to be on 24/7. They've mentioned shutting them off a few times but it's not enforced and people like to waste $ I guess. I can walk through cubes and see a significant % of monitors on full power (not even standby) which means the computer is on, and more where the monitors are at least on standby but the PC is on.

Average LCD maybe uses 40-50 W.. most PCs have two of them, plus another 125 W or so for a CPU idling. At least a few hundred of this left on 24/7 as opposed to the 8x5 or so they are being used. I mean to not even use a standby mode for the computer and monitor??

It's not a huge cost to the company but I find it pretty fucking stupid when I'm getting laid off and other things being cut like benefits to save costs. Idiots.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Global warming is a scam (the past couple years here have been driving that home and we are set up for another harsh winter from the looks of things). Besides, I heat the room with the PCs, if the PCs weren't on I'd be using electric to run the heater anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, me running a few systems 24/7 isn't going to affect a darn thing.

Complain about global warming? Complain at the sun, it's the source of heat ya know.

If global warming is a scam then why have the polar ice caps melted into almost nothing? And if you dont think man is causing a rise in global tempretures by burning fossil fuels, how about global polluting? We have to burn coal so you can leave your computer running all night. And yes, you alone are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but imagine at least 250 million (out of 6.7 billion) people like you world wide doing the same thing. That crap adds up you know!

So which is it: global warming or global pollution? You decide America.

 

[Tiamat]

Yup, its about 20-25$ for a computer. Anything that uses power continuously when shut down will save quite a bit of funds.

 

[waffleironhead]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Global warming is a scam (the past couple years here have been driving that home and we are set up for another harsh winter from the looks of things). Besides, I heat the room with the PCs, if the PCs weren't on I'd be using electric to run the heater anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, me running a few systems 24/7 isn't going to affect a darn thing.

Complain about global warming? Complain at the sun, it's the source of heat ya know.

Dont confuse local weather with global climate. they are two linked but seperate things.

And for the record, I run my systems 24/7 at full load.(dpad crunching)

 

[duragezic]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
People who leave their computer(s) running 24x7 should be punched in the face for several minutes.

Why? We pay the bill, not you.

Global warm MY planet will you?! :|

Global warming is a scam (the past couple years here have been driving that home and we are set up for another harsh winter from the looks of things). Besides, I heat the room with the PCs, if the PCs weren't on I'd be using electric to run the heater anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, me running a few systems 24/7 isn't going to affect a darn thing.

Complain about global warming? Complain at the sun, it's the source of heat ya know.

Global warming is a reality but electricity is probably a very minor contributor especially when lot of plants are hydro dams, wind mills etc... the main contributor is probably cars. In winter for example when everyone leaves their car running for an hour or two before work. Gas/coal/oil heating etc...

What? The vast majority of power plants are fossil fuels. I doubt hydro and especially wind produce any significant portion of electricity at this point.

An hour, or two?? I don't know anyone who leaves their car running more than 10-15 minutes. It's better for your car and sometimes it's so cold and full of ice you have to warm it up. If you take off too soon you can fog and ice up and can't see out the window.

Also you have to heat your house. Your PC running 24/7 doing absolutely nothing is a huge pointless waste of electricity and money.

I'm not the environmental type so if you want to pay for it, go ahead. But when I am personally affected (like work situation I posted) it's pretty stupid to do.

 

[SparkyJJO]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO

Global warming is a scam (the past couple years here have been driving that home and we are set up for another harsh winter from the looks of things). Besides, I heat the room with the PCs, if the PCs weren't on I'd be using electric to run the heater anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, me running a few systems 24/7 isn't going to affect a darn thing.

Complain about global warming? Complain at the sun, it's the source of heat ya know.

If global warming is a scam then why have the polar ice caps melted into almost nothing? And if you dont think man is causing a rise in global tempretures by burning fossil fuels, how about global polluting? We have to burn coal so you can leave your computer running all night. And yes, you alone are insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but imagine at least 250 million (out of 6.7 billion) people like you world wide doing the same thing. That crap adds up you know!

So which is it: global warming or global pollution? You decide America.

The planet has been warmer than this in years past. We survived just fine. And that was before the industrial revolution. Oh, and it didn't warm up during the industrial revolution when CO2 output went up. Temps went down IIRC. Sun activity is what creates the most effect on the global temperatures (surprise, it is the source of the heat in the first place after all).

Another thing - coal burning is so regulated there is barely anything coming out of those stacks. No smoke comes out of them you realize. If it does, there has been a system failure and they shutdown stat. We are burning much much cleaner now than many years ago.

I think we need to move on to more nuke plants and fewer coal plants, because they are cleaner which is great, but some people think that a nuke plant is a time bomb waiting to go off or something.

And one more thing: with China spewing horrendous amounts of pollution into the atmosphere, I feel eyes should be on THEM, not the USA, as far as pollution goes. Seriously, the crap they do over there is appalling.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
Global warming is a scam (the past couple years here have been driving that home and we are set up for another harsh winter from the looks of things).

<facepalm>
LRN2CLIMATE
Your local weather is just a tiny tiny snippet of what's going on. GW is a based on measurements of the average temperature of the atmosphere over the entire planet.

Besides, I heat the room with the PCs, if the PCs weren't on I'd be using electric to run the heater anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, me running a few systems 24/7 isn't going to affect a darn thing.

Then for your specific case, there is no net gain, at least in the winter. In the summer, your PCs would counteract the effects of air conditioning. Every 100W of PC you're running adds 341BTU of load to your cooling system.

Complain about global warming? Complain at the sun, it's the source of heat ya know.

Yeah, it's a source. And some of the things we release into the atmosphere serve to retain more of that energy than would otherwise be present.

Originally posted by: duragezic
I think that's a bit high $ savings for one PC, but I do understand your point.

I was thinking how ridiculous it is for hundreds of machines and monitors at work to be on 24/7. They've mentioned shutting them off a few times but it's not enforced and people like to waste $ I guess. I can walk through cubes and see a significant % of monitors on full power (not even standby) which means the computer is on, and more where the monitors are at least on standby but the PC is on.
...

Some people do think that if you turn off the monitor, you'll lose what you were working on.
Seriously.

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
The planet has been warmer than this in years past. We survived just fine. And that was before the industrial revolution. Oh, and it didn't warm up during the industrial revolution when CO2 output went up. Temps went down IIRC. Sun activity is what creates the most effect on the global temperatures (surprise, it is the source of the heat in the first place after all).

No one's concerned about the species surviving, or anything like that.
It's concerns that the climate may become unpredictable, and strain our already-sketchy models for day-to-day weather prediction, as well as longer-term predictions. Certain areas not acclimated to drought may see more, other areas not accustomed to rain may see more of it. It's just tossing a wrench into a machine, the workings of which we still haven't fully documented. So the cautious approach is to try to avoid screwing with something where we don't exactly know what the results would be.

Another thing - coal burning is so regulated there is barely anything coming out of those stacks. No smoke comes out of them you realize. If it does, there has been a system failure and they shutdown stat. We are burning much much cleaner now than many years ago.

Still plenty of CO2. Yeah, not "evil", but it's produced.
It does block IR wavelengths, thus serving to trap more heat in the atmosphere.
Is it enough to make a difference? Maybe, maybe not. Better to play it safe, and keep the wrench out of the machine, no?

I think we need to move on to more nuke plants and fewer coal plants, because they are cleaner which is great, but some people think that a nuke plant is a time bomb waiting to go off or something.

Here, we are in agreement. More fission for the present, more reprocessing, and fusion for the future.

And one more thing: with China spewing horrendous amounts of pollution into the atmosphere, I feel eyes should be on THEM, not the USA, as far as pollution goes. Seriously, the crap they do over there is appalling.

Yes, they're putting out a lot of pollution. No sense in us making a potentially-bad situation worse.

"Well HE gets to pollute all he wants! I wanna pollute too!"
That reasoning usually is found in elementary school playgrounds, and that's the age group in which it should stay.

 

[yhelothar]

Originally posted by: duragezic
I think that's a bit high $ savings for one PC, but I do understand your point.

I was thinking how ridiculous it is for hundreds of machines and monitors at work to be on 24/7. They've mentioned shutting them off a few times but it's not enforced and people like to waste $ I guess. I can walk through cubes and see a significant % of monitors on full power (not even standby) which means the computer is on, and more where the monitors are at least on standby but the PC is on.

Average LCD maybe uses 40-50 W.. most PCs have two of them, plus another 125 W or so for a CPU idling. At least a few hundred of this left on 24/7 as opposed to the 8x5 or so they are being used. I mean to not even use a standby mode for the computer and monitor??

It's not a huge cost to the company but I find it pretty fucking stupid when I'm getting laid off and other things being cut like benefits to save costs. Idiots.

should've told your boss, it might've saved your job

 

[SparkyJJO]

Originally posted by: Jeff7

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
Global warming is a scam (the past couple years here have been driving that home and we are set up for another harsh winter from the looks of things).

<facepalm>
LRN2CLIMATE
Your local weather is just a tiny tiny snippet of what's going on. GW is a based on measurements of the average temperature of the atmosphere over the entire planet.

Besides, I heat the room with the PCs, if the PCs weren't on I'd be using electric to run the heater anyway. And in the grand scheme of things, me running a few systems 24/7 isn't going to affect a darn thing.

Then for your specific case, there is no net gain, at least in the winter. In the summer, your PCs would counteract the effects of air conditioning. Every 100W of PC you're running adds 341BTU of load to your cooling system.

Complain about global warming? Complain at the sun, it's the source of heat ya know.

Yeah, it's a source. And some of the things we release into the atmosphere serve to retain more of that energy than would otherwise be present.

I'm not just looking at my local town dude. And I know some things do hold heat in better. But you know what? The trees are doing really well with a little more CO2 available for them, and still things are cooling down right now because, gasp, less sun activity, and the impact of a little more CO2 in the air now vs 5 years ago isn't affecting much to worry about.

Besides, when something like global warming is hyped up by lying politicians and used as leverage for passing more government control on people's lives and higher taxes to line their pockets with, I become VERY skeptical and suspicious of it. And, like most political stunts, this is just yet another money and power grabbing scheme.

But what am I bothering with this for anyway, half of AT is full of liberal tree-hugging hippies who believe whatever master al gore/obama/whatever say. Maybe just for them I'll turn another PC on

 

[sao123]

Originally posted by: ChaoZ
People don't turn off their computers when they sleep? Wtf?

linux id10ts measure their epenis based on their up-time since their last reboot/shutdown.
yes it dum.

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
People who leave their computer(s) running 24x7 should be punched in the face for several minutes.

At my company we are required to leave the PCs on 24/7 so the IT folks can push crap out at will. I've been on vacation this week, my PC hasn't.

 

[FelixDeCat]

Originally posted by: ironwing

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
People who leave their computer(s) running 24x7 should be punched in the face for several minutes.

At my company we are required to leave the PCs on 24/7 so the IT folks can push crap out at will. I've been on vacation this week, my PC hasn't.

Lots of companies are guilty of this. I hope one day they realize the arrogance of their ways.

edit: Before I left my last company after 17 years of employment the majority of users had network boxes using a mini OS's like Windows CE and downloaded programs from the server at every bootup. If they updated the server all machines were upgraded when the machine was turned on the next day (I think). I never used one since I had to have a PC. They looked someting like this.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: SparkyJJO
I'm not just looking at my local town dude. And I know some things do hold heat in better. But you know what? The trees are doing really well with a little more CO2 available for them, and still things are cooling down right now because, gasp, less sun activity, and the impact of a little more CO2 in the air now vs 5 years ago isn't affecting much to worry about.

And that's fine for down here within a few dozen feet of the surface.
Point is, CO2 does act as an insulator. Is it enough to make a difference? Maybe, maybe not. Like I said, it's better to try to avoid throwing a wrench in a machine whose workings we don't fully understand yet.

Besides, when something like global warming is hyped up by lying politicians and used as leverage for passing more government control on people's lives and higher taxes to line their pockets with, I become VERY skeptical and suspicious of it. And, like most political stunts, this is just yet another money and power grabbing scheme.

Well it was something in the realm of the scientific community, but it got politicized, and turned into little more than another talking point, or yes, leverage.
Let's say, oh, I don't know, they discover oil on the Moon. Guess what that'd do to NASA: Everyone there would become every Congressman's best friend, especially those from states where NASA has any sort of landing strips or launchpads. Suddenly "exploration" will be the biggest talking point ever, with one group deciding to go mine it freely (those who would profit either monetarily or politically), and the other side wishing for it to remain pristine and untouched. Eventually there would be little to nothing getting done about it (like possibly figuring out how it magically got there in the first place), because it'd just be something for politicians to squabble over, and for talking heads like Keith Olbermann or Glenn Beck to blabber about.

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat

Originally posted by: ironwing

Originally posted by: FelixDeKat
People who leave their computer(s) running 24x7 should be punched in the face for several minutes.

At my company we are required to leave the PCs on 24/7 so the IT folks can push crap out at will. I've been on vacation this week, my PC hasn't.

Lots of companies are guilty of this. I hope one day they realize the arrogance of their ways.

I think they could use the wake-on-LAN feature to turn on the PCs if they need to do anything to the PCs, or even just to run a backup routine.
I don't know how that sort of thing is actually implemented though; all I know about it is that there's an option for it in the BIOS of just about every PC I've worked with in the past...well, at least since they started integrating NICs right on the motherboard.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Originally posted by: sao123

Originally posted by: ChaoZ
People don't turn off their computers when they sleep? Wtf?

linux id10ts measure their epenis based on their up-time since their last reboot/shutdown.
yes it dum.

I'm one of those, but I only do it with servers. My home server was up for over 200 days but I moved out so had to bring it to my new house. I felt like just leaving the UPS hooked up so I can keep it online the whole time LOL.

It is a Linux thing though. Windows can't do that. A simple update and you have to reboot, AGAIN.

Also I'm not getting how one PC costs 20 bucks to run. I'm looking at my latest bill, and I paid 28.98 and 19.79 of that is delivery charges. Used 108kWh which comes up to 6.16.

So assuming my PC is using 300wh that's $12.3 per month to run. My pc probably uses less then that. So for those saving 20+ per month by leaving it off for a portion of the day, what kind of kick ass hardware do you got?

My culpit right now is the heater that's under my garage. Was told to have that thing on as the foundation is above frost level and it could freeze up and crack. In fact it is quite cold and I did not even go right in yet. That heater is 2800w. That's 114 bucks per month. It's not always on though but if I were to leave it on... ouch. Anything that requires me to install a 30 amp breaker will normally cost a lot to run... lol

 

[ScottFern]

Turning it off is not really an option when I am downloading 8GB Linux ISOs all night.

I think I have found a work around, however I am not sure how effiicient it is. I bought a Thecus NAS box that the web OS can install mods and one of the mods is Azureus. So I will have those Linux ISOs downloaded straight to the NAS instead of to my PC.

 

[OFFascist]

I leave my computer on 24/7.

I do some folding@home but the real reason I leave mine on is because I'm always downloading stuff in the background.

I would have to say the money saved on "entertainment" because of my computer usage more than outweighs the cost of running it 24/7.

 

[BoomerD]

Mine pulls about 250 watts at idle excluding the 19" crt monitor. (per kill-a-watt)

I shut it down overnight when it's not being used.
That's roughly 1 kW/4 hours, so 2kW/day x 3 = 60 x .14/kW = $8.40/month in savings.

I wish I had the low electric bills some of you folks do...during the summer months, mine runs $250 to $350, during the winter months, about $125-$150.

 

[Red Squirrel]

This thread made me want to test mine but my multi meter does not do amps AC it seems.. I tried DC setting but it sticked to 0. I need to order myself a killawatt. Easier then crocodile clips and stuff...

Actually do they make 240v version of killawatts? Would be nice to test 240v items too like the stove, dryer, and other misc items.

 

[IronWing]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
This thread made me want to test mine but my multi meter does not do amps AC it seems.. I tried DC setting but it sticked to 0. I need to order myself a killawatt. Easier then crocodile clips and stuff...

Actually do they make 240v version of killawatts? Would be nice to test 240v items too like the stove, dryer, and other misc items.

Just get two 120V models and use them in serial.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: RedSquirrel
This thread made me want to test mine but my multi meter does not do amps AC it seems.. I tried DC setting but it sticked to 0. I need to order myself a killawatt. Easier then crocodile clips and stuff...

Actually do they make 240v version of killawatts? Would be nice to test 240v items too like the stove, dryer, and other misc items.

For 240V, you'd probably need a clamp-on meter.

 

[fleabag]

clamp on meters are useless unless you can get the clamp around one of the wires like the hot or neutral. But in most cases, the hot and neutral are in a single romex making that impossible and therefore useless for most cases.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Neffing + listening to iTunes is burning 133-151W according to the display on my UPS. Major powered items include: Xeon X3360, GTX260, three internal hard drives, one external, two routers, and an HP LP2275w. I save more money every month turning off my roommates' lights.

 

[OCGuy]

I pull over 550W from the wall while gaming. Give my system a fucking cookie.