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Operating Costs?

lt_wentoncha

Junior Member
Hi all,

I'm planning to build a DVR, the build I'm looking at runs on a 350w PSU. How do I determine the operating costs of letting it run 24/7? Thanks.
 
You would have to determine your idle power consumption which is a good baseline to calculate costs per year. A P3 kill-a-watt is a decent tool to determine idle consumption which costs around $20. You would also need to know what your energy costs per kwh in your region.

BTW, a 350w PSU is only the max DC rating. A PSU only draws as much power as necessary.

If you wanted an example lets say you idled at 60w, and you pay .12 cents per kwh. So...

((60w x 24hr x 365days)/1000) * .12 cents per kwh = $63.07 per year
 
as dualsmp said, it depends entirely on the system that you build. Unless you are using high end graphics cards/cpus (why would you for a DVR?) it is going to be pretty cheap to run, expect probably around 100-120 W max for integrated graphics and a low power CPU.
 
I can tell you if power is your concern then nothing you build will be less than that of a consumer DVR, they can be as low as 30 watts.
 
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