Power Question...

[Kayes]

Hello

I have been having problem with power bills lately and today I calculate howw much does my computers cost to be on 24/7...

OK here is my calculations.

Energy consumed = 24 X 7 X 4 X (275W + 250W) = 352.8kWhr(give or take)

Noticed that this is not including 2 X monitors and 2 X 2.1 sound systems.

This is actually nearly 40% of my total power consumption.

Anyone think of this before?
Anyway to reduce this?

Thanks...

 

[BigToque]

What are the 275 and 250W from? The 2 power supply's for the 2 computers?

You do realize that you are never going to be using all available power from your power supply (ie, you're not gonna be using all the devices in your system at the same time).

Just turn off the speakers when you're not using them, and set the monitors to shut off after something like 10 minutes of not being used.

Also, from what I've heard before, the cost of having a computer running 24/7 is roughly the same as running a 100W light bulb 24/7.

 

[Adul]

use the power down features of your PC. put Hard drives into sleep mode, shutoff monitor, etc... You really don use the full power of what your power supply is rated at, but it does help to have these things go into a power down mode.

 

[jamarno]

The rating of the power supply indicates how much power it can put out, not how much it actually does put out, and I remember when an old 486 system with several 5.25" hard drives (10-20 watts each) was measured with a wattmeter, it consumed only a bit more than 100 watts from the wall outlet, indicating that the supply was putting out only about 70-80 watts.

A CRT monitor consumes roughly 70-110 watts when fully on, maybe 5-15W when asleep (about the same as the computer). Amplifiers tend to consume 2-3 times the power that they feed to the speakers, but speakers are rarely driven above 1-3 watts continuous power.

I think your estimate of your computer system's power consumption may be high by 50-100%.

 

[Supradude]

ha ha, i hear ya though, between me and my roomie we have...

4 250W psu's
1 300W psu
1 labtop
4 monitors
2 speaker systems

running basically 24/7 ha ha, can't wait to see my power bill

 

[Kayes]

I have now set all to hibernate and sleep mode after certain time. Next month I will know the result.

Damn power bill has been on the upward trend since the first time I moved out.

For the sake of argument, if it is at 30% of 352.8kWhr, it will still be around 105.84kWhr
Damn! Furthermore I will be getting some LaserJet and maybe another PC as server most definitely 24/7 too.

Argggh!

 

[Kayes]

jamarno

I will use your figure to do some calculation later.
Thanks.