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PSA: Save money, put your PC to sleep at night!!

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loki8481 said:
I never got the whole "putting your pc build in your signature" thing
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It is mildly convenient when something has broken and you're starting a bunch of threads, but it's pretty easy to make it take only two lines of text. Other than that, e-peen.
 
loki8481 said:
I never saw the point of sleep/hibernate versus just turning it off completely, unless you really really really need to save the ~10 seconds of boot-up time.
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This assumes that you have no background apps or anything running.
Mine's loaded with fun little toys, and takes nearly 3min to boot up.


I turn mine off each night, and use the RTC Alarm to wake it up so it's ready to go for me in the morning.
 
I normally turn mine off when sleep. Unless its a nap during the day. I need to squeeze what little life expectancy out of my computers as I can, since iunno when I can build some new rigs. I let my netbook do all the u/d when I'm asleep though.
 
I turn mines off when it's not in use. I don't download big things; too lazy to download demos most of the time.

Brought up to avoid being wasteful, so leaving 150 watts to idle overnight bothers me.
 
loki8481 said:
but does anyone really care what the make/model of your cdrom is?
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People post their specs to eliminate questions in help threads. It's just easier to know what someone has when talking about computer parts. I know that's not what 99% of the people do here these days (including me sadly), but don't knock the origins of the site.
 
MotF Bane said:
PSA: Use less electricity, spend less money!
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Yeah, some of these "PSA's" are so stupid.....as if the OP has made some huge discovery that he just has to share with the world. 🙄 Unfortunately, common sense seems lacking sometimes around here, so I suppose any "discovery" of out of the ordinary (like, as you pointed out, use less electricity, spend less money) deems a PSA thread.
 
GodlessAstronomer said:
I just got the biggest power bill of my life. $400 (normal bill is around $200). Fucking absurd. Damn flatmates running the heat pump 24/7, not only that but they insist on keeping every internal door in the house open so that the heat pump will "warm the whole house". Which doesn't fucking happen, obviously. Combined with lazy flatmate who watches 10-14 hours a day of TV on a shitty old 37" tube TV and never turns lights off. Grrrr...
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A lot of the energy the TV uses is turned into heat, which will make your heat pump work less. In the winter, being a couch potato is green!

In the states, you can sometimes get free energy audits from electric companies and such. Maybe you can find a leak or something and get it plugged. If you're wanting to warm the whole house but it's not working, a few fans might fix you up. There are also shrink film kits which go over your windows:

http://www.amazon.com/Duck-00-09122-.../dp/B000NHY1P0

Are you the primary leaseholder? Do you have any power over these guys? If so, you might consider (gently) putting your foot down. Stress is bad. Stress over something one can't fix is worse. And stress over something one could fix but won't is the worst kind.
 
I live in BC. Power is basically free here because we sell it to Americans at $300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 per watt.
 
How much money can you save from switching from desktops to laptops? Thinking about replacing a htpc with just a netbook on 24/7.
 
Number1 said:
I saved $22.50 a month on electricity just by doing this.
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That's about how much my HTPC costs to run 24/7 all year. I do turn my gaming PC off when not in use since it's pretty power-hungry.

BTW, turning it off or hibernating uses less electricity than sleeping.
 
I just turn my computers off when I'm not using them. An extra 45 seconds of boot time doesn't really affect me. I have my phone to look up anything I need instantly. I turn off lights and TVs too. Of course I make up for this by running my AC at 68.
 
eldorado99 said:
I live in BC. Power is basically free here because we sell it to Americans at $300000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 per watt.
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I thought you guys still used coal in your stoves and had ice boxes. What do you need power for anyway?
 
You can use this to calculate the power your pc uses

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

(watts / 1000) x cost per kwh x 24 hours per day x 30 days per month

@ $0.08/kwh (my rate) it costs ~$17.50 per month to run a 300w computer, and that's assuming it's running at peak CPU all day, every day. Most computers probably use half that when idle, or less if it's a laptop or atom processor. So on average let's call it $10/month.

OP, if you're turning off your PC every night I'm assuming it's off for 12 hours per day. So by the above formula, your computer had to have been using an average 538 watts while it was on! World of warcraft, much? 😉. Seriously though, I'm not sure how the math doesn't add up here, but I'd guess that you saved money somewhere else, too.
 
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GodlessAstronomer said:
I just got the biggest power bill of my life. $400 (normal bill is around $200). Fucking absurd. Damn flatmates running the heat pump 24/7, not only that but they insist on keeping every internal door in the house open so that the heat pump will "warm the whole house". Which doesn't fucking happen, obviously. Combined with lazy flatmate who watches 10-14 hours a day of TV on a shitty old 37" tube TV and never turns lights off. Grrrr...
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CRTs even that size generally should only be around 100 watts. Get a kill-a-watt metering device (you can buy it online) and check out the wattage usage of the device. I saw a 36" CRT use only 100watts while a 42" plasma use 350watts, so it really depends on the device.

Cal166 said:
Converted all my desktops to laptops.
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That doesn't always save power, try using a Kill-a-watt device on it and you may be surprised as I know I was.
 
fleabag said:
CRTs even that size generally should only be around 100 watts. Get a kill-a-watt metering device (you can buy it online) and check out the wattage usage of the device. I saw a 36" CRT use only 100watts while a 42" plasma use 350watts, so it really depends on the device.


That doesn't always save power, try using a Kill-a-watt device on it and you may be surprised as I know I was.
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Can you inflate a "kill-a-watt metering device" to sidewall?
 
apac said:
You can use this to calculate the power your pc uses

http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

(watts / 1000) x cost per kwh x 24 hours per day x 30 days per month

@ $0.08/kwh (my rate) it costs ~$17.50 per month to run a 300w computer, and that's assuming it's running at peak CPU all day, every day. Most computers probably use half that when idle, or less if it's a laptop or atom processor. So on average let's call it $10/month.

OP, if you're turning off your PC every night I'm assuming it's off for 12 hours per day. So by the above formula, your computer had to have been using an average 538 watts while it was on! World of warcraft, much? 😉. Seriously though, I'm not sure how the math doesn't add up here, but I'd guess that you saved money somewhere else, too.
Click to expand...

I was going to post this.

The math just doesn't add up. There has to be something else that the OP neglects to account for. I'm guessing differences in outside temperature.
 
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