Cost of running a computer or laptop

Rock_Bottom

spud17 wrote: »

Conor, have you checked the date of the thread?

Prices will have doubled. :eek:

AHAR

I bought a cheap power meter from Lidl recently. According to that, my PC uses about 60 Watts when it's idle and peaks at just over 100 Watts when it's working hard e.g. in Google Earth. My PC has a fairly modest spec: 2GHz Pentium Dual-core/2GB RAM/Integrated low-end NVidia graphics. I believe some high-end 3D cards can use 100+ Watts on their own when playing games.
On top of that, my 20" widescreen LCD monitor uses almost 40 Watts and the wireless router is about 10 Watts.

Interestingly my old PC is worse in terms of power usage. This is probably partly due to modern power supplies being generally more efficient than old ones - often 80%+.

There's a detailed article on PC running costs here.

robredz

Conor is correct, a computer psu uses more power the greater the demand on itup to it's rated maximum, so a 700 watt psu may only be using 100 watts when idling.
My Rig has a 700 watt psu with but unless I am playing a demanding game seems to use about 200 watts with the LCD screen using a max of 85 watts according to the manual.

S0litaire

I used one of those plugin monitors and I was surprised how much I was using.

TV + Sky box + Phone base + ADSL Router + Printer + Laptop = 160w

Reggie_Rebel

Depends on how much you spend on ebay/amazon/play or tesco's when you are online

Mobeer

esbo wrote: »

Quite a bit I would imagine, for anything more than a basic graphic card
It would recommend a biger power supply than I currently have, I have 300watt
supply and it recommended 400 watt. That was for a £50 card, for a more
expensive card it could be a lot more. A 700watt supply is recommended for this one.
http://www.pcworld.co.uk/martprd/store/pcw_page.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1576062661.1217888241@@@@&BV_EngineID=ccciadeekleifelcflgceggdhhmdfhk.0&page=Product&sku=421900#productInformationSection

I guess it has a dual function as a room heater though. :rotfl:

AnandTech did a test that put an average gaming machine at 168W idle and 341W load from the power supply, + 13% inefficient power supply = 190W idle / 385W loaded from the socket, excluding monitor, router etc.

To estimate the power use you would have to know what proportion of time was spent under what idle conditions (such as browsing a site like this) and what proportion under high load (such as gaming).