cost of leaving PC on 24/7

canny_fisherman

Hi i am guilty of leaving my PC on 24/7 i was wondering what the saving in electricty would be turning it off over night ?

thanks

robt_2

Many sources quote it costs around around 30p for 24 hours, call it £100 a year. Remember that includes the time you are using it, not just when it is sat idle.

Red_Rose_Exile

It depends on your PC set. You would need to find out the wattage of your PSU and then multiply it by the cost of a kWh .

There are ways to configure your PC to be a bit more energy efficient. Start with the basics, ie the free ways,

Turn off your monitor or configure it to go into standby when not in use, a crt uses 80w and an hour, and LCD half that

Configure the hard drives to sleep on inactivity. You can do this via Control Panel, Power, and it's especially useful if you have multiple drives in a machine.and that will save a further 5 W

Disconnect any peripherals, such as printers, external hard drives and scanners when not in use

Now for the things that cost

If you don't play games, and are using a high end graphics card, consider changing it. A graphics card is the second most power hungry device on your PC, even in sleep mode it can be using up to 20 W of power for top end cards

Try sourcing a more efficient PSU, A lot of PSUs work at around 65% efficiency converting your power from the socket into something usable by your PC. Manufacturers are jumping on the Green bandwagon (at last) and creating more efficient PSUs with efficiency up to 85%

esuhl

Okay, take a price of 10p per kWh (just a guess), and an average power consumption of 250W (again a rough guess).

It would cost 10p per kWh
Or 10p per hour per kW
Or 2.5p per hour per 250W
Or 60p per day per 250W
Or about £220 per year.

I think the maths is correct there, but PCs vary quite wildly in power consuption...

MercilessKiller

I have a 600W PSU. dual monitor.. Nvidia 8800GTS...

My girlfriends going to kill me when she sees the ELEC bill

I turn the monitors off at night though so hopefully won't ccost toooo much

advent1122

Why do you leave your PC on 24/7?
It only takes afew seconds to turn it off at the end of the day.

robt_2

advent1122 wrote: »

Why do you leave your PC on 24/7?
It only takes afew seconds to turn it off at the end of the day.

There are hundreds of reasons, some examples

• Batch processing
• up/downloading
• system utilities eg defrag
• video processing

Red_Rose_Exile

I understand why it maybe left on 24/7, and I'll give you a few of reasons why mine is on

• All my updates are done overnight,
• My AV and anti spyware scans are run nightly
• Defragging and backing up are done whilst I am asleep
• Large (legitimate) downloads are done so as not to annoy a teenage gamer.

lilac_lady

If you switch the PC off but leave it connected at the wall socket, does it use up electricity?

robt_2

esuhl wrote: »

Okay, take a price of 10p per kWh (just a guess), and an average power consumption of 250W (again a rough guess).

It would cost 10p per kWh
Or 10p per hour per kW
Or 2.5p per hour per 250W
Or 60p per day per 250W
Or about £220 per year.

I think the maths is correct there, but PCs vary quite wildly in power consuption...

That seems excessive, as most sources I see quote half that.

superscaper

lilac_lady wrote: »

If you switch the PC off but leave it connected at the wall socket, does it use up electricity?

Some. I think worst thing for me is all the transformers that get quite hot. I always switch off my pc and all peripherals at the socket at night. (only one switch and the remote control is on my desk anyway so not really expending that much effort to switch off/on at mains).