Power consumption

RagnaroK

Must be dreaming...
Joined
27 Apr 2002
Messages
673
Hi,
Just wondering if it's possible to work out the total power my computer consumes, say, per hour or something. I wanna find this out cause my father's been complaining about our latest electricity bill... :eek:
Hope you guys can help. Thanks a bunch.

RaG
 
Just to give you an idea.....

AMD Processor 95 Watts
Hard drive 30 Watts each
Mobo 40 Watts
Memory 10 Watts ( per 125 Mb)
Cd Drives 30 watts
Video card 70 watts approx (128/256 Mb)
PCI Cards 5 watts
USB Connections 2.5 Watts
Fans 5 watts
 
Sounds like my grandmother. she moans and groans at the littlest things, like the little red indicator on the vcr for the timer.
 
BTW, I know realise that each component of the PC use different amounts of power, but isn't the true figure of consumption just the power output on the PSU itself rather than on each individual part?

e.g. a 450W PSU IS the power consumption rather than say 10 components added together to make 275W?
 
Originally posted by ming
BTW, I know realise that each component of the PC use different amounts of power, but isn't the true figure of consumption just the power output on the PSU itself rather than on each individual part?

e.g. a 450W PSU IS the power consumption rather than say 10 components added together to make 275W?
no, the psu only uses as much as needed. otherwise, as in your example, where would the extra 175 watts of energy go?

a 500w and 200w psu will use the same amount of electricity when hooked up to identical sytems.
 
When analyzing PC power consumption you have to look at load current of each voltage output. ATX Power supplies were originally balanced for an expected equipment load out. So much +5V, +12V, -12V, etc. so on average everything worked out and no voltage output was overloaded.

Then everything changed. HD makers stopped using the 12Vdc, USB became popular, low voltage processors and RAM became satndard, etc. Now almost everything comes out of the 5Vdc and 3.3Vdc outputs. The better, newer supplies take this into account and have heftier ratings on the +5 and +3.3 V outputs.

The el-cheapos call themselves 450W power supplies but don't supply any more of the needed power than a good brand 350W supply.

A loaded system (3gig cpu, 1gig ram, 2 HD, 2 optical drives, top end video) should have +5V @ 30 A and +3.3V @ 20 A. The rest of the voltage outputs don't matter much anymore because they aren't used. Note this only adds up to 216W!

I have a post somewhere in here where I go through the details of computing your power consumption for a real system. I'll try and find it.

Keep in mind the numbers may be changing again soon with Intel's CEO talking about "a 100w processor is reasonable".

Check out tomshardware they have a list of cpu consumption for all the different makes and models. The athlon types jump around between 55 and 75 W last time I checked. The 3000 may be up to 80w.
 
Ragnorak...

He may be right. I did a post the other night about how much all these souped up computer systems are costing in electricity.

Figure $10 per month, per system if they are on a lot of the time. In the summer that goes up by 50% to pay for the airconditioning to remove the extra heat load from the house. I'm not sure if it comes down any in the winter because I leave the computer room warmer than the rest of the house.
 
$10p/m?? that's cheap compared to the UK.

I pay something like £50-£60 per quarter and I dont have aircon.

Anyway, it's nice to know that the PSUs don't consume what I thought it'd consume. :D
 

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