How Much Electricity

[Cheese]

I have my computer on 24/7 and live in the UK and was just wondering how much electricity am I using or, more to the point, how much is this adding to the electricity bill?

My PC has one fan that I keep on medium setting (not sure about RPM's but can find out), the monitor, speakers and printer are only on when I'm actually using the computer.

Any ideas? I don't want exact figures but maybe an idea of what I should be expecting to pay extra...

[Mad Cat]

PCs don't use much power compared to other things. I doubt it will be noticable at all.

Air conditioning units, electric heaters, and things like that are what will kick up your bill.

EDIT: What the hell am I on about? Air conditioning units in the UK :lol:
Oh yeah 1001 posts :P

[Samurai]

Why is your PC on 24/7? It shouldn't be too much but one fan for your PC is just not good enough. I bet if you opened the case right now, you'll be met by Indiana-Jones style cobwebs/dust. I recommend you invest in more fans or your PC won't last past your next bill ;)

[Cheese]

Originally posted by Samurai@9 January 2004 - 19:40
Why is your PC on 24/7? It shouldn't be too much but one fan for your PC is just not good enough. I bet if you opened the case right now, you'll be met by Indiana-Jones style cobwebs/dust. I recommend you invest in more fans or your PC won't last past your next bill ;)
Now you've got me worried... :ph34r: Isn't one fan enough if it's on all the time...I haven't had any problems so far (it's been on for six months and only switched off occasionaly).

[abu_has_the_power]

put it on hibernate or stand by when ur not using it! or at least turn off the monitor when ur dling something and ur away from the pc

[Mad Cat]

Originally posted by Withcheese+9 January 2004 - 20:45--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Withcheese &#064; 9 January 2004 - 20:45)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-Samurai@9 January 2004 - 19:40
Why is your PC on 24/7? It shouldn&#39;t be too much but one fan for your PC is just not good enough. I bet if you opened the case right now, you&#39;ll be met by Indiana-Jones style cobwebs/dust. I recommend you invest in more fans or your PC won&#39;t last past your next bill ;)
Now you&#39;ve got me worried... :ph34r: Isn&#39;t one fan enough if it&#39;s on all the time...I haven&#39;t had any problems so far (it&#39;s been on for six months and only switched off occasionaly). [/b][/quote]
How long have you had the PC?

He may be right, check your temperatures with a program. It&#39;ll probably be fine if its been running for months on end already.

I reckon it&#39;ll be fine, my 1.4 GHz Athlon runs at about 50 degrees C (cpu temp) most of the time and its been on nearly 24/7 for the 2 years I&#39;ve had it.


Monitors don&#39;t use much power either, but its a good idea to turn it off when the PC is idle/you are away.

[Samurai]

Fans operate in two ways... commonly known as the &#39;suck n blow&#39; method.

Fans can either:

1) suck air in
2) blow air out

With one fan, as suggested, your fan is only doing one of these. Most PC enthusiasts on this forum know that they need to have an equal amount of fans doing the opposite job, i.e. 1:1, 2:2, 3:3 where 3 suck 3 blow.

This is needed to ensure a constant air cooling method and to ensure your PC&#39;s internal areas, i.e. motherboard, graphics card, memory etc... doesn&#39;t get dirty by foriegn objects. Dust WILL get inside your system.

My advice would be to open up your PC and ensure you are safely &#39;earthed&#39; (try an anti-static wrist strap) and give it a good clean with an air spray. Do not use a hoover, or Dyson... these are huge sources of static electricity that could fry your motherboard.

Also suggest you buy some more fans if you really care about your PC. They&#39;re only cheap, definately under a tenner and very cost effective. Check out Aria (http://www.aria.co.uk/) for some good deals on fans.

Samurai :ph34r:

Edit
------

Download SpeedFanSpeedFan 4.09 (http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/13/5/13-5-8.shtml) and post your CPU&#39;s temp on this board so we can let you know if it&#39;s good or bad.

Screenshot is here for what we want to see...

http://www.softpedia.com/screenshots/13-5-8_1.jpg

[Cheese]

My advice would be to open up your PC and ensure you are safely &#39;earthed&#39; (try an anti-static wrist strap) and give it a good clean with an air spray. Do not use a hoover, or Dyson... these are huge sources of static electricity that could fry your motherboard.

Should I be investing in some sort of dust guard?

Cheers for the tips guys, I&#39;m not that confident with opening up my PC to do anything (even if it&#39;s just cleaning) but I know a few people who can sort that for me...


I reckon it&#39;ll be fine, my 1.4 GHz Athlon runs at about 50 degrees C (cpu temp) most of the time and its been on nearly 24/7 for the 2 years I&#39;ve had it.

Mine runs at about 45 degrees C (cpu temp)

Back to the electricity question: do you think it does make much difference, one person say it won&#39;t but...?

edit; just saw your post samurai bear with me...

[Mad Cat]

Right, just found this. A 17 inch monitor on 24/7 will cost about £81 a year to use. Thats £6.75 a month for monitor on 24/7. I know a PC will probably be less than this (although it may differ) so I reckon a PC will be, probably at the very most, £5 a month to operate, 24/7.

EDIT: Another site I looked at says that a typical PC with a 17 inch monitor with an inkjet printer will cost about 1.6 pence per hour to use (that is converted from a 3 cent cost, since it was an American site).

[Cheese]

http://www.withcheese.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/_borders/xscreenshot.JPG

sorry it took so long but I&#39;ve never posted a screenshot before (had to download a prog to do it :lol: )

[Joakim Agren]

Hello&#33;

Actually todays modern computers with their fast processors draw alot of power.

My 4 year old iMac uses about 150Watt including the built in monitor. My new HP computer with monitor uses about 300 watts of power.

I can actually heat up my room to room temperature with just my computer,monitor,tv and VCR and 3 light bulbs during vintertime down to about -10 degree celcius outside. Only if it goes below that I have to use my electric heater. This I could not do when using my old Mac so it shows that todays fast computers uses up alot of power. I have tryed to run both my PC and my Mac at the same time for 24 hours whit closed door and the temperature raised to 25 degree Celcius when it was -5 outside. To hot&#33;. Athlon processors uses more power then Pentiums do&#33;. I have AthlonXP 2600+ running at 2133MHz&#33;.

The thing is that I actually saves power usage during vintertime when running my computer for 17 hours a day. This is because I do not have to use the heater that uses 1000 watts. But during summertime I do not know how hot my room will become since I have not had it during summertime. When it is like 25 degree Celcius outside then I think that I will have to shut down my computer or else it will become like a steam sauna inside&#33;. :blink:

Regarding the fans&#33; I think he ought to have atleast 3 fans inside he just does not know it&#33;hehe :lol:

One is built in the Power Unit and blows air out of the computer at the back. One is for the CPU taht cools the Processor down and one somewher else to take in air in the chassi&#33;.

My iMac does not however have a fan at all not even for the CPU. Instead it uses convection cooling in which the heat inside causes air to raise up and cool air to get sucked in from the bottom and causing an internal airflow that cools the components down at the bottom and very hot air to be vented out at the top handles airholes. I ould hardly touch my imac at the top it was so hot but taht is teh way it is supposed to be when using convection cooling. This type of cooling requires a special design and a CPu that is not faster then 800MHz. So it does not work on current CPU&#39;s they are to hot and needs direct cooling&#33;.

[Samurai]

Ok what is your OS? Also your clock speed is needed as well.

For example:

Windows XP AMD Athlon 3000+



To upload pictures, you&#39;ll need to press &#39;Print Scrn&#39; button (Next to Scroll Lock) and then open up Paint. Click Edit > Paste

You&#39;ll then need to resize it, for consideration of the forum users, using the options in Paint.

Then you&#39;ll need to upload it to your webspace/image holding account and link to it.

[Cheese]

Originally posted by Samurai@9 January 2004 - 20:50
Ok what is your OS? Also your clock speed is needed as well.

For example:

Windows XP AMD Athlon 3000+



To upload pictures, you&#39;ll need to press &#39;Print Scrn&#39; button (Next to Scroll Lock) and then open up Paint. Click Edit > Paste

You&#39;ll then need to resize it, for consideration of the forum users, using the options in Paint.

Then you&#39;ll need to upload it to your webspace/image holding account and link to it.
My screenshot is a few posts above...

OS: Windows XP

clock speed: erm I&#39;ve got AMD Athlon 1800 :(

[Robert00000]

Originally posted by Withcheese@9 January 2004 - 20:02
I have my computer on 24/7 and live in the UK and was just wondering how much electricity am I using or, more to the point, how much is this adding to the electricity bill?

My PC has one fan that I keep on medium setting (not sure about RPM&#39;s but can find out), the monitor, speakers and printer are only on when I&#39;m actually using the computer.

Any ideas? I don&#39;t want exact figures but maybe an idea of what I should be expecting to pay extra...
Just add up the wattages and multiply electricity costs (per Kilowatts per hour) and you should get a rough idea of how much its costing you :D

[clocker]

Originally posted by Samurai@9 January 2004 - 14:20
Most PC enthusiasts on this forum know that they need to have an equal amount of fans doing the opposite job, i.e. 1:1, 2:2, 3:3 where 3 suck 3 blow.

This is needed to ensure a constant air cooling method and to ensure your PC&#39;s internal areas, i.e. motherboard, graphics card, memory etc... doesn&#39;t get dirty by foriegn objects. Dust WILL get inside your system.


I would disagree with this on both general and specific principles.
"Most PC enthusiasts" don&#39;t know anything of the sort.
Many people are proponents of "negative" case pressure- most fans blowing out, or "positive" case pressure- most fans blowing in.
Case "pressure" being a relative term here...the pressure in question is minimal.
My case worked best with a majority of the fans bringing air in. You&#39;re results may vary.
Dust is an issue in all computers and my experience trying all three layouts hasn&#39;t shown one to be superior to another in the area of dust prevention.

[lynx]

Back on topic, the monitor is usually the biggest consumer of power. But assuming that you have it set to switch off after a few minutes idle in reality it won&#39;t consume that much power.

If a 17 inch montior used 24/7 would cost about £81/year, the rest of your system would probably cost under £60/year. Obviously you won&#39;t be using your montior 24/7, so the actual annual cost of that would be relative to your use.

Overall, a monthly cost of £5 to £6 is probably a reasonable figure.

[Cheese]

Originally posted by lynx@10 January 2004 - 02:51
Back on topic, the monitor is usually the biggest consumer of power. But assuming that you have it set to switch off after a few minutes idle in reality it won&#39;t consume that much power.

If a 17 inch montior used 24/7 would cost about £81/year, the rest of your system would probably cost under £60/year. Obviously you won&#39;t be using your montior 24/7, so the actual annual cost of that would be relative to your use.

Overall, a monthly cost of £5 to £6 is probably a reasonable figure.
That sounds pretty cool :) , my monitor gets switched off when I&#39;m not using the PC anyhow. What are you basing those numbers on?

[lynx]

The £81 per year came from what Mad Cat posted, it seemed a reasonable figure.

My overall electricity bills are about £21/month including standing charge (about £3.50) and I&#39;m quite sure my pc doesn&#39;t account for more than a third of my electricity usage, so £6/month seems about right.

That works out at 20 pence per day, or 0.833 pence per hour, on average. Again, that fits in with Mad Cat&#39;s post quoting 1.6 pence per hour, since the monitor won&#39;t be on when you are not there.

[Cheese]

Excellent cheers for that Lynx, now I can tell my landlady that it&#39;s not my fault the electricity bill has gone up by 20 quid in recent months :lol: