In light of the FB headline: http://www.flexbeta.net/main/comments.php?...&shownews=15615
I got to thinking about how much my PC and my wife's PC setup is costing us in energy. I have no REAL way to calculate my exact useage, but I found a website online which has some stats for infact, MY setup - less a few components ofcourse.
I found out that: an Athlon 64 3200+ (Socket 939, 2GHz, 512KB L2, Winchester (90nm)), MSI K8T Neo2 (VIA K8T800), Radeon 9600XT AGP with 256MB RAM, 1GB PC3200 RAM (2*512MB), on-board sound and network, 1 hard disk, 1 CDRW drive, 1 DVDRW drive. ~65W idle under WXP (no Cool'n'Quiet, should be ~6W less), ~78W idle under Linux (no Cool'n'Quiet, does not work properly on this box), ~100W compiling, ~110W gaming uses 65-110watts. There are a few adjustments I'd have to make. I have an Athlon64 3400+, an ATI 9800 and 4 additional drives. My board is also an Nvidia board, but that probably makes little difference. I have a printer, the router, my logitech speakers and my 19inch LCD monitor to tack on to that. It's safe to say I'm running a good 200 watts.
I run my PC 24/7 because it's ALWAYS playing music or downloading. So, I know I've got to be eating a nice chunk of the energy bill. My wife's setup is an AthlonXP 2000 with 700+ megs of ram and everything onboard with 2 little speakers, a 40 gig drive, a cdrw and a dvdrw. But she has my 19 inch CRT, so her PC must be eating up a good 150w also. So between us both, we're using about 350 watts of energy. Her PC sleeps, but mine doesnt.....now all I need to do is look at a bill and find out how to calculate the exact cost of running my PC.

Here's another tidbit, "The average PC (and monitor) costs approximately 2-3 cents per hour or 60 cents per 24-hour day." This is assuming that you're using about 150 watts.

How bout you guys? Think you're running high or low? And if you live with your parents do you think they'd kill you to find out you're running your PC all the time and using 1-3 100 watt light bulbs worth of power?

Oh, here's a link to the site that I found where the person measured the amount of power some systems were using: http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/com...onsumption.html

Here's another link. This is one of the best ones concerning PCs and power consumption that I've found: http://www.techreviewer.com/viewpage.cfm/ui/040226130555

I found this calc a while back then stumbled across it again. It kinda gives you a rough idea how much power your computer draws. http://www.extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp

Awesome calculator!

Looks like I'm at 439w @ 100% (CPU and Video)
370w @ 60% and 409w at 80% which is the default?

Only 260w(at 80% default) here. But thats because i have a low-end rig. Not that powerful of of a grafics card and i use onboard sound. Still, i run it 24-7 so it prolly creates a nice electric bill for my parents.

For me at 80% im using 377watts and full load 412watts. I wounder how accurate this calc is.

I doubt the accuracy of the calculator... Overclocked my P4 C 2.8Ghz processor to 3.5GHz cause me a massive of 660W to be utilised (full-load), 566W (80%) which totally exceeds the amount of power my PSU (420W) can support.

Wow....what system are u running exactly to be using 660w of power?

I have 10 USB ports in use
4 Drives (3 SATA, 1 EIDE)
ATI TV Tuner
ATI 9800
56K Modem
CDRW
DVDRW
Athlon64 3400 OCed to 2.4GHz
2 Sticks DDR2
9 Fans (3 lighted, 1 cathode)

and I'm at what I stated above. What are you running to possibly be getting 660?
Correct or incorrect that's super high. LOL. Even if I filled out my system with drives and a water cooler, I don't hit 550w.

It may not be spot on but I think it's close.

Dunno how much it uses, but my parents won't kill me for it, since I don't live with my parents

It seems that Intel processors take in more power than AMD, at least for what the calculator labelled.