The Cost of Running Your PC
by Christoph Katzer on November 14, 2008 3:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Cases/Cooling/PSUs
Introduction
Have you ever thought about how much it cost to run your PC -- the one you're using to read this article? What does it cost to play games, surf the Internet, or download files? It all costs money -- money that you, your parents, or whoever is in charge of the monthly electricity will have to pay. Those of you in charge of paying this bill will surely be interested in keeping costs down, which is why you might want to pay a little more attention to what sort of hardware you are using in your computer.
Many users -- especially computer enthusiasts -- put together a new PC that can easily handle any task, without much thought for power efficiency. If you intend to use the computer primarily for gaming, buying a high-end processor and graphics card makes sense. Likewise, if you intend to do complex three animations or movie encoding, you'll probably want to have as much processor power as possible. If all you're going to do is watch movies, run Microsoft Office, and surf the Internet, you're not going to put a big load on any of the components. In that case, your PC will typically be idle and waiting for user input, while any high-power components will still go merrily along sucking down extra power.
We recently looked at the topic of power consumption for each component in the PC. Of course the numbers were merely a rough estimate for our specific setup, programs, and tasks, so that article could serve as a baseline for the amount of power your system might require. We also discussed how power requirements affect the type of power supply that you will want to purchase. In this article, we want to focus more specifically on the costs of running a computer (not counting anything like broken components and upgrades). We look at electricity prices in the US and Europe to calculate how much various types of PCs actually cost to run. Perhaps you're one of those people with multiple systems -- one for gaming, one for office work, maybe one or two for the kids, and perhaps a few extras running distributed computing tasks 24/7. We will look at several different workloads to see how much various types of systems actually end up costing on a hourly, daily, and yearly basis.
KWh prices in the U.S and EU
When we started researching prices of electricity (measured in kilowatts hours/kWh) for the different countries, we were surprised by the huge differences in price. In the US prices range from $0.05 to $0.21, according to the Energy Information Administration -- the average price is $0.089 per kWh. European prices are different for each country, so we will just take Germany as an example. Prices there are high relative to the US but about average for Europe. In 2008, Germany has an average of 17 to 22 Cents (€) -- about $0.22 to $0.29 USD! That's anywhere from 1.5 to 6 times as expensive in the old world depending on where you live; obviously, areas where costs are higher will probably be more interested in PC power consumption, but that is a separate issue from what we are looking at today.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
Kyanzes - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
I've kind of anticipated a calculator but still a nice read.JarredWalton - Saturday, November 15, 2008 - link
Isn't that what the spreadsheet is?vandaliser - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
All you had to do is buy a Watt Meter which is kind of like a surge protector (but with a digital reader) where you connects your PC's power plug to the meter, then the meter to the main. (just go to ebay search Energy Meter and you will know what I'm on about)Take the reading in watts, divide it by 1000 to gives you the number of kwph. Finally, multiply it by the cost of one kwph on your electricity bill and numbers of hours you want to run it for.
I'm not sure about their expected cost of running, but it actually surprises many people that their PC uses a lot less power then what they expects.
Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Just that truly el-cheapo equipment will give you horribly wrong readings (cos-phi anyone?). Not saying a "watt-meter" must be expensive to give you acurate readings for home use, but there is way too much junk on the shelves out there.Souka - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Buy a Kill-a-watt meter of eBay.... I did years ago, still using it today.It'll show real time Amps, Volts, Watt load, KWhr used, and time.
http://energyseeds.com/2007/10/11/go-solar-and-kil...">http://energyseeds.com/2007/10/11/go-solar-and-kil...
I just pulled it out for a co-worker to try at her home. :)
DeepThought86 - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Given how little power even beefy systems consume, why is it that Anandtech continually reviews rediculously overpowered PSUs? What % of the market is made up of those 600W-1000W monsters? How about comprehensive reviews of the 300-500W marketanartik - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 - link
I would have to say that is a common misconception... There are reasons to buy more power than you "need". I bought "extra" for future upgrades and headroom. The problem with the calculator is most people plug in and come to the conclusion they need some fixed amount of power. All power supplies degrade in output over time with the cheaper ones faster (or use misleading claims as to output in the first place). If the calc says you need 400 and you buy 400 you’re in for trouble as the output deteriorates even quicker from running it at full capacity. The more you strain the PS the hotter its going to run and the louder its fans get. Plus you decide to run out and buy the latest power sucking hardware and voila you need a new power supply.I have a 4.3ghz E8500/X48 (SB w/bay,2 sticks DDR2, 2x drives,1 dvd burner and 3x120, 3x140) system and according to the calc I only need 462 with my current OC'd 8800 GTX. My old 550 Antec couldn't hang, screeched harmonics and was replaced with a Corsair HX1000. If I did a worse case upgrade... OC'd Q9550, more HD's, bluray burner and either a single 4870 X2 or possibly two and that power jumps to the range of 650-850 on paper. Factor in overages for peaks, efficiency, deterioration, percent utilization and it ranges from in the ball park to pushing it.
nilepez - Wednesday, November 19, 2008 - link
With all due respect, sites have been pushing large PSUs for years. As I posted earlier, people were trying to convince me I need 600w 3 or 4 years ago, when I built an Athlon 64 Rig with an X800XL: a rig that couldn't not possibly have used 300w, even when overclocked, from the wall, much less from the PSU.As for the idea of what you'll need down the road, by the time you need more PSU (esp due age), you could just buy a new quieter, more efficient PSU, with more bells and whistles of equal or higher quality with the money you saved.
Besides, in 20 years of computing, I've never had a PSU die. The worst thing that happened was a fan died. Bought a new fan and it worked like a champ, and that was some POS PSU that came with my Inwin Case (I think I still use that PSU, 10 years later!).
buying a quality PSU makes sense. Buying 750w+ PSUs only makes sense for someone running Tri or quad SLI, which means almost nobody. I've seen developers at work return 600W PSUs, because they feared that they'd need more to run to 8800GTs.
Those 2 cards pull at most 160w...add in a Core2 CPU, and you're looking a rig that is unlikely to pull 300W while playing far cry with Super Pi (just in case there's an idle cycle) running in the background.
It's almost all marketing hype.
Griswold - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
I've been saying this since Chris' first (excellent!) review here at AT. I really wish he would push those insane power monsters with extra bling off his workbench and start reviewing those PSUs the majority actually buys.Christoph Katzer - Friday, November 14, 2008 - link
Next one up will be most probably the Thermaltake TR2 QFan series with 300, 350, 400, and 450W. Everyone cheer up! ;)