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How can I calculate power consumption of my PC in Watt?

I realize this question is difficult to answer as it would be different based on users location, what there PC is doing and what hardware it consist of, along with other factors but I am hoping someone could give me a very rough estimate.

I have always run many PC's in my home 24/7 and I am just now looking at it from a money/cost of electricity point of view.

  1. I live in Central Florida. Can anyone guesstimate/estimate the average monthly or daily cost of running your average PC? Intel quad core processor, 1 SSD drive for OS and programs and 4-5 1-2 TB hard drives in a RAID setup for data. 750watt PSU. What would your guess be?

  2. Also is there an accurate way to figure this out (non-super technical and confusing to a non-math person please) Also I have seen those kill-a-watt devices, do they figure this kind of stuff out for you?

  3. Does a larger PSU make your PC consume more power?

Thanks for any help, you can most likely tell I am somewhat lost about this!

Community
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JasonDavis
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2 Answers2

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  1. Figure out the power usage of your computer. It's hard to know exactly without using a measuring device (Like those 'kill-a-watt' things). You can search online for people with similar computers and see how much theirs use.

  2. Figure out the cost of your electricity. It's measured in $ per kilowatt-hours.

  3. The formula you need is:

(watts used by your PC)/1000 * (hours per month you run the PC) * (cost of electricity).

For example, if your PC uses 200 watts, and you run it 24/7 (720 hours per month), and your electricity costs $0.15 per kilowatt hour, then the cost per month would be: 200/1000 * 720 * 0.15 = $21.6

These are just random numbers, you'll need to plug in your actual numbers. Note you cannot use the 'watt' rating from the side of your PC, that's just the maximum output. Not the actual amount being used.

Sidenote: larger PSU usually doesn't make your PC consume more power. But it can be less efficient than a smaller one, so it might use slightly more power from the wall to provide the same amount of power to your PC components.

davr
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Not necessarily relevant for a home user, but commercially one would also calculate the additional hardware maintenance cost -- turning the host off and on increases the chance of something breaking, contacts coming loose, etc. If I remember correctly, commercially, it wasn't worth turning hosts off overnight (particularly if software maintenance was done overnight), but over weekends it was.

Mostly, that shows how little difference it makes (pennies either way).

mpez0
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