How to determine how much electricity a computer consumes. Electricity consumption by computers of different power

Finding out how much electricity a computer spends is made difficult by the fact that a computer is a complex device. Its power generally depends on the hardware - the installed processor, video card, number of monitors. The second factor is the time and purpose of using the PC. It would seem that the longer a computer runs, the more energy it requires to function. But the system may have a simple office software package open, or maybe a resource-demanding game. Therefore, you should take into account not only purely technical characteristics, but also the software and games being launched.

How to find out and calculate the electricity consumption of a computer? We have identified two main methods:

using special sites;
and with direct measurement of meter readings.

To most accurately measure the amount of energy consumed, you need to know the technical aspects of your computer. What program allows me to determine how many watts of power my PC is using? There are sites designed to calculate the power of equipment. We will use the OuterVision service. It allows you to calculate the power of a computer power supply using a calculator integrated into the site.

The site calculates the power of the iron. After all, the more sophisticated the PC, the more energy it consumes. Working with the service is simple - we fill in the table with data about the computer components and calculate its potential power.

Note! There are two types of calculators on the site: advanced (Expert) and simple (Basic). It will be enough for the average user to use the simple mode, especially considering that the site is in English and it can get confusing.

Measuring electricity consumption of a computer or laptop through the OuterVision service

Step 1.

Step 2.

Step 3. Let's start filling out the computer information. First of all, we indicate the type of motherboard. For personal computers, select “Desktop”.

Step 4. CPU – processor data.

Here you can select the number of cores, or find your own processor in the search bar - the site’s database is large.

Step 5. Memory – RAM. Either select the quantity from the first drop-down list, or indicate specifically from the second. We recommend using the second one, since the speed of the RAM depends on the type (DDR) and affects the performance of the PC, and, consequently, the amount of energy consumed.

Step 6. The site allows you to determine the video card with accuracy down to a specific model. The energy that goes into a computer is highly dependent on two key devices: the process and the video card.

The first point is to select the card manufacturer (AMD, Nvidia).

Then we indicate the number of video cards installed in the PC (useful for gamers - often several cards are installed on gaming computers).

The last point is to find your specific model in the list.

Step 7 Storage – we are talking about hard drives. Specifically, about the types of their connection. The parameter is not of fundamental importance - the hard drive has virtually no effect on the energy consumed by the computer.

Step 8 Optical Drives – presence of a disk drive. If you don't have one, skip this step.

Step 9 Monitor. We set the number of connected monitors (the more monitors, the more powerful the video card is overclocked, and other highly loaded processes are connected). For each monitor we indicate the number of inches.

Step 10 That's all for purely technical characteristics. Two points follow:

Step 11 When all fields are filled in, all that remains is to start calculating the approximate amount of energy consumed. To do this, click on the blue “Calculate” button.

Note! To completely change the data in the filled fields and enter them again, click the orange “Reset” button.

Step 12 Let's look at the results. The service analyzes the entered data within a few seconds and displays the result.

Load Wattage is the number we are looking for. This is the amount of energy consumed. In our case it is 265 watts.

That's how simple it is, in a few clicks you can determine the power consumption of your computer.

How to find out the power of a computer without using third-party programs?

How to find out how much electricity your computer consumes: alternative methods

There are two more ways to obtain information about energy consumption.

Method 1. Wattmeter. A device designed to accurately measure the electrical energy consumed by a specific appliance. Sold in online stores at an average price of 10-20 dollars. It will be useful for those who assemble “farms” intended for mining Bitcoins.

Method 2. Here you will have to show skill. This method is suitable if you live alone in an apartment. The bottom line: turn off absolutely all devices that consume electricity. The only thing is that you can leave a simple light bulb (then you just need to subtract 100 watts from the calculation). We turn on the computer and note the time of its actual operation. Moreover, you can customize the method for different situations - check the energy consumption when working with office applications, games, or in sleep mode. After the end of the recorded time, all that remains is to count the revolutions on the counter.

How much electricity does a computer consume per hour?

The first way to find out is to return to the OuterVision website and set the Computer Utilization Time parameter to “1 hour per day.” However, we will get a theoretical, approximate result.

The second method is to turn off all devices, mark one hour and count the meter readings. How much electricity does your computer consume in sleep mode?

Sleep mode is a compromise solution for weak PCs.

If you do not use the computer for some time, then turning it on and off takes a lot of time - the system loads internal components, programs open from startup. Sleep mode saves energy; on average, when using it, a PC consumes 100-200 watts. To save even more power in sleep mode, we recommend turning off peripheral devices (printers, scanners) and the monitor.

Should you turn off your computer to reduce energy consumption?

Turning off your computer completely saves energy. However, if you use a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) in your work, the PC will still run the counter. The reason for this is the slow background charging of the UPS battery. If the UPS has not managed to accumulate enough energy while the computer is running, the remainder will be gradually replenished when sleep mode is activated and even after the PC is turned off. Therefore, we recommend turning off the UPS at night or when you are away from home for a long time.

How to reduce your computer's energy consumption

Video - How to find out how many watts a computer consumes

You've probably already heard about the new law that should come into force in the next few years. Its meaning is this: up to a certain threshold, the cost of electricity is slightly lower than we usually pay, and everything above this threshold is paid twice. Next year the experiment will begin in several Russian cities and if it ends successfully, it will be applied throughout Russia. The point of the idea is that people would finally start saving electricity and this is correct in its own way. However, the majority of our compatriots were hostile to this innovation.

Against the backdrop of this news, home PC users began to think about how much electricity their computers consume. In addition, many ignorant people claim that PCs consume a huge amount of energy, and therefore have to pay incredible amounts for electricity. Is this really true?

First of all, you must understand that energy consumption directly depends on the power of the PC, as well as how loaded it is at the moment. This is explained quite simply. Let's look at an example based on a power supply - this is generally one of its most important components. can be very different and the higher it is, the better, because then you can connect various components to it, even of very high power. This allows you not only to play the latest games, but also to run resource-intensive programs, for example, for designers or designers. However, it is important to understand that in case of idle time or simply surfing pages on the World Wide Web, such a PC will consume several times less energy than when it is used to its fullest. In other words, the fewer processes are loaded, the less you pay for electricity.

Now let's try to calculate the costs. Let's say you use a 500 W power supply, although in the modern world this is not so much, it is quite enough even for a gamer. Let’s say that during the game 300 W are used + about another 60 W are “added” by the monitor. Add these two numbers and we get 360 watts per hour. Thus, it turns out that one hour of play costs on average a little more than one ruble per day.

However, there is one big BUT in this whole story - you cannot judge costs solely based on the power of the power supply. Here you also need to add data on the energy consumption of other components of the system unit, including the processor, video card, hard drives, and so on. Only after this can you multiply the numbers you received by the hours of work and then you will receive paid kilowatts.

According to various studies, the average office computer usually consumes no more than 100 W, a home computer - about 200 W, and a powerful gaming computer can consume an average of 300 to 600 W. And remember - the less you load your PC, the less you pay for electricity.

Perhaps everyone is interested in the question: how much electricity does a computer consume? After all, many people have computers that work all day long and consume electricity during the entire operation. Let's look at the theory and the results of my measurements.

At work, I often have to connect computers, or rather, provide sockets in the project for connecting computers. Technologies give the power of one computer to connect 0.5 kW. According to TKP 45-4.04-149-2009, the power factor of computers is 0.65. With these values, the calculated current of one computer is 3.5 A. You can connect 5 computers to one group, on a 16 A circuit breaker, which is how I usually connected it.

3.5*5*0.8=14 A< 16А.

0.8 – demand coefficient, with the number of computers up to 5 inclusive.

In fact, the computer is not such a monster as technologists paint it

As I mentioned earlier, I bought myself a multimeter with a clamp meter. Now I can measure the current of any household appliance.

So how many watts does a computer consume?

1 At home I have an ASUS K53SM laptop.

After loading the operating system, the multimeter showed 0.1 A. While working in AutoCADe, listening to music and working in parallel in other applications, the current consumption did not exceed 0.15 A. The maximum short-term current was recorded at 0.3 A. Unfortunately, I did not I was able to check the current during games, because... I practically don’t play games, and the minesweeper doesn’t eat up a lot of resources

At the time of writing this article, the multimeter shows a value of 0.1-0.11 A. For calculation, we take the average value of 0.14 A.

Р=220*0.14*0.65=20 W. This is the power that the electric meter calculates.

2 As soon as I moved to a new job, they bought me a new and quite powerful 4-core computer with an LCD monitor. In general, now almost everyone has such computers. After loading, the device showed 0.3 A. The average value during operation was 0.4 A. The maximum value that was recorded was 0.7 A. Even during calculations in the Dialux program, the current did not exceed 0.5 A.

Р=220*0.4*0.65=60 W.

Let's calculate how much electricity we will consume per month.

Let the computer work around the clock.

Laptop: 20*24*30=14.4 kW/month.

Stationary computer: 60*24*30=43.2 kW/month.

Now let's theoretically calculate how many computers can be included in one group so that the circuit breaker (16 A) does not trip. In the calculation we will take 0.7 A/computer.

16/0.7=22 computers, i.e. in this case, our design solutions turned out to be 4 times overestimated.

During the experiments, one interesting feature was noticed. A switched-off laptop consumes 0.04 A from the network, which is about 6 W, even if you disconnect the cable from the laptop. Therefore, always unplug laptops, phone chargers and other electrical appliances. This will allow you to save energy.

How much power does the computer consume?

This question can be interesting from two points of view: firstly, to select a suitable power supply unit (PSU), so that on the one hand you do not overpay for excess power, but, on the other hand, you do not end up with a computer that barely works on a weak PSU; secondly, this question is not so rarely asked in order to calculate the impact of a 24-hour computer on the family budget.

Usually, when you open the “Energy Consumption” section in any article, you will see the results of measuring energy consumption “from the outlet” - that is, how much power from the 220 V network is consumed by the power supply, on which the computer under test acts as a load. It is very simple to carry out such measurements: household wattmeters, which are a small device with one socket.

It's worth making a few notes about this measurement:

The efficiency of the power supply is not taken into account: say, a unit with an efficiency of 80% at a load of 500 W will consume 500/0.8 = 625 W from the outlet. Accordingly, if you get a result of 625 W in measurements “from the outlet,” you don’t need to run for a 650-W power supply - in fact, a 550-W power supply will do the same.
The result obtained in such measurements is the average, not the maximum value. Modern ones can change their power consumption very quickly, however, individual short surges will be smoothed out due to the capacitance of the power supply capacitors, therefore, when measuring the current consumption between the unit and the outlet, you will not see these surges.

Why is it necessary to take into account the maximum value, i.e. maximum load?

Most power supply manufacturers indicate high specifications, but consumers are not always able to test them in practice. A partial solution would be to monitor the voltage through the BIOS or motherboard utility, but even professionals cannot get accurate values under maximum load.

The power supply is a small box that can ruin the entire “life” of your computer. Sometimes it will work fine, but sometimes the computer will start to restart, “glitch” and “hang”. A similar situation may arise if you equip your PC with a more powerful graphics card or processor, which may result in the system becoming unstable. In such situations, the user often blames components such as the processor, memory and cooling system. But replacing them does not help, and the user tries to find the cause by updating the BIOS or drivers.

Very often the cause of problems is an overloaded power supply. Many users do not bother to check whether it works correctly, although without a good power supply you cannot get a stable system.

The power of the power supply, which is written on the price tag, is the maximum power. For switching power supplies, the rated power is important, i.e. that load power at which maximum efficiency is achieved. But this very important parameter is not written either on the price tag or in the manual.

To move from theory to practice, we will use the testing results of the F-Center company.

So, Office computer

A very inexpensive, but at the same time a good system unit for office work. Configuration:

Processor Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2220 (2.4 GHz);
CPU cooler GlacialTech Igloo 5063 Silent (E) PP;
Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2 motherboard (nForce 7100 chipset);
RAM module 1 GB Samsung (PC6400, 800 MHz, CL6);
Hard drive 160 GB Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.B HDT721016SLA380;
Sony MRW620 card reader;
Case IN-WIN EMR-018 (350 W).

Final result:

Obviously, any power supply will be enough for such a computer - even 120-watt units provide a double power supply. The type of load has little effect on power consumption, since in any case the most “gluttonous” component is the processor.

Home computer

Next we have a PC that claims to be a relatively inexpensive home computer, on which you can already play games - however, the games are undemanding, due to a weak video card.

Configuration:

GlacialTech SilentBlade II Fan GT9225-HDLA1;
DVD±RW drive Optiarc AD-7201S;
Case IN-WIN EAR-003 (400 W).

The Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (32-bit) operating system and all the necessary drivers were installed on the computer.

Final result:

However, this gluttony is very conditional - the entire computer needs about 137 W in the heaviest mode.

File server

To answer the question, what kind of power supply is needed to assemble a RAID array? Three Western Digital Raptor WD740GD drives were added to the computer from the previous section. The disks were connected to the chipset controller and combined into RAID0.

Configuration:

Processor AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ (2.60 GHz);
CPU cooler TITAN DC-K8M925B/R;
GlacialTech SilentBlade II Fan GT9225-HDLA1;
ASUS M3A78 motherboard (AMD 770 chipset);
RAM 2x1 GB Samsung (PC6400, 800MHz, CL6);
Hard drive 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3250410AS;
Video card 512 MB Sapphire Radeon HD 4650;
DVD±RW drive Optiarc AD-7201S;
Case IN-WIN EAR-003 (400 W);
Hard drives 3x74 GB Western Digital Raptor WD740GD.

The Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (32-bit) operating system and all the necessary drivers were installed on the computer.

Final result:

The result of the study is only partly unexpected: the most difficult moment for a file server is switching on, when the spindles of all disks in the array spin up simultaneously. However, for our modest three-disk array with not very modest ones, a conventional 300-watt power supply is more than enough - it will turn on the computer without problems, and during operation it will provide a threefold power reserve.

Gaming computer

The next system is a mid-priced gaming computer, a very popular model among buyers. This system allows you to play most modern games at good settings and costs a very reasonable amount.

Configuration:

Processor Intel Core 2 Duo E8600 (3.33 GHz);
CPU cooler GlacialTech Igloo 5063 PWM (E) PP;
ASUS P5Q motherboard (iP45 chipset);
RAM 2x2GB DDR2 SDRAM Kingston ValueRAM (PC6400, 800MHz, CL6);
Hard drive 500 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12;
Graphics card PCI-E 512MB Sapphire Radeon HD 4850;
DVD±RW drive Optiarc AD-5200S;
Sony MRW620 card reader;
Case IN-WIN IW-S627TAC;

The Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (32-bit) operating system and all the necessary drivers were installed on the computer.

Final result:

However, the overall power consumption is comparatively low: 189 watts. Even a 300-watt power supply will provide one and a half times the power reserve, and there is simply no point in taking anything more than 400 W for such a computer.

Powerful gaming computer

The penultimate computer, a very powerful and expensive gaming system based on the latest generation of Intel processors - .

Configuration:

PCI-E 896MB video card Leadtek WinFast GTX 260 Extreme+ W02G0686;
DVD±RW drive Optiarc AD-7201S;

The Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (32-bit) operating system and all the necessary drivers were installed on the computer.

Final result:

However, in general, the appetite of such a powerful computer is relatively modest - 371 W at maximum. Even when choosing a power supply with a 50% margin, you can safely settle on 550-W models.

Very powerful gaming computer

And finally, the most serious gaming system - in the configuration described in the previous section, we change the video card to a two-chip monster ASUS ENGTX295 (as you might guess, GeForce GTX 295). Everything else remains the same.

Configuration:

Processor Intel Core i7-920 (2.66 GHz);
Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R motherboard (iX58 chipset);
RAM 3x1GB Samsung (PC3-10666, 1333MHz, CL9);
Hard drive 1000 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST31000333AS;
PCI-E 1792MB video card ASUS ENGTX295/2DI;
DVD±RW drive Optiarc AD-7201S;
Case IN-WIN IW-J614TA F430 (550 W);

The Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium SP1 (32-bit) operating system and all the necessary drivers were installed on the computer.

Final result:

It still remains unclear who needs kilowatt power supplies and why - even for such a powerful gaming system, a 750-W power supply is more than enough. The “kilowatt” here will already provide a double power reserve, which is clearly excessive.

Conclusion

Let’s summarize the results in a summary table, where we present two values for each computer - maximum (FurMark + Prime"95) and typical (3DMark’06):

Well, even if we take the maximum possible power consumption of the system as a guide, we don’t see anything terrible. Of course, 500 W is a lot of power, a quarter of an iron, but the power supplies that provide it are not only no longer uncommon, but also cost quite reasonable money, especially compared to the cost of a computer that consumes so much. If we take a power supply with a 50% margin, then a 750-watt model is sufficient for the Core i7-920 and GeForce GTX 295.

Other computers are even more modest. It’s worth changing the video card to a single-chip one - and the needs are reduced to 500-550 W (again, taking into account the reserve “just in case”), and the more common middle-class gaming computers will get by just fine with an inexpensive 400-watt power supply.

And this is energy consumption under heavy tests, and no real game can compare with FurMark in its ability to load a video card. This means that if we take a 750-watt power supply to our most powerful computer, we will get not even one and a half times, but an even greater power reserve.

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Nowadays, modern technology is coming to the forefront in the world of information technology. Probably, few people have thought about how much a laptop costs per hour. Due to the increase in tariffs, even rich people are starting to save. So how much electricity does a laptop consume per hour of use? Let's look at this interesting question.

Choosing a laptop

If you are just planning to buy a laptop, then try to pay attention to energy-efficient models. The computer may cost you a little more, but it will save you money on electricity and will pay for itself over time. Remember that different models use electricity differently. To a large extent, it depends on the purpose of the laptop. To find out how much electricity a laptop consumes per hour, you need to consider its different types. Unfortunately, we will not be able to get an accurate result.

Electricity costs from running a laptop

A laptop with average performance. Let's say you bought this laptop for work. You work on it for about 8 hours a day in various office applications, on the Internet, or play simple games. In this case, the laptop will consume approximately 80 watts per hour. In 8 hours, the meter will accumulate about 0.640 kW. For a month this comes out to 19.2 kW. Not bad, right? But this is an average laptop that is simply used for work. Okay, let's move on to the next example.
Gaming laptop. How much electricity does a laptop with a good processor and gaming graphics card consume? A gaming laptop will consume about 190 watts. It is difficult to calculate how much electricity a person will spend using this technology, since different people spend different amounts of time at the computer. But let's say you play it 6 hours a day. In just one day you will spend 1.14 kW, which is about 34.2 kW per month. Quite a big figure.
Laptop in server mode. There are people who use their computer as a server on which they store photo and video files. Of course, such a laptop is not equipped with high technical characteristics, the only thing is a spacious hard drive (several terabytes). This computer will consume about 30 watts per hour. If it runs 24 hours a day, it will consume about 0.72 kW, which is 21.6 kW per month.

How to find out how much electricity your computer consumes

As we have already found out, it will depend on many details. Completed tasks and computer specifications do not make it possible to accurately determine how much electricity a laptop consumes per hour. If you are buying a new computer, you can determine its power and calculate the approximate costs (this information is indicated on it). But there may be another case, you buy an assembled laptop that does not have any power data. In this case, it will not be possible to find out the approximate costs, unless, of course, it is completely disassembled.

So, let's figure out how to find out how much electricity a laptop consumes? There are two effective ways that we will now consider.

What is the difference between different power consumption modes

Today, modern technologies have made it possible to reduce energy consumption. If you need to go away for a short time, it is not advisable to completely turn off the laptop, but in order to save money, you can switch it to another mode. To do this, you need to run a specific program that will turn off or slow down some components of the device. If you are about to start working on a laptop, the program will automatically start these processes. This created the opportunity to save on the included device.

The laptop does not work, but still consumes electricity, since the program is active and processes can resume at any time as soon as the user indicates this. If your computer is put into sleep mode, it only takes 30 seconds for it to wake up all components.

The second sleep mode is inactivity or hibernation. This mode is similar to the off state. In this case, energy costs will be minimal. Unfortunately, even if you turn off the device completely, it will waste a small amount of electricity. This is due to networking capabilities.

How much electricity does a laptop consume in sleep mode?

How much electricity does a laptop consume per month?

So how much electricity does a laptop consume? Let's say you have an average laptop that you use for gaming and work. On average, you work on it for 4 hours and play for 3 hours. During operation, electricity costs will be 0.4 kW, for games 0.45 kW and 17 hours of inactivity, which will also require 68-170 W depending on the mode. As a result, monthly electricity costs will be about 30 kW.

How to reduce your laptop's electricity consumption

We have found out how much electricity a laptop consumes per hour and per month; now we need to take care of saving energy. Of course, the main thing is when connected to the network, but there are also certain rules that can help save:

When buying a laptop, pay attention to energy-efficient models.
If you feel comfortable, you can reduce the screen brightness.
Don't spend too much time playing games and turn off your laptop.
Customize power modes based on your needs and schedule.

Conclusion

Now you can calculate how much electricity your laptop consumes per hour and create a work schedule for yourself that will help you save. Remember that turning off your laptop completely will help with this. If you follow all the tips, you will spend less on electricity.