Measure PC power consumption

[theKumba]

Is there a way to measure how much power my system consumes or does it always consume the PSU's wattage? It would be very interesting to know how much I pay for my PC power whise.

[DIV1D3]

There is software that you can use to monitor one or two Corsair PSUs, though they are quite pricey and the only other way I know of is if you buy a wattage meter that you plug into the wall outlet and then plug the PC power into that which will be able to tell you the wattage consumption and how much you are paying in electricity after you put in how many cents/Kw you pay. 

Edit:

The wattage meters are quite cheap and you should be able to get one for $30, though try and get a decent one, I've had two that have died on my costing me a total of 85 AUD. 

[Fulgrim]

You can get some equipment to monitor the power usage, but i think they cost quite a fair bit. The best you can do without buying that stuff, is working out the maximum potential power usage or your rig. Here' s a post i made the other day, in response to a guy wanting to know how much it'd cost to have his rig running 24/7 for a month as a minecraft server - 

 

 

Depending on how many watts your rig uses, it'll vary. Since it won't be running at 100% capacity, it will be drawing less, the best you can do is work out a rough estimate of the maximum possible consumption. 

 

Use this to work out the wattage of your rig. http://www.extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp

 

That is how many watts per hour it can be drawing. As an example, say if my rig was pulling 400 watts. 

 

400 watts = 0.4kw/h   <--- how much i'll be using an hour, at most

1kw/h = 1000 watts

0.4kw/h x 24 = 9.6kw/h  <--- so for 24 hours use i can use up to that amount of electric

9.6 x 7 = 67.2 kw/h  <-- 1 week's potential use of electric

67.2kw/h x 4 = 268.6kw/h

 

It's ~17pence per kw/h for me, so -

 

9.6kw/h x 17 =  £1.63  <--- 24 hours 

67.2kw/h x 17 = £11.41 <--- 1 week

268.8kw/h x 17 = £45.69 <-- 1 month

 

It will not be that high, since it won't be running balls out, it'll most likely be burning about £15 - £20 a month on electric, considering it won't be running at it's maximum potential, and it won't be running that hard often because the server won't be constantly full.

 

As for my real wattage usage, i haven't got the gear to calculate it perfectly, but it pulls about ~60watts when i'm not doing much, i.e watching a movie or browsing the web.

[smjpl]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Energenie-ENER007-Power-Meter/dp/B003ELLGDC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407411533&sr=8-1&keywords=power+meter+plug

[LogicalDrm]

There isn't really way to monitor PSU's as they don't have any data connection to mobo. Best way is to use hardware (read meter) solution. PSUs don't use all their capacity all the time. And it depends on 80Plus rating how much of it they actually use in different loads.