Power Consumption

[Guest]

Suppose I got a 650w PSU and PcPartPicker says that I will use 415w (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/KnKY4C) what would be the approximate electric bill cost for just the PC alone per month? 

[sazrocks]

How are we supposed to know that when we 

1. Have no idea what electricity costs in your area

2. Have idea what you do with your computer

3. Have no idea how often you use your computer.

[Guest]

Just now, Redstoneary said:

It depends on the efficiency (Bronze, Gold, Platinum 80+) 

It's 80+ gold, you can see that in the part list, should have mentioned that though

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, sazrocks said:

How are we supposed to know that when we 

1. Have no idea what electricity costs in your area

2. Have idea what you do with your computer

3. Have no idea how often you use your computer.

That's why I said approximate, and I will be gaming about 3-4 hours a day

[STRMfrmXMN]

10 minutes ago, XxBatman99xX said:

It's 80+ gold, you can see that in the part list, should have mentioned that though

80 PLUS Gold just means it hits certain efficiency at pre-selected points based on Ecova's standard.

 

You also should do this yourself, with your own location's costs for electricity per KWh, seeing if it differs at different points in time during the day, and considering the fact that we don't know how much power your system is consuming at any given point in time since you're probably not hammering the system to its full capacity all the time.

[mariushm]

That computer will use around 300-350 watts when gaming.  Let's say 350 watts because it's a nice round number.

When you're not gaming, it's going to be less than 100 watts.

 

Your power supply is around 90% efficient, which means out of 100% of the energy that it takes from the socket, 90% is actually going to components.

 

So, if 350 watts go to components then the power supply will consume  350 x 100 / 90 = ~ 390 watts from the mains socket. We can round it up to 400w to keep things simple.

If your computer components are using 100 watts, then your power supply will consume 100 * 100/90 = ~ 110 watts.

 

You pay for your electricity in kWh ... that's 1000 watts over the course of one hour.  So if you're playing games on your computer and your power supply is taking 400w throughout the hour, that means you will be billed for 0.4 kWh for that hour and in four hours you're going to be billed for 1.6 kWh.

If you play games every day for 4 hours, then in 31 days you're going to pay 1.6 x 31 =  50kWh.

 

How much you pay for each kWh varies from country to country, from state to state ... I think in US the average is around 0.10$ for 1kWh , so that means you'd pay 50 x 0.1 = 5$ at the end of the month.

 

When you're not gaming, your computer will use 110w, so it would take about 9 hours to reach 1kWh, or ~ 3 kWh if you'd keep the computer running 24/7... or 100kWh per month, which translates into around 10$ a month extra on your electricity bill.

 

Note that speakers (maybe 10-20w) and the monitor (30w-50w) also matter, and most people forget about them.