Electricity Usage & Bills Question

[jiyeon]

Hi, so I was talking to my family about the two gaming systems in our house - my 8600K + GTX 1060 PC & my brother's Ryzen 2200G PC - and I made a point:

Quote

My PC uses like 250W at max and 150W at idle so it's not much money used especially since now I'm only on the computer for like 30% of my day.

and so my mum was convinced the electricity bill would be minimally affected by the power consumption of my PC. My brother's PC comes into the equation, I estimated his PC uses around 130W at max and he uses his PC easily 15 hours a day (it's complicated) and I also claimed this wouldn't affect the electricity bill that much.

 

How much of an effect does my PC's electricity usage have on the household electricity bill? Our average electric bill comes to £50 per calendar month, but I have no idea if that covered my PC since I made my PC in June and the bill probably wouldn't have adjusted to the new PC's electricity usage due to it being a quarterly payment.

 

Some notes:

• My PC is used around 6 hours per day, 50% gaming, 50% desktop

• Brother's PC is used around 12 hours per day, 90% gaming, 10% desktop (I'm not joking, he's got social problems and thus is homebound by choice)

 

Both of the PCs are in my signature.

 

Extra question, how much of a price difference is running 4.6GHz vs 4.9GHz on my 8600K?

[vanished]

The key factor missing here is how much power the rest of your house consumes (or just the total, we can work it out from that) so you can get a proportion of your PC to the total, or alternatively, the price of your electricity per kWh, so we know what your PC actually costs to run.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Basically nil, PCs consume very little power compared to a fridge, electric stove, microwave, electric heat, etc.

[Origami Cactus]

Why is your pc using 150w at idle?

My pc with r7 1700 oc and a gtx 1080ti pulls 90w at idle.

[orbitalbuzzsaw]

Just now, Origami Cactus said:

Why is your pc using 150w at idle?

My pc with r7 1700 oc and a gtx 1080ti pulls 90w at idle.

Yeah same here, about 120w on an OC 8700K and slightly OC 1080 Ti at /idle/ (watching YT video)

[jiyeon]

1 minute ago, Origami Cactus said:

Why is your pc using 150w at idle?

My pc with r7 1700 oc and a gtx 1080ti pulls 90w at idle.

That 150W figure was an estimate, I assumed that:
• OC 8600K - 100W

• GTX 1060 - 30W

• Rest of system - 20W

 

I don't have any sort of physical electricity meter on hand so I could be talking rubbish for my wattage numbers.

[Syntaxvgm]

Get a Kill-a-Watt. You will be able to see total usage in KWH and current draw. 

Better yet- get smart plugs 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079Q5W22B/

They give you draw, usage history in nice graphics, all of that in addition to being able to control the plugs and schedule them. I use them for my window ac units. 

 

With the smart plug, you will be able to quantify your total usage. 
Compare with your bill. Find out how much you pay. I used ot pay .08 a Kwh but now now I pay .105, which is a huge increase they did silently at some point. =(

Help them identify devices that use a lot of power. A good led light will use 5w-8w while an incandescent equivalent will use 60-100w. That adds up over a ton of bulbs! I'm a brightly lit person in a small house, but I cut my usage in almost half for the winter months by switching to LED. 
Even little things. a 100w device on 24 hours a day is about $7.56 a month at my rate. For this reason, I like to think not of total KWH used but average draw. This allows me to cut out the things in my mind I have little control over- electric stove, etc and makes it easier to quantify how much something contributes to your bill easily. I use about 600KWh a month in the winter months, which means my average power draw is about 833 watts. By cutting out a constant 100w for that, or if 12 hours a day 50w, I'm lowering my usage by 12% or 6%. 

The reason I look at winter months is I have gas heat and my electric bill stays constant, where my bill fluctuates in the summer depending on how hot it is. And how much I use ac. Spent a lot of time in the 90s this year, higher bills and the smart plugs helped me predict that. 

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, seoz said:

That 150W figure was an estimate, I assumed that:
• OC 8600K - 100W

• GTX 1060 - 30W

• Rest of system - 20W

 

I don't have any sort of physical electricity meter on hand so I could be talking rubbish for my wattage numbers.

You've massively overestimated the CPU, and probably underestimated the rest of the system almost to a point where it balances out, but I think the figure is still high.  My system with an OC 4770k and an R9 Fury and two monitors, which I'm counting, pulls about 150 W from the wall at idle.  Yours should be a fair bit less.  Also remember that your components have to go through the inefficiency of the PSU, so if they consume 100 W, it might draw 120 W from the wall to power them.

[Razor Blade]

You can easily keep track of usage with a device like this...

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/FLOUREON-230V-250V-Consumption-Monitor-Calculator/dp/B01DSQ30FO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1538936935&sr=8-2&keywords=killawatt

 

If your PC consumes 150 watts on average that means every hour your PC uses 150 watt hours. Divided by 1,000 that means 0.15kW/h now just multiply that figure by how much your electric company charges then the hours in which you use your PC. That will give you a cost figure you can work with.

[Spotty]

Just now, seoz said:

I don't have any sort of physical electricity meter on hand so I could be talking rubbish for my wattage numbers.

Given the recent conversation with your family, I'd recommend buying a wall outlet power meter to measure your usage. They're relatively cheap for around $20 or so, and you can move it throughout the house to test various appliances.

[jiyeon]

7 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

The key factor missing here is how much power the rest of your house consumes (or just the total, we can work it out from that) so you can get a proportion of your PC to the total, or alternatively, the price of your electricity per kWh, so we know what your PC actually costs to run.

My dad is the only one who knows that figure and he's not home for a while.  

 

2 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

You've massively overestimated the CPU, and probably underestimated the rest of the system almost to a point where it balances out, but I think the figure is still high.  My system with an OC 4770k and an R9 Fury and two monitors, which I'm counting, pulls about 150 W at idle.  Yours should be a fair bit less.

Huh, interesting. See, I'm not too good at estimating at wattage, clearly!

[Levent]

I am pretty damn sure no cpu since early 2000s idle at 100w even if you turn of all the power saving options. My setup (3 monitors, my computer, a desk lamp, surround sound system, and few idle usb chargers) is consuming 150w as of writing this post.

[jiyeon]

2 minutes ago, Razor Blade said:

If your PC consumes 150 watts on average that means every hour your PC uses 150 watt hours. Divided by 1,000 that means 0.15kW/h now just multiply that figure by how much your electric company charges then the hours in which you use your PC. That will give you a cost figure you can work with.

Ah, thank you for this equation!  

[vanished]

1 minute ago, seoz said:

My dad is the only one who knows that figure and he's not home for a while.  

 

Huh, interesting. See, I'm not too good at estimating at wattage, clearly!

If I were to take a guess, I'd say you idle at more like 100 W and at max load could push ~300, but those are rough figures.

 

Also feel free to check out my guide about efficiency and how much of an impact it can have on your bill here:

 

[jiyeon]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

If I were to take a guess, I'd say you idle at more like 100 W and at max load could push ~300, but those are rough figures.

So that's 8600K + 1060 idle, what about if I changed to a 1070? Provided my 450W can do that.

[vanished]

1 minute ago, seoz said:

So that's 8600K + 1060 idle, what about if I changed to a 1070? Provided my 450W can do that.

I don't think the idle would change much.  A little, but not enough to really matter.  Under load you could see 50 W more I'd think, maybe no even that much.  Depends on the card, how you OC it, etc.

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, seoz said:

So that's 8600K + 1060 idle, what about if I changed to a 1070? Provided my 450W can do that.

At idle there wouldn't be much difference. Pascal is fairly decent at clocking itself low when it's idle. Under load maybe 30W difference.

But, I wouldn't bother going from a 1060 6GB to a 1070.

[jiyeon]

4 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

I don't think the idle would change much.  A little, but not enough to really matter.  Under load you could see 50 W more I'd think, maybe no even that much.  Depends on the card, how you OC it, etc.

 

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

At idle there wouldn't be much difference. Pascal is fairly decent at clocking itself low when it's idle. Under load maybe 30W difference.

 

Interesting one, thanks guys.

 

1 minute ago, Spotty said:

But, I wouldn't bother going from a 1060 6GB to a 1070.

It was an example that came up in my head, particularly since my brother wants to get a GTX 1050 in his PC soon.

[Pixel5]

21 minutes ago, OrbitalBuzzsaw said:

Basically nil, PCs consume very little power compared to a fridge, electric stove, microwave, electric heat, etc.

this is completely false, especially people that have their PC running all day will have a significantly higher bill.

 

anyways the only way to answer how much it is gonna cost is to also know how much you pay for electricity.

[vanished]

19 minutes ago, seoz said:

Interesting one, thanks guys.

 

It was an example that came up in my head, particularly since my brother wants to get a GTX 1050 in his PC soon.

 

At the end of the day, if we run the numbers I proposed, we get this:

 

You: (100 W / 0.80^[1]) x (0.3^[2] x 24 hours/day) x (30 days/month) x (0.12 $/kWh^[3]) x (0.001 kWh/Wh) = $3.24 per month

Brother: (70 W^[4] / 0.80^[5]) x (15 hours/day) x (30 days/month) x (0.12 $/kWh) x (0.001 kWh/Wh) = $4.73 per month

 

*1: this is the efficiency of your PSU at that load, from here: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-cx750m-psu,4799-5.html

*2: you said you use it 30% of the day, I'm assuming every day

*3: this is a total guess for your power cost.  It could be much lower or much higher, you will have to figure that out.

*4: This is a guess at his power consumption.  Again, get a kill-a-watt (or something better) to make sure

*5: This is a guess at his efficiency at that level from here (very rough as this isn't even the right model): https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/psu/101983-quiet-pure-power-10-600w/?page=5

 

Again, I must stress this is very rough, but provided you can at least fill in the true cost of your power, it should be accurate to within +/- 20% I'd say which is probably close enough.  If you really wanted to be precise, you'd have to figure out how much of the time you spend off, at idle, and under load, and you'd have to factor in your monitor(s), etc. - here I'm just putting the whole system load through the PSU even though that's not quite fair^[6] but again, it's rough.  Alternatively, as mentioned, just get a Kill-A-Watt.  That will track your power over a long period of time and remove any need to do math.  Just keep in mind that while they are the go-to, they can sometimes be quite inaccurate.  I hope this can help

 

*6: what I estimated was wall power and thus shouldn't be done this way (divided by efficiency) but I'm estimating using idle figures, which is inherently going to underestimate the average monthly load, so I figure I can counter that somewhat by overestimating in this manner

[Tosa]

Atm my PC (Ryzen 5 1600X and GTX1080) runs at about full load (Folding@Home), and the entire setup is pulling 470 watts. That's including 3 monitors.

[jiyeon]

7 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

At the end of the day, if we run the numbers I proposed, we get this:

 

You: (100 W / 0.80^[1]) x (0.3^[2] x 24 hours/day) x (30 days/month) x (0.12 $/kWh^[3]) x (0.001 kWh/Wh) = $3.24 per month

Bother: (70 W^[4] / 0.80^[5]) x (15 hours/day) x (30 days/month) x (0.12 $/kWh) x (0.001 kWh/Wh) = $4.73 per month

 

*1: this is the efficiency of your PSU at that load, from here: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/corsair-cx750m-psu,4799-5.html

*2: you said you use it 30% of the day, I'm assuming every day

*3: this is a total guess for your power cost.  It could be much lower or much higher, you will have to figure that out.

*4: This is a guess at his power consumption.  Again, get a kill-a-watt (or something better) to make sure

*5: This is a guess at his efficiency at that level from here (very rough as this isn't even the right model): https://hexus.net/tech/reviews/psu/101983-quiet-pure-power-10-600w/?page=5

 

Again, I must stress this is very rough, but provided you can at least fill in the true cost of your power, it should be accurate to within +/- 20% I'd say which is probably close enough.  If you really wanted to be precise, you'd have to figure out how much of the time you spend off, at idle, and under load, and you'd have to factor in your monitor(s), etc. - here I'm just putting the whole system load through the PSU even though that's not quite fair but again, it's rough.  Alternatively, as mentioned, just get a Kill-A-Watt.  That will track your power over a long period of time and remove any need to do math.  Just keep in mind that while they are the go-to, they can sometimes be quite inaccurate.  I hope this can help

Oh wow, that's so concise. Thanks so much for this! Yeah, I'm probably going to get a Kill-a-watt for the sake of my sanity, this is interesting stuff, especially my brother whose PC isn't even in its final form yet.

Thank you so much for the help!

[vanished]

53 minutes ago, seoz said:

Extra question, how much of a price difference is running 4.6GHz vs 4.9GHz on my 8600K?

To answer this we'd need to know the voltage difference for one thing, but I would estimate < 20 W change, so not a huge deal, especially since that would only come into play at full load.

 

You could try to estimate yourself though.  Using a tool like HWMonitor, AIDA64, etc. you should be able to look up a software reading of your power consumption.  The same can be done for most system components, which could help you get a better sense of the total, but nothing is better than just reading directly from the socket since only large components like CPU and GPU are going to show up in software, which leaves the monitor and all other small bits as a mystery, and software readings don't count any inefficiencies in the PSU.

[jiyeon]

16 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

To answer this we'd need to know the voltage difference for one thing, but I would estimate < 20 W change, so not a huge deal, especially since that would only come into play at full load.

 

You could try to estimate yourself though.  Using a tool like HWMonitor, AIDA64, etc. you should be able to look up a software reading of your power consumption.  The same can be done for most system components, which could help you get a better sense of the total, but nothing is better than just reading directly from the socket since only large components like CPU and GPU are going to show up in software, which leaves the monitor and all other small bits as a mystery, and software readings don't count any inefficiencies in the PSU.

I can manage 4.6GHz at 1.15V, and 5GHz at 1.35V.

 

I use HWMonitor myself already so I can see what my system uses, although I've never paid attention to the wattage usage on a daily basis, only ever when I run Cinebench.

[vanished]

29 minutes ago, seoz said:

I can manage 4.6GHz at 1.15V, and 5GHz at 1.35V.

 

I use HWMonitor myself already so I can see what my system uses, although I've never paid attention to the wattage usage on a daily basis, only ever when I run Cinebench.

It would be interesting to take a look next time you run a stress test. Increasing voltage increases the wattage, and the current, which also increases the wattage, so in theory that could make a ~38% increase to whatever it consumes at 1.15v - a number that surprised even me when I calculated it.