Power Consumption question

[magruder13]

I keep reading about power consumption and higher power bills. These high end PC's with the 1200watt psu's use alot of power, but how much is that on a power bill? I live at college and therefore i dont pay the power bills. I'm just wondering on how they relate and stuff.

 

[hunter315]

average price per kWh in my area is about $.15, for a smaller scale lets say you have an a 1kW PSU that is 80% efficient when the system is drawing 500W, lets say you have another that is 90% efficient at the same power draw. The first one will draw 625W from the wall, the second will draw 555.5W, so there is about a 69.5W difference in their draw with one at basic 80+ levels and one at gold levels. If your computer were to be run at that power level for 24 hours a day, all year long, its about $100

Now for a super high end system, if it has an 85% efficient unit, and actually uses 1kW of power it will pull 1176W, or about 17 cents an hour, but if you play games an average of 15 hours a week, thats $137 over the course of the year, over a few years a high end system can cost you quite a bit, which is part of why more and more PSU makers are making higher efficiency units, because while they are more expensive up front, over their lifespan they more than pay for themselves.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

The push for more energy efficient pc components originated in the corporate world where a large corporation might have thousands of pc's. Just a few dollars per month for each pc add up quickly.