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I've recently built myself a good, quiet yet powerful HTPC for xbmc as well as gaming machine.
I generally keep it running 24/7 but I'm wondering how much this generally costs on electricity. I know this depends on a lot of factors but is there a general way to determine this?
I've saw some websites that allow you to input your components and it can give you an estimate on how much wattage it's running, how would one figure out what that costs on electricity.
Below is my specs. Based in the UK too.
I'm wondering if this bothers anyone else or am I just paranoid :-)
Windows 7
i5 3570k ( not overclocked )
700w enermax triathlor PSU
8 gb ram
2 x 2tb HDDs
1 x Sandisk SSD
DVD drive
GeForce 670 GTX
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2013-02-20, 20:09
(This post was last modified: 2013-02-20, 20:19 by particleman.)
The best way to find out how much power your system uses in various states is to buy a kill a watt or some other power meter, then do the calculation based on energy costs.
My main desktop is similar to yours except with 2 670 GTX's in SLi and a i7 3770k, when I measured the power consumption using a kill a watt, it used @90 watts when idle and 400 watts under load. I suspect yours will be around 70 watts idle. But the only way to know exactly is to buy a power meter, because power consumption of components vary greatly depending on the make & model of the motherboard, the make & model of the HDDs, and efficiency of the power supply. Also every one of those online power calculators I've seen only calculates power under load.
I don't leave my main system on 24/7, so idle power consumption on my desktop doesn't bother me that much. I have a small mini itx system for stuff I need running 24/7.
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Thanks.
Well I built it to try to be as low powered as possible, but still wanting it for gaming. An impossible task really but with the i5 chip running low wattage and I cant see the Enermax running at 700w ever ( maybe when gaming ) so its as close as i could get really. I may switch out the HDDS for a few 2TB green drives too.
Its runs very cool and quiet which im pleased with. The reason for wanting it on mostly 24/7 is so i can get access to it remotely, and also for my downloads etc via couchpotato/sickbeard.
Ive tried iPhone apps to allow me to wake it remotely from sleep but i think my problem lies with my BT Homehub router, as i dont think it allows me to do this. Works fine over wifi but not over 3g/internet.
If i could get that set up then i most likely wouldnt have it running 24/7
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The very best way would be to plug it in to a Kill-A-Watt or equivalent power meter. Find out what the regular average draw is then you'd have to look at and decipher your power bill. Depending on your provider you might have tiered rates, in which case you should probably use the highest tier that you're paying now. Then just google up a power usage calculator that allows you to input a wattage, time and electricity cost per kWh and it will tell you the total cost.
