Electrical Costs: For an Average User
We calculated the yearly electrical costs for an average user. Our user leaves the computer on for 9 hours a day and runs the CPU at 100% for 4 hours a day. We used these values to create our average user profile.
If the computer is equipped with the most energy efficient Sempron, the 64 3000+, the PC system’s energy costs (excluding monitor) are about $82 (53.21 Euros) per year. The smallest Dual-Core BE processor only costs $3.05 (1.98 Euros) more per year.
At $124.50 (80.83 Euros), the Quad-Core Phenom system is better than the Athlon 64 X2 6400+. The two times higher energy consumption of the Phenom during standby is not noticeable for the average user when compared to the fastest Dual-Core Athlon: there is only about $6.32 (4.10 Euros) more in electrical costs over the year. It’s obvious that the Phenom processor has the highest energy costs out of all of the AMD desktop processors.
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my media centre based on a 3700+ (S939, single core san diego, 1MB, 2.2GHz) only uses 56-58W while running rosetta@home! That's including 1.25GB DDR (3 sticks), a freeview TV tuner, and a 2GB compactflash card on a Seasonic S12 330W PSU. It's undervolted as far as it'd go though...
What about performance per watt comparisons, which would have been the best comparison you could have made in such an article.
If you had a system that consumed 300W of power (forget about idle and full load differences for this question!!) with a 500W PSU, what would your power consumption be for the purpose of energy bill calculation?
Am I correct in believing that the rating of your PSU is the maximum power it can supply, and that it only actually draws what the system asks for? So in this case, your overall system power use would be 300W?
So, if you install a much more powerful PSU than you currently need (for the sake of future SLI upgrades) you wouldn't be wasting electricity?