Electrical Costs: the 24-Hour System
There are lots of users who leave their computers on all the time; this demographic can always find another task for their arithmetic servants: for example, vast amounts of data are downloaded overnight from the Internet, or videos are converted. Then during the day games are played or video continues to be converted. The computer may also be left on all the time so that access to it is more convenient, and it’s not necessary to wait for it to boot up.It is also interesting to see what costs are raised when the HTPC in the living room is never turned off, so that immediate access to the TV or to videos is possible. In this calculation, we assume that the computer is used for an average of 8 hours a day, for example, loading down the CPU by playing HDTV.
If the computer is equipped with the smallest BE Dual-Core processor, the per year costs are about $220.27 (143 Euros). The yearly costs of the “Energy Efficient” processors are between $220 and $245.10 (142.79 and 159.12 Euros).
At $308.07 (200 Euros), the Phenom processors have the highest electrical costs for an AMD system. When compared to the fastest Dual-Core processor in a 24 hour a day setting, though, the cost is only $23.10 (15 Euros) more per year.
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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?