My monthly electric bill

[Chef_Boyardee]

I have an issue. My roomate is getting concerned and i too am becoming concerned. He wants me to pay the majority of the elecric bill b/c of my comp.
my kw/h is 9.548cents.
the comp is on about 4hrs a day.
1hr average of gaming.
the psu is 600w
have an fx-55
7800gtx in sli mode.
19 in crt monitor

i've done research and found that it may cost only 6 bucks a month. this cant be right. or can it?

the only site i found forcalculatin is in euros, but i don't think it matters, and thats where i get the 6 bucks from.

site url: http://www.eu-energystar.org/en/en_008.htm

i've also been scanning various forums and finding costs anywhere from 6-10 bucks. so, i want to go to the site i trust most for my pc info, and its here. thanks

 

[revel911]

My roomate and myself were trying to cut cost over the summer by leaving them on as little as possible and found that two computers both at 550w barely cut anything. Heating/AC + bad insulation are the main reasons for electric cost.

 

[doolittle]

I got 350w from the psu calc (guessing 1 hdd, 2 fans and a sound card), if you have 75% efficency for your PSU that would be 467w (350/0.75) from the outlet so in a 4-hour run that is 467w * 4h = 1.9 kw/h

but that is if you are running 100% for the entire 4-hour run so the idle power should be around half of the full burn, seeing a typical x2 4600 system has been measured at 202w idle and 407w running 3dmark06 so you can guesstimate 75% average use for 1/2 idle and 1/2 burn so 1.42kw/h would be a good cost basis per 4 hour run for the pc itself.

add about 100w for a typical 19" crt', .4kw/h

so total is about 1.82 kw/h for a 4 hour session.

Tell him to get one of these Kill-A-Watt Electric Usage Monitor since it can meter your usage. I think he will be suprised how low it actually is.

 

[atp777]

Well if you came up with about 6 EUR that's about $7.50. Not more than half of the bill as your roomate is trying to make you pay. Your PC being on for about 4 hours a day isn't costing much at all.

 

[enforcer22]

In my exp a computer is not running up your bill. I have left my comp on 24/7 and have just had it turned off. No noticable difference in bills. lets take a 1000 watt psu lets assume it uses all 1000watts 24/7 if im not mistaken 1000watts is a kilowat hour? not sure in anycase there are a couple things in a house that cause the bill to shoot up assuming its all electric of course. Heating, AC, Washer/dryer, Oven, water heater. Everything else is to little to care about. I lvoed my old place $20 a month in electric during the summer. Then again i didnt have a washer dryer heater was off never used my oven only thing i used was the water heater since i was to busy to cook. My computer tv stereo lights and other things were on 24/7 however. Yes i know its wasting

 

[3lfk1ng]

Your roomate is an a$$...nuf said

 

[enforcer22]

agreed

 

[Chef_Boyardee]

cool. that puts my mind at ease a little. what about amps? i know the psu carries an amp rating. does that mean that the wattage rated multiplies the watt rating? i hope that sentence made sense.

i'm probably beating a dead horse b/c EnFoRceR22's reply said having his rig on "24/7/30" vs. "not at all" had a negligible difference.

anyway, thanks a lot for the info. i'll let my roomate know.

 

[tool_462]

Here are some figures I pulled off my Dad's spec sheets for the heating/AC/Electric company he works for. I dont have the sheets at school but I saved most of it to show people when they were telling me my D805 was going to raise my bill a lot.

PC - 550 watts.
Avg. Air Conditioner - 6,500 watts.
Clothes Dryer - 2,760 watts.
Dishwasher - 1,250 watts.
Hair Dryer - 1,000 watts.
Range - 12,000 watts.
Water Heater - 2,500 watts.
Toaster - 1,500 watts.

I chose those because their average usage and annual kw/h totals are on par with their single use power consumption.

Edit: Sorry, I checked the curve again and Toaster and Hair Dryer are not on par with the annual kw/h of a PC, but either way you can shove some professionally calculated stats in his face.

 

[UC7]

Well, with winter coming up I would say that you will indeed probably end up owing your roomate some money for the electric bill. He has been supplying a lot of hot air.

 

[jamesgoddard]

I would say worst case senario is $10 a month...

 

[Chef_Boyardee]

thanks tool man. good stuff.

 

[sailer]

cool. that puts my mind at ease a little. what about amps? i know the psu carries an amp rating. does that mean that the wattage rated multiplies the watt rating? i hope that sentence made sense.

i'm probably beating a dead horse b/c EnFoRceR22's reply said having his rig on "24/7/30" vs. "not at all" had a negligible difference.

anyway, thanks a lot for the info. i'll let my roomate know.

The amps are a measurement of available power. Notice that psu's are measured in wattage ratings, not amps. The only place where amp ratings are important is on the 12 volt rails. The total watts used are what's imortant in calculating electric bills. Enforcer is right, the PC uses little total power compared to the rest of the house and so has a negligible effect on the monthly bill.

Your guess that the PC was using about 6 euros of power per month sounds about right. Depending on idle time, it might even be lower.

 

[DuncanSharpe]

Unfortunately the power taken by a 600W power supply can be quite a bit more than 600 Watts - the 600 is the output power, not the input power. And you've got to add the monitor in on top.

However, there's one final twist. If you are heating the house with electricity, then the cost of using your PC is zero - the PC makes heat, and basically saves the heating system some work. In summer, the opposite effect occurs - all energy used by your PC is matched by additional energy used by the aircon - possibly doubling the cost of running the machine.

Either way, a reasonable estimate is about 500W x four hours - about 20 cents per evening. Six dollars per month. And you can double that if the aircon's on.

 

[chuckshissle]

This is how you do it.

First find out what's your place current electricity rate.

For this we'll say 5 cents per kilowatt hour as for example.

That's .05 per kilowatthour.

System: 600 watts psu with 75% effeciecy that about 750watts. include monitor and speakers for example let say 100watts.

Now computer is 850watts running power.

Lets say this system runs 8 hour per day. About the average pc.

So we got the values.

Equation:

Now 850 watts X 12 hours, 850 x 12 = 10,200

That's one day.

Now well multiply is for 30 days or one month.

So 10,200 X 30 = 306,000

Now 306,000 is used in given system for one month.

Now we'll convert that to kilowatt hour or 1000watts per hour.

To do so we'll divide 306,000 with 1000.

306,000 divided by 1000 = 306

306 Kilowatthour is used in one month.

Now we'll mutiply 306Kwph with the electricy rate we gave as 5 cents per kilowatthour.

306 x 0.05 = 15.3 or 15.30

15.30 is the bill without tax.

For my system I estimated I pay about $20 a month.

Equation: U.S.

Total system watts x how many hours per day x how many days per month = X, then divide by 1000 then multiply with the electricity rate.

 

[doolittle]

if im not mistaken 1000watts is a kilowat hour?

yep, I used minutes for some reason, my bad

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

If you want to reduce energy consumption... swtich to an Energystar complient LCD monitor. Those CRT's suck up energy like KRAZY.


I would be pissed if my roommate demanded I pay more then 1/2 of anything. Thats not how things work.

 

[doolittle]

System: 600 watts psu with 75% effeciecy that about 750watts. include monitor and speakers for example let say 100watts.

Now computer is 850watts running power.

Don't forget, the psu only draws what it needs as far as the components are concerned - so the psu calc is helpful for that estimate. At least you didn't turn hours into mins like i did

 

[doolittle]

I would be pissed if my roommate demanded I pay more then 1/2 of anything. Thats not how things work.

I agree, a new LCD and a new roomate 8)

 

[UC7]

Yeah, but which roomate do you advise him to get? The Intel one or the AMD? I suppose I would go with the AMD if it stands for something like Ashley Marie. 8)

 

[sirheck]

like everyone has said, it shouldnt be that much.

also does your roomate use the computer too?

 

[Chef_Boyardee]

he uses the computer about 30min a day (but i paid $2500 for my last upgrade.) but his argument is that i game on it.

 

[Chef_Boyardee]

oh yeah, chuckshizzle. you said 8hrs/day is average, but you used 12hrs. in the equation. is there a reason for that?

 

[sirheck]

does he use it for any type of school or to pay bills online?

if so tell him to chill out.

would he complain if you used a ps2 or xbox.

 

[Chef_Boyardee]

i should tell him to chill. he does use an xbox btw. but i'm sure that doesn't use as much juice as my baby.

also, how much power does an xbox360 use. when he gets that i can definitely tell him whats what.