How do i calculate the cash im spending with a 24\day pc turned on?

Lets take this for example, i have a computer that im using along with a webcam to criate a time lapse video, for that i'll need that have it turned on for about 4 months with no reboots whatsoever (offtopic: its taking 1 picture each 20 minutes for a whole period of 4 months, in order to get a 5 minutes video when compiled @ 30fps\s)

And for that im using a pentium 3 450, a s3trio 4 mb agp, and a usb webcam, a small fan to refresh the webcam and no soundcard or cd drives etc. Im wondering how can i calculate the amount of euros im spending each month, knowing that the total wattage of the system is 125 watts, and my electricity company take 0.90€ per kilowatt.

Are those 125 watts the wattage it consumes per hour or something? Im only missing that in order to calculate the amount of money ill be spending.

Thanks in advance.

John is right 0.90€ is too high. Here in CT, US its $0.12 and its the highest in the country. To get accurate watt reading i would suggest looking at something like Kill-a-watt. it will tell you how many KWhr you have used at the end of each week, day, hour, minute, and second. I have one and its great.

You may want to eat all the food in the refrigerator first

You also have to be careful about how they charge the electricity costs.

Here in the UK you pay a base rate and then another rate once you go over a certain limit ......

FTW!!!!

Valis

A Watt is a unit measurement of power, you get billed for a unit of measurement of energy such as a Watt Hour

Just make sure your units are correct in the end, and you won't go wrong most of the time.

1Watt * 1 Hour = 1 Watt Hour

or, 125 Watts * 24 Hours = 3000 Watt Hours

you can always multiply by 1 and not change anything. Since 24 hours and 1 day are the same thing, you can multiply by 24 hours and divide by 1 day, you are still multiplying by "1". your result will be a bigger or smaller number, but your units will differ.

now, 125 Watts * 24 hours/day * 30 days/month * 1 month = 90000Watt hours or 90 kWH

notice how day cancels our of the numerator and denominator and month cancels out which leaves you with Watt and Hour are the only thing left.

now multiply the price/kwh * kwh

kwh once again cancells out of the numerator and denominator leaving with nothing but the end price.

Your question about the video length and FPS -

1 picture/20 minutes * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 31 days/month * 4 months =

8928 photos

8928 frames/30fps = 297.6 seconds = 4 minutes 58 seconds

If you are concerned about the money you would be "wasting" by having the PC running 24/7 (like mine do), don't forget that the "waste heat" from the PC is dumped out into your room air. This has the effect of heating the room that the computer is in, which slightly reduces the load on your home heating system. So, you get to use your computer for fun things, and it even keeps your room nice & warm for you - what a deal!

BTW, don't forget to use a good UPS.

Altazi

a fan to refresh the webcam?

wow, I live in Houston too, and it's only $0.06 per kWh

On a new machine your depreciation would be greater than the power usage.
At todays price of $2000.00 in one year what would your PC be worth?
Maybe $1000.00?
That would be a daily depreciation of $2.74
The next years depreciation might only be $500.00

Turn everyting off in your house temporaraly. Find your Electrical Meter. Verify that it has stoped. Record the Reading. Turn you PC on record your reading again in exactly one hour. Subtract one reading from the other, multiply X 24. Refrigerator will be fine if you don't open it.

First, make sure the device you want to measure is turned off. Also, turn your air conditioner off and unplug your refrigerator; if they kick in while you're making your measurements, that will change the results. Go outside with a stopwatch and measure how many seconds it takes for the disc to spin around one time. Go back inside and turn on the device you want to measure. Don't change anything else at all -- turning even one light on or off will significantly change your results. Go back outside and count how many seconds it takes for the disc to go around once now.

Now you're ready to calculate. Look on the meter for something that says "Kh X.X", where "X.X" is some number (often 7.2). Plug your numbers into the following formula:

3.6 x Kh factor
----------------- = kW
number of seconds
For example, your Kh factor is 7.2, it took 60 seconds for the disc to spin once. Your check showed you were using (3.6 x 7.2)/60 = 0.432 kW, or 432 watts.