How will upgrades affect my electricity bill?

[jaywald]

I'm hoping to upgrade my gaming PC but I'm worried about how more power heavy components are going to affect my electric bill. According to Outervision PSU calculator my wattage use is going to increase by about 150w, I probably spend 4 hours a day browsing and 2 hours gaming. How dramatic are the price costs going to be?

 

[jay_nar2012]

Most electricity companies charge a certain amount per KW/h.

 

[Temile]

I'm hoping to upgrade my gaming PC but I'm worried about how more power heavy components are going to affect my electric bill. According to Outervision PSU calculator my wattage use is going to increase by about 150w, I probably spend 4 hours a day browsing and 2 hours gaming. How dramatic are the price costs going to be?

PSU calculators estimate the maximum power and they overestimate that. On the other hand, they measure the output of the psu, not the amount they draw, nor do they measure the draw of monitors.

Taking my own machine for example:

Outervision recommends 750w.
At 90% efficiency, that implies my machine will actually draw about 830w from the wall.
In practice, the most I've ever seen it draw is 500w measured at the wall.
Playing a game, it draws about 400w.
Browsing it draws about 150w.

Do you own calculation before and after...I'll bet you find its less than 150w difference. Power costs 14c KWh here, so even if it is 150w, you're talking a few pennies an hour.

 

[hunter315]

What is your actual system?


Lets take temile's system for example with 500 W measured at the wall at the peak and regular load levels are only 150 W, for your usage statements that implies about 1000 W used gaming and 600 W used browsing for 1.6 kWh/day, over the course of a year that is about 584 kWh assuming the same usage 7 days a week all year, at about 15 cents/kWh that is about $87.60 a year in electricity used, or about $7.30 a month which isn't much.

 

[jaywald]

Thanks for the info guys.