August 28, 200916 yr I noticed some people list their power usage but how are you figuring that out? Is there a way to do it from the components or are you hooking it up to something?
August 28, 200916 yr Some UPSes will report power usage. Kill-a-watt is another product that measures power usage.
August 28, 200916 yr Author Ah, I have one of those kill-a-watt things. ;-) My desktop currently says 121watts idle, is this really high? What's the best way to calculate out how much this cost for a year? I want to find out if it's worth using my old desktop vs buying new low power stuff. What's the "break even point"?
August 28, 200916 yr Ah, I have one of those kill-a-watt things. ;-) My desktop currently says 121watts idle, is this really high? What's the best way to calculate out how much this cost for a year? I want to find out if it's worth using my old desktop vs buying new low power stuff. What's the "break even point"? According to this chart, the US residential average cost of a kilowatt hour of electricity is 11.86 cents. That is the cost for 1000 watts for 1 hour, or 100 watts for 10 hours, or 121 watts for 8.26 hours. (If your desktop when idle draws 121 watts, then it will use a kilowatt hour of electricity in 8.26 hours.) In one year, you will use (365 days * 24 hours) / 8.26 kilowatt hours of electricity or 1160.5 kilowatt hours You will pay 1160.5 * 11.86 cents or $125.77 per year for electricity. (assuming you pay that average 11.86 cent per kwh rate I started with) If you can build a server with an average idle draw of 40 watts, then you will use one third of the kilowatt hours of electricity, and save roughly $80 per year. Your own break-even point will depend on your cost for a new motherboard, cpu, memory, efficient power supply, etc over the time you expect to own the server and your actual kwh cost.
August 28, 200916 yr Or the rule of thumb is each Watt used by an always-on device, costs $1 per year.
August 29, 200916 yr Author Ah, that makes estimates easier. So my base idle system use 119..if I take out the graphics card it uses 93. I guess I should remove the geForce 8800 from an unRaid box. :-)
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