Total power consumption....Going Green!

[VolvoR]

I've done a search!!

I can't find anything that talks about total power consumption of a PC...

What's the best way to meter how much power my PC is using? I've heard of the Kill-a-Watt, but supposedly it's not very accurate.

I'd like to know how to save some energy with my PC (without turning it off). I know that putting the monitor in standby ASAP is good, but are there other things I can throttle back that will help?

We should really have a sticky thread on this matter, being greener should be a part of who we are, because as what I call "Power Users", a lot of us run computers that draw a ton of energy. If we could all find a way to save 50watts/hr, that would add up to a lot of electricity.

I'm open for suggestions.

The one thing I've done is that I've told my PC to hibernate after 5 minutes of inactivity...is there something else I can do while I'm using my PC? I don't need the maximum power of my computer to surf the web for example, but for gaming I do. Is there a way to either a-control this manually, or b- a piece of software that will do if for me automatically?

Thanks!

 

[Menelmarar]

A kill-a-watt or a UPS that reports usage is probably the easiest and economical way of measuring your PC's power draw. It will be accurate enough for your purposes.

I've gotten in the habit of turning my computer off during the day while at work, where I used to leave it on 24/7 *shrug*. As long as I have no encoding tasks or torrents going anyway.

 

[Solar Granulation]

Turning it off is always good (unless you'll turn it on again so fast that the power spike would null the down time).

If you have a secondary drive that you rarely access, consider spinning it down. Frequent spin up/downs can cause damage, but if it's seldom used there's no need to keep it spinning!

I'm also wondering if it's possible to underclock the CPU etc. Could be worth looking into. I know various laptops do it but I don't know about desktop units.

 

[Somnambulator]

i dont give a shit about 'going green' but saving money is nice. i read somewhere that the average C2Q folding a single threaded F@H client costs on average an extra $300/year in electricity. i dont fold on this PC but i did start turning it off at night.

my shitty folding/torrent/IM box still stays on 24/7/365 though.

IMO going green is a huge conspiracy to control people's behaviors...but that's another topic entirely. i like saving money (but spending money to save money doesnt always make sense).

 

[dz.Doze]

IMO going green is a huge conspiracy to control people's behaviors..

Umm, what?

 

[Solar Granulation]

I see that "Umm, what?" and raise an "...on Earth?"

 

[VolvoR]

Well, I'm no enviro-weenie, but I do care about the planet that I live on, seeing as I don't have a choice about which planet l live on...

I'm also into saving money.

I'm pretty sure that our energy consumptions, with all the users here combined, running our PCs at max, doesn't equal the power usage of a small factory. But that's not the point...

It doesn't matter what the reason is really, let's just see if there are ways to save some energy/money/environment.

I admit to a bit of hypocracy here as right now my 46" LCD tv is on in the living room, with no one there, but I think that the computer can control its own power usage...I'm just not sure how...

 

[mavalpha]

Consider a second computer. My solution is to have a high-performance system for gaming, which I only use- you guessed it- for gaming.

My daily rig (now my HTPC) is an ultra-low power rig that I'm okay leaving on 24/7. Total consumption is around 60W loaded, which is still perfectly usable between 780G video and an Athlon X2.

 

[larryBird44]

I know my laptop C2D has the ability to throttle itself back during idle, savings electricity in the process. I am not sure if desktop Intel or AMD offerings do as well.

 

[Zero82z]

I know my laptop C2D has the ability to throttle itself back during idle, savings electricity in the process. I am not sure if desktop Intel or AMD offerings do as well.

Yes, they all do. Speedstep/C1E on Intel systems automatically lowers the speed of the CPU during periods of inactivity.

OP, if you haven't already, you should set the power management options of your OS to their maximum power-saving options as well.

 

[Arcygenical]

Umm, what?

Going green on a personal level is dumb. If you've ever seen the amount of energy that a SINGLE large manufacturing firm wastes, you'd never buy another CFL bulb again.

But get a good UPS that shows power usage.

 

[Ockie]

Going green on a personal level is dumb. If you've ever seen the amount of energy that a SINGLE large manufacturing firm wastes, you'd never buy another CFL bulb again.

But get a good UPS that shows power usage.

I do agree with this logic in a sense, going green intentionally is dumb, going green systematically is smart.

You are not really going to save any money or the enviroment by ditching an already owned computer in favor of a brand new system (lets not forget factory pollution and resource waste) just to go green. Going green should be systematic, if you are in the market for a new hard drive for example, find something that meets your needs and then find a lower power consumption model... when buying a power supply, see if you can find something that meets your needs and price but has an 80+ certification... etc.

Now if you have an old quad slot xeon with tons of old scsi drives and memory sticks, then it would be worth ditching right away to go green because your savings would outweigh your consumption by far.

 

[Thejavaman1]

My main problem are my displays - my computer only uses ~100w idle and 170w loaded (Q6600, 4GB and pretty much integrated everything). Turning down the backlight helps (it's still about as bright as my secondary at 0 instead of 6 and it uses almost 50w less), although the higher backlight does produce as true a white.

Shutting down when you are not using it is probably the easiest way to save energy/money - I'm in the middle of a 300GB backup to Mozy so my computer is going to be on 24/7 for the next month or so, but after that it's getting shut off whenever I'm out.

 

[-Dragon-]

Vista's overhaul on sleep modes is super. I could never get XP to reliably sleep/hybernate due to some beta driver I was using failing to give its OK to enter standby. Since Vista no longer waits for permission to go to standby it has been much more reliable. And since my PC is in my bedroom, as I'm sure it is for many here, my room stays much quieter and cooler when I'm not using the PC or when I'm away, esp when sleeping. So much quieter that I'm becoming somewhat obsessed with water cooling to make it even quieter while running . There has been a noticable difference in the power bill too as I'm not sure that $300/year bill for folding mentioned above includes the additional power required in the summer months to remove all that additional heat load from the house, so you might be looking at another $100 or so (depending on efficiency) to remove that extra heat.

So if you have Vista make sure you're taking full advantage of its sleep modes, including hybrid sleep (which you may need to enable)

 

[-=Antimatter=-]

This is like the whole Electric car thing.

People are buying these things up, but they are doing more damage to the environment than they would be if they had just bought a nice used car that is good on gas. The used car has already "paid" for itself in terms of carbon footprint and it has already made an impact on the Earth. That's not to say people shouldn't buy these at all, it's just that they shouldn't ditch that old Civic that gets 30-ish MPG for a brand new Chevy Volt.

The point is, the technology we have has the capacity to be improved upon in terms of power usage. We just have to seize this opportunity and use the tools we do have to do more with less.

I'm a big fan of this post. Well said.