How much electricity are you really using?

Have you guys ever wondered how efficient is your PC? 

When I started to get into overclocking and gaming, I was happily increasing my voltage to hit that satisfying 4.0Ghz speed. Seeing the 3DMark06 score jump by 400 points after overclocking my 8800GT was really exciting. Gained 4 fps in Crysis and I was already the happiest guy for the day.

Until the electricity bill came of course.

I never actually considered how much power my PC would be using but I bet the hours of Priming I did must have contributed something to it. So now I'm in a dillema. On one hand, I already have my system water cooled and it's begging to be overclocked but on the other, get nagged everyday by my mom for the increased electricity bill. Not a nice place to be at all.

So I went about to find some sort of measuring device so I could divert my mom's attention and hopefully able to blame some other faulty thing for the high electricity so she would leave me alone to continue OC my system hehe. It took me pretty long time and I just could not find any sold in PG or in Malaysia. Of course there are those so called plug-ins to the wall socket that supposedly able to cut down your electricity cost immediately but I chose not to trust these items partly also because it costs alot to find out if it works or not and that alone has already offset whatever savings you might be able to get from it.

Back to the topic, in US they have the pretty popular Kill-A-Watt (you can google it and you'll find many places selling them) but again, not offered here. There is also a problem of socket compatibility since the US pin layout is different. You would need a converter for the device and another for your application to plug into the device. Inconvinient and bulky I would think. To cut the story short, I went to ebay and did some search and found a few different models from UK. Apparently the UK uses the same socket layout as us and that is a definate plus. It also supports the same current and frequency ratings as what TNB is supplying us with. So after thinking a moment (first time buying from ebay and from a seller so far away), clicked the buy button and got it over with. RM80 gone and I waited patiently for it to arrive.

So, item arrived today much to my relieve. It was actually small enough to fit into a sort-of envelope with some paddings inside. I did not take any pictures of the unboxing or packaging because I was just too excited to try it out hehe. There were 3 buttons on the device: "UP", "SET" & "FUNC". The first two supposedly allows you to set the time and program it to even calculate your power cost by providing it with the price per kWh and it will be able to do the rest. Anyways, I skipped all those fancy stuff and basically only used the "FUNC" button. Pressing it will toggle the display to switch thru the typical Voltage, Current and Power(Watts) value. On to the results then!

Make a guess. What do you think is the power draw of my system?

For those who do not know my system specs:

Intel QX9650 3Ghz

Foxconn X38A Motherboard

2x1GB Crucial Anniversary 800Mhz DDR2

Seagate 320GB 7200rpm HDD

Western Digital 640GB Caviar Green 7200rpm HDD

Galaxy 8800GT 512MB GDDR3

Samsung 19" LCD

CoolerMaster M620 620W PSU

Watercooling: Swiftech Apogee GT, Swiftech MCR320 (120.3 radiator) & Swiftech MCP655 Pump

I did the measurement with everything at stock and no OC on any parts.

I first turned on the mains. At this point, PC is powered up but not running yet, mobo lights and PSU lights are on.

9W! I think I could have powered half a Atom PC up already even before I powered up my PC. At this point, it's not looking good at all. I'm so going to be blamed for the electricity cost.

Next, bootup.

Hmm, it's not that bad @ 200W but still, assuming bootup should be around the idle state of the PC, I would assume then that full load when playing games would have to be higher than this

Move on then. I have now start-up my PC and have logged in to Windows. Even during the OS loading and everything, nothing much changed. I was still pretty much stucked at 200W. So I fired up a movie (Madagascar 2) to see what is the power consumption at during one of my movie sessions. To my surprise, it stayed at the 200W level maybe a occasional 2-3W spike now and then but it was still pretty good considering the increase of HDD activity as well as GPU usage. Hehe, no worries for movie sessions anymore!

Now to gaming! Started Left 4 Dead game and let it run its usual opening "2 weeks after initial infection" movie. Started the hospital campaign and this is what I got:

OK. So now we're seeing a slight increase to about 220W. Either L4D was a totally undemanding game or my GPU was handling the game very efficiently. Gaming is usually where we see the graphic card switch to the higher powered 3D mode to help out with all the 3D accelaration and the processor will also get out of it's sleep/idle state. So 20W is not a great increase at all. Good good.

But I just had to know. What is the absolute peak of my PC if it actually went that far. So I opened Prime95 and proceeded to torture test all 4 cores. The result was:

So this is the max draw of my PC. A constant 270W at peak loading (I can only imagine the hours I spend running Prime on it when I first overclocked it and how much power was been used up then :S). Anyways, this is with the CPU maxed out but I'm sure if I perhaps run an ATI tool to stress the GPU, we're maybe talking about 300W then.

Last test. I actually regularly leave my PC on throughout the night to complete my torrent. So just for an idea how much power I'm using that time I measured it with the LCD turned off (don't need it since I'm going to sleep right?)

176W. So my LCD is actually taking 30W of power to display.

So in conclusion, I can see that although the power used during torrent-ing is the lowest at 176W, it is also the one that I used the most. Leaving over night means the PC will be on for around 6-8hrs each time, everyday. Add that to my occasional gaming when I'm awake, we are talking about 185W+ per hour each day for 6-8hrs. That is a total of ~1.5kWh each day. For 1 month, thats 45kWh units of additional cost printed into your TNB bill. Using TNB's very own bill calculator (http://www.tnb.com.my/tnb/tariff/calc.htm), that is a huge total of RM9.80 per month. What?!

I think it's time for me to go back to the world of over clocking and let me find the unfortunate electrical appliance that I'm gonna put all the blame on haha! RM9.80 a month was not a very huge amount and definately not something I should be so worried about. Yay! :)

For those looking for the same product, check it out in ebay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120432557865QQssPageNameZMERC_VIC_RCRX_Pr4_PcY_BIN_IT&refitem=110394878567&itemcount=4&refwidgetloc=closed_view_item&usedrule1=CrossSell_LogicX&refwidgettype=cross_promot_widget&_trksid=p284.m183&_trkparms=algo%3DCRX%26its%3DS%252BI%26itu%3DUCI%252BSI%26otn%3D4

As always, appreciate the comments. Have a nice day!