Electricity usage.

darkdreamer1

darkdreamer1

New Member
My Mum often complains to me about having my pc on for long amounts of time, and I am wondering if it is a great use of electricity.

Also I have been told that it uses mroe energy to turn it off and then restart it than keep it on for longer amoutns of tiem. Say Like, I went out for 20 mins would it eb mroe energy efficient to turn it off and restart after that time or leave it on for the 20 mins until I came to use it again.

Thanks.
 
Well be for cost effective I think to turn it off, booting doesnt really take any more power consumption than idle.
 
I'd think that it'd be better for the power anyway to put it into sleep mode... but I don't know if that's related to power up/down stress.
 
Boot up vs Idle power consumption varies enormously depending on the hardware involved. It would be extremely unusual for your boot up power consumption to be more than twice your idle consumption, and realistically it's more often in the order of 20-50% more.

So if your system takes 1 minute to boot up fully, it would (from a power consumption point of view) be worth turning it off if you'll be leaving it for more than two minutes (and that's worst case boot consumption).

The standby tip is a good one though, and you should also turn off your monitor when it's not in use. A CRT monitor can easily draw as much as an idling PC (again, that varies enormously depending on the hardware and monitor).
 
an idle computer in sleep mode takes up 99% less power than a PC that is on. ALso, I have 3 desktops running constantly on my home network plus my A/C unit is a window unit and runs off electricity. During peak times of the summer when it is super hot my bill gets up to max around 100 dollars in a month. I also have three ceiling fans running 24/7 in the summer.

On the flip side my gas bill goes down to like 8 dollars a month during the summer time. So I guess it works out.
 
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