Approx. standby power consumption

[Drizzt]

Hi.

If someone is willing to give some opinion...I've got an old rig with a Duron 1000, Radeon 7200 AIW, 3 HD and a DVD burner.

Now, simply said: how many W should it consume in standby? I've set it up to shut down all the fans and HD every time it goes in standby, and monitor is not a problem (It's a TV, I shut it off whenever I don't need it...)

Are there any official figures?

[ZokesPro]

Welcome back! It's been a while!

[Dilitante1]

what is the motherboard? is it energy star compliant?

[az]

My guess (!!) would be around 35 W. But I don't really know. Maybe you can get a power meter from your local power company - many communities lend those out so citizens can lower their energy consumption.

Welcome Back

[dZeus]

only the RAM and some stuff on the mobo is consuming power in S3 standby (like USB if you use wake on USB, LAN when WOL, etc). Afaik even the CPU is a near to complete 'off' state in S3 standby.

My machines use (measured at the power plug):
10 W for my P4 2.8 with 2x512 PC3200 DDR-SDRAM (with wake on USB, USB keyboard and mouse)
0.5 W for my P3@933 with 2x128MB PC133 SDRAM (without wake on USB and LAN enabled)

[Mikko]

Here is my system:

http://www.matroxrulez.net/pics/desktop.jpg

It'll take ~27 watts, if I turn everything off.
It'll take ~31 watts, if I keep my monitors in a standby mode (power saving mode).

[Greebe]

Find a REAL electrician and see if he'll measure it for you. Adding up what it should be and what it really is are two different things.

It's like going on a game show and gettng to pick what's behind door #1, #2 and #3. All have a car behind it, but only one is a REAL car.

Or go out and buy an AC clamp meter. Better yet get an AC/DC clamp meter, around here they can be had for ~$50 at your local Sears store.

[Dr Mordrid]

Put it in hibernation if your rig supports it. The current state will be saved & the system shut down. Takes a very short time to re-start.

[Paddy]

If you have a multimeter you can get a tool to measure the amperage by induction. All you need is to expose one of the live wires. I found the best way was to plug everything that you want to measure into an extension cable and then cut the shielding and isolate the live wire. You place the meter around the wire and it gives you a reading in amps.

Amps x volts (140 there??) = watts
watts x 24 / 1000 = kilowatt hours per day.
Then you just need to see how much you are paying for a unit.

I tried to calculate mine out and I was way off.

A quick google shows them for under 20USD, but I'm sure you could get a multimeter attachment for less.



Paddy.

[az]

Why do you guys want to make things more complicated than they need to be?

Get something like this: and plug your computer into it. Done.

[Paddy]

[Fat Tone]

Paddy - try again with something like what az posted - I got one from Maplin for about £15. I think you'll get a very different answer to your running costs as there are lots of ways to vary the reading you'll get through induction.

(Using mine I found the combined standby power of my LCD TV, VHS, cable box, HTPC and AV amp & powered sub to be 60W Now I try to remember to turn it off over night)

[Drizzt]

Thanks all for the comments
I suppose I will not care too much for power consumption, then. I will wire the PC so that it will goes in suspended mode late at night and resume in the morning, and to stay in S3 standby for the rest of the day.

I use an avg 3200 kw a year, so I suppose 40-80 kw more will not be too much a trouble.

[Drizzt]

Uh, thanks all for the welcome back.

Guess what...I've never really gone away, simply too busy for writing and was just watching from time to time.
Couple life is a mess for spare time, but it's still a pleasure