PSA - PC power usage

[Brother D]

We move about and out of the country for months at a time and I've been struggling to determine why my electricity bill is $160 a month for an empty flat (daily usage of +15kwh)

Turns out after installing an energy meter in the office, my workstation sat just at idle is eating 350watts! (HP Z800, 80gb, dual zeons, 2Tb, Radeon RX5700)

I know back in the day people said not to switch on and off PCs, but I think that's going to have to change with energy prices as they are...

[toohuge]

Haha - I have the same issue with my workstation (also dual Xeon of the same era) and my monitor for that fact haha

It’s been a consideration for me since my parents have solar installed and a meter that measures draw vs production, they couldn’t work out why there was a circa 600w draw on the home until my machine was switched off.

I only have my computer turned on when I need it though - partly because when it’s all turned on it’s so hot!

[xeny]

Brother D said:

Turns out after installing an energy meter in the office, my workstation sat just at idle is eating 350watts! (HP Z800, 80gb, dual zeons, 2Tb, Radeon RX5700)

Have a look if speedstep and power management for the CPUs is configured properly - I've got a Dual Xeon of that era (Dell T5500) and it idles at comfortably under 200W. If nothing else it makes the office more pleasant in the summer.

edit - by your numbers, that PC is only responsible for just over half the flat's energy draw though.

Edited by xeny on Thursday 17th March 07:04

[mmm-five]

My gaming PC (5800x, 3080Ti, 4TB Ironwolf HDD, 6 x m.2 SSDs - and RGB fans/lighting) sits at less than 150w at idle.

But I still switch it off when I know it's not going to be used for more than an hour.

[Lucas Ayde]

I only turn my main PC on (Ryzen 5900x and 3070) when I want to game on it (including streaming games to VR headset or TV) or run handbrake for some video re-encoding.

For the rest of the time, I have a Surface Go tablet that is docked and always on - I use it for regular PC use (anything web based, remote server access etc) as it draws so little power and is good enough for simple tasks.

I have GeForce Now so I am often just starting up a streaming game on my Surface (for PC gaming) or NVidia Shield (for console type gaming on the TV) in preference to firing up the main PC. For VR stuff there are a lot of games that run natively on the headset so no PC needed for those.

[Brother D]

xeny said:

Brother D said:

Turns out after installing an energy meter in the office, my workstation sat just at idle is eating 350watts! (HP Z800, 80gb, dual zeons, 2Tb, Radeon RX5700)

Have a look if speedstep and power management for the CPUs is configured properly - I've got a Dual Xeon of that era (Dell T5500) and it idles at comfortably under 200W. If nothing else it makes the office more pleasant in the summer.

edit - by your numbers, that PC is only responsible for just over half the flat's energy draw though.

Edited by xeny on Thursday 17th March 07:04

Thanks I'll give that a try - it's completly silent as it happens. The other half of power usage is probably down to switches, routers, cameras, NAS, fridge and all the TVs being on standby. Going to be a bit more conscientious about shutting everything down when we leave going forward!

[Trustmeimadoctor]

The only issue the not powering off thing was to solve was spinning disks in Servers mainly that could warp over time. No issue in a workstation or desktop especially with ssd

[geeks]

Brother D said:

xeny said:

Brother D said:

Turns out after installing an energy meter in the office, my workstation sat just at idle is eating 350watts! (HP Z800, 80gb, dual zeons, 2Tb, Radeon RX5700)

Have a look if speedstep and power management for the CPUs is configured properly - I've got a Dual Xeon of that era (Dell T5500) and it idles at comfortably under 200W. If nothing else it makes the office more pleasant in the summer.

edit - by your numbers, that PC is only responsible for just over half the flat's energy draw though.

Edited by xeny on Thursday 17th March 07:04

Thanks I'll give that a try - it's completly silent as it happens. The other half of power usage is probably down to switches, routers, cameras, NAS, fridge and all the TVs being on standby. Going to be a bit more conscientious about shutting everything down when we leave going forward!

Yeah as a user of a similar (again) era Dell T7500 I can report similar low power draw. Just as a heads up smart plugs are very good for this kind of thing, will tell you what power each plug is pulling but also allow you to report switch off anything you might have forgotten too. Also can be used to setup alerts when something is drawing power when it shouldn't.

[Brother D]

geeks said:

Yeah as a user of a similar (again) era Dell T7500 I can report similar low power draw. Just as a heads up smart plugs are very good for this kind of thing, will tell you what power each plug is pulling but also allow you to report switch off anything you might have forgotten too. Also can be used to setup alerts when something is drawing power when it shouldn't.

Pretty much everything is on a smart switch in the flat - which ones do you use that have power draw level monitoring? Pretty sure the 5-plugs-for-$20 smart plugs I have don't monitor power : )


Also another top tip - make sure the primary router is not powered via a smart plug and switch off the 'All Home' device group when you are 1500 miles away...