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View Full Version : Interesting Kill-A-Watt numbers


CBRworm
08-16-2007, 05:06 PM
Maybe not, but I thought they were interesting.

I was a little surprised at the low wattage my PC's pulled through the Kill-A-Watt.

My main PC rarely breaks the 500 watt mark - that is with the HD2900 & E6600 & 7 hard drives & Antec TPQ running TAT (on one core) and 3dmark together. Everything is overclocked. It idles in the high 160's with the drives spun down.

My media server machine (with an X850 PE, Pent D 950 & 8 HD's & X-1000) idles around 200 watts with all the drives spun down. It gets up to about 400 watts running 3dmark with the drives all spinning. Spinning all the drives up and down only makes about a 40 watt difference. I was surprised that this machine didn't use more power - it is a pre speedstep 950, and the hard drives are 7 old sata-I 250gb drives (4 WD RE series and 3 Hitachi deskstars) that I bought when they first became available and one old raptor 74.

My HTPC pulls 200 watts under load with an X1950XTX & E6550 & Antec PS that came with the case.

My workout room PC pulls a whopping 84 watts. It is an intel 915 chipset w/ a 540j and onboard video.

Those were not the interesting numbers though. I have replaced a lot of parts to get these machines to be more efficient, and cooler running, although I guess I could run each of my machines just fine on a 500 watt or smaller PSU.

What was interesting to me is that my TV set pulls 130 watts when it is turned off!?!?!?

I know there is a lot of circuitry running inside the TV all the time, there are a handful of different fans that spin up and down 24 hours a day - but 130 watts? It is an older Mitsubishi DLP. The wattage varied a bit during the day with the TV off, never dropping below 110 watts. If I unplug the TV it loses some of it's settings - so I have to leave it plugged in.

My network closet which has a cable modem, a wireless router, a network hub, a hardware firewall and a ups draws about 60 watts full time.


It makes all the effort I put into making other things efficient seem like a waste of time.

Kvar
08-16-2007, 09:16 PM
Maybe not, but I thought they were interesting.

I was a little surprised at the low wattage my PC's pulled through the Kill-A-Watt.

My main PC rarely breaks the 500 watt mark - that is with the HD2900 & E6600 & 7 hard drives & Antec TPQ running TAT (on one core) and 3dmark together. Everything is overclocked. It idles in the high 160's with the drives spun down.

My media server machine (with an X850 PE, Pent D 950 & 8 HD's & X-1000) idles around 200 watts with all the drives spun down. It gets up to about 400 watts running 3dmark with the drives all spinning. Spinning all the drives up and down only makes about a 40 watt difference. I was surprised that this machine didn't use more power - it is a pre speedstep 950, and the hard drives are 7 old sata-I 250gb drives (4 WD RE series and 3 Hitachi deskstars) that I bought when they first became available and one old raptor 74.

My HTPC pulls 200 watts under load with an X1950XTX & E6550 & Antec PS that came with the case.

My workout room PC pulls a whopping 84 watts. It is an intel 915 chipset w/ a 540j and onboard video.

Those were not the interesting numbers though. I have replaced a lot of parts to get these machines to be more efficient, and cooler running, although I guess I could run each of my machines just fine on a 500 watt or smaller PSU.

You'll usually get the highest efficiency from a PSU at 25-50%. It often goes down about 5% at 100% load. So, the size should be about twice that of 0.8*normal state (not stressed, but with all drives spinning) power

I know there is a lot of circuitry running inside the TV all the time, there are a handful of different fans that spin up and down 24 hours a day - but 130 watts? It is an older Mitsubishi DLP. The wattage varied a bit during the day with the TV off, never dropping below 110 watts. If I unplug the TV it loses some of it's settings - so I have to leave it plugged in.

Fans spinning up frequently does seem to show it's in fact drawing that kind of power. What model and how old is the TV? Feel for heat to. If it was pulling 130W, it would certainly feel quite warm in the area.

Oklahoma Wolf
08-16-2007, 09:19 PM
What was interesting to me is that my TV set pulls 130 watts when it is turned off!?!?!?

Try a DTH satellite receiver... most of them have maybe 10W difference between on and off, due to the need to keep the LNB up 24/7 to receive subscription/firmware updates.

My Starchoice receivers never get turned off. There's virtually no point to doing so.