PC's, how much power do they draw?

[Edame]

Does anyone know how much power the average PC draws these days? I know the older ones didn't require much, but with these room-heating AMDs and such, do they take a lot more?

I ask because my parents are trying to blame an increased power bill on me leaving my PC on 24/7, do you think this is likely, or is the power draw still minimal compared to other appliances?

[nips]

It depends on your power supply. If you open up your PC and look in the top left (usually) then you should see a big box with wires comming out of it. If you read how many Watts it says then that's your energy. It usually depends on your PC, if you have LOADS of fans, and a kick ass graphics card with LEDs and Cathode Tubes, you may be looking at a 400-500W power supply. Otherwise 200-300W is common.

Monitors take up energy too... so don't forget!

[vic_viper]

Just for the PC alone it'll be something along the lines of 300-500w depending on the PSU that you're using.

So its probably comparable to leaving 6 or 7 light bulbs on continuously. When you think of it that way their complaints don't sound too unreasonable.

[Valken]

If you let the monitor go into standby and have the drives power down after a short period of time then it won't draw *that* much power... in my experiece it's CRTs that suck up the most power.

[Commander Marklar]

It's about the same as having another fridge in the house. Leaving the monitor on is like having another fridge in the house and leaving the door open

[MartyG]

I got a leaflet from leccy people when I switch my gas supply to them, it showed that it cost 6p a day to run a PC, though I'm not sure when that was 24 hours or a normal working (8 hour) day.

Regards
Marty

[Edame]

I have my monitor set to power down after about 10 mins, but I don't know about the HDD. It does seem to take a moment for it to get back up to speed after long periods of inactivity.

Does anyone else leave their PC on all the time?

[Adrock]

I always leave mine on all day and its fine. If your PSU is say 350w it doesnt use 350w all the time, thats the maximum capacity for it.