Ho ho ho now I have a wattmeter

Monday, 22 August 2005  |  simon edwards

I recently moved into my new house, which also means that I have to pay for electricity directly. Wanting to do know how much power things are really using in the computer room, I went out and bought a wattmeter. It measure power use at the wall. I thought that other people might be interested in seeing some "real world" measured values.

I measured energy use at the wall with the device idle and also when turned off but plugged in.

  • Athlon 64 3000+, 512Mb, 1 HDD, CD/DVD etc drive, low end passively cooled gfx card, NIC. idle/on: 55W, off: 10W
  • "Shuttle", Athon 2800+, 512Mb, 1 HDD, optical drive, high end ATI gfx card, USB sound card. on: 102W, off: 15W
  • Athlon ~1600 (underclocked), 512Mb, 2 HDD, CD burner, NIC. idle/on: 32W, off: 15W
  • LCD monitor 17 inch, NEC LCD1701. on: 41W, off: 8W
  • LCD monitor 17 inch, Samsung SyncMaster 172v. on: 26W, off: 8W
  • Printer, HP Deskjet 930C, idle: 11W, off: 10W
  • Scanner, HP scanjet??. idle: 15W
  • E-tech 5 port switch. idle: 11W
  • Very old 16 port hub (retired). idle: 25W
  • Cordless digital phone. on: 8W

It appears that the art of implementing an on/off switch that actually turns the device off is dying out. I'm now turning peripherals and other junk off at the wall using a powerboard with a real switch. And also trying to turn the Shuttle off when GF doesn't need it.