Power supply ratings are their maximum output they are capable of.
Computer power supplies are going to be oversized (if the computer was
built right) otherwise they wouldn't last for very long and would run
very hot. Computers, especially modern ones, power usage is going to
vary wildly from one second to the next based on it's load and what's
connected to it. If your system is just sitting there, on, doing
nothing, it will likely be under 100watts, especially if the monitor is
off, asleep or non-existent. Servers will tend to draw more, because
they have a lot more fans, hard drives, and power profiles that don't
allow for them throttle as much.
Even if you do have a system that only uses 50 watts normally, I still
recommend getting something low power like a raspberry pi to serve your
house because even if you have to buy the PI and the existing computer
is free, the PI will quickly pay for itself and after that it's almost
free to run it... and a lot more quiet and you also don't have to pay
for your air conditioner to cool off the room that your higher power
computer heated up which is also a very real cost that hasn't really
been mentioned yet.
I had to argue with an electrician about power supply sizes when I build
a computer lab with custom built computers with massively oversized
power supplies. He went around adding out all the wattage ratings of
the power supplies and decided that my 30 computer lab would require a
minimum of 15 circuits in order to not pop breakers. I never could
convince him that I was right, and that the breakers wouldn't pop and he
finally did want I asked him to do which was to add 4 circuits, which we
never has any problems with.
Brian Cluff
On 7/23/21 10:22 AM, Keith Smith via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>
> Based on what we have been discussing I assume my 400 watt power
> supply may be drawing much less power based on actual usage. Therefore
> maybe my computer might only be using 60 watts... making the cost lower.
>
> Your thoughts.
>
>
>
> On 2021-07-22 21:39, Mike Bushroe via PLUG-discuss wrote:
>> I usually use a mental rule of thumb that for every watt of 24/7/365
>> power consumption costs about $1 per year. Obviously this is failing
>> as electric rates keep going up. So to first order of magnitude a 100
>> watt server would cost around $100 a year, but if the server was using
>> the whole 400 watts it would cost more like $400 a year.
>>
>>>> If my home web server is using 100 watts an hour that mean 100
>> watts *>> 30 days * 24 hours or 72K watts.
>>>>
>>>> I'm thinking 72 * .1085 = $7.81 a month.
>>
>> KINDNESS
>>
>> is most VALUABLE when it is GIVEN AWAY for
>>
>> FREE
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