Silkroad Online Forums

Well I'm in that whole phase of trying to convince my parents to let me leave my computer on while I'm asleep at night and at school so I can stall. They say it makes the electricity bill go up but I know it doesn't use that much energy. I'm trying to find out if there is a program that will measure how many watt hours my computer is using.

1 period of your washing machine (it's like an hour or so) = your computer being on for 2 days straight

a site I found on the internet said a computer uses about 2.42 kilowatt hours per day when left on all day and price per killowatt hour in georgia last year was 9.07 cents so it costs almost 7 bucks to run my computer all the time.

also my dad says that the heat that my computer puts out cost more money to cool down the house, he rarely ever turns on the air conditioner anyways cuz hes stupid like that but does anyone know how big of an affect a computer would have on the cost of cooling a house/room?

wow... is electricity that expensive? In most rather wealthy countries here in South America water and electrivity must be as cheap as possible.

appaerntly, I didn't think that was very expensive.

It is, here that amount is around 20-30 cents or so, I'm really not sure though. Taxes free, the way it should be

lol without taxes we/you would have no governmet

My dad hardly ever uses AC either
And I can never stall because I play SRO on my dads laptop *cause it's way better then our other computers* and he hates finding me playing it or having it left on

I don't really remember the term but there's something called Need vs Luxury, and I'm not sure in which category electricity is but water is in the "need" category. They have plans to make it free for those in the low economical social class

lol money is a necessity too, unless your self-sustained its a necessity.


but back to the subject, any programs that measure kWh usage?

Call a handy man or whatever they're called there's a special device for it but no software that's for sure (or afaik).


Off topic now: tv, computer, extra lighting, AC, etc = luxury

I believe when doing energy consumption reviews, 3dguru uses a special plug. It plugs into the wall and then you plug your plug into it, measures the power used by the devices plugged into it. Sounds perfect for what you need.

yea I found things that you can plug into a socket to measure energy usage but spending 20 bucks to prove to my parents that it doesnt use that much money really isn't worth it

and if you want to talk about luxuries and stuff you can pm me, or aim at HeilsAdvocate or msn at heilsadvocate@hotmail.com

V=IR

the older models waste more energy now a days processors are becoming energy efficiency i remember reading that some where and i think its the intel core 2 extreme and intel 2 core dual save more energy

http://www.intel.com/ or u can see how it works better at http://www.dell.com then click on the left where it says HARD CORE QUAD CORE
i have pentium D

Yeah they do, look at spec sheets, Intel's are about half the power consumption as a lower speed ADM CPU. But PC power consumption is different on every machine, obviously a budget Dell wont use as much as a hardcore gaming rig with 4 hard drives, Intel extreme, and 3 GPUs. Get a wall plug meter, it will tell how much power it is drawing. Most PC builders use them.

Turn everything else in your house off and watch your power meter...

Unfortunately there is no way an application on your computer can tell you how much power it is currently consuming. The way you can find out your actual usage is from an external device such as a "Kill A Watt". A normal computer and monitor use about as much electricity as a TV... meaning about 180-250 kilowatts depending on how big your monitor is and how bright you have it set, and what processor and video card you have.

Many computers not only generate a significant amount of heat, but also use fans to circulate air to cool them. What that means is... over time they aren't so much cooling the computer as they are heating up your room. It may seem insignificant, but depending on MANY factors, like where your computer is located, how well ventilated it is, where the thermostat is for your A/C, what temperature it's set to turn on at, etc, etc, etc... you can cause your A/C to run much more often simply by turning on the computer and letting it run for a few hours. This is bad because the A/C uses 10-20 TIMES MORE POWER than the computer, which can really increase the overall cost of running the computer for extended periods of time.

But besides satisfying your scientific curiosity, you may want to just do what your parents ask. In the end, if the reason you want to run SRO 24/7 is for stalling your drops... I would say it's totally not worth it. Your parents aren't looking for proof that it's cheap to run the computer all the time... they're looking for you to just do what they say and have faith that they know what's best. They probably don't have a money tree growing in the back yard and don't like to see something like an unattended computer slowly drain their bank account dry. In the long run, you'll be better off if you stop trying to show them how smart you are by using scientific reasoning and calculations to try to prove something they don't want to hear and show them how smart you are by accepting their answers for what they are without debate.

Not the answer you want to hear, I know. I can tell you there's more to be gained by giving in to your parents than trying to prove your point over something like this.

was about to say that too

One thing wrong with that, least i saw...would take a long time for the heat from your computer to raise the ambient of your room, with a AC its pretty much non existent. Least in my mind. But ive always been one to fight for what i think.

7 bucks a day or what? that sucks for you . i get to keep my comp on for like a week and my parents dont care , they say they'd rather spend the money then waste time waiting for the comp to boot up =.=

CO2 emissions

dont keep it on 24/7

I think you messed up your calculation. It should be 9.07 x 2.42 = 22 cents a day.

2.42 kWh is basically a 100 Watt device on for 24 hours. You can turn your screen off, run sro in background and use something like RMClock to turn your cpu speed to the minimum to bring down your energy consumption.

You shouldn't be concerned about the cost of electricity, but the general wear and tear of your computer by leaving it on so much. Thats whats gonna cost you.