How much is this costing?

[Rubber Bullets]

Hi,

I have just been given an old Pentium III 633Mhz computer that I have decided to run as a server. It has WinXP on it, and just the server software nothing else.

It has a number of instances of svchost.exe running, and one of them (user name LOCAL SERVICE) is using a fairly constant 80% of the CPU usage. Total CPU usage is not much more.

The total max power usage of the PC is roughly 155W according to one of the online calculators, and so I am concerned that this PC is actually costing far more to run than I would have thought. Potentially over 120W which would be over £60 per year and I really don't want to add £5 per month to our electric bill.

Any thoughts?

RB

 

[Rubber Bullets]

OK, with a bit of research I have found that I had a service called SSDP Discovery trying to start and using up CPU time. I have disabled this and now the usage has returned to 1-4% which makes me much happier.

However to keep my other half happy I still need to know how much this box will cost to run basically 24/7. I know it won't be the full 155W but is there anyway to guesstimate without a proper meter?

Thanks

RB

 

[Kryten]

When i was working in student accommodation, a common whinge when peoples boilers broke down was "the temporary electric heating was far more expensive to run : please compensate us".
We spoke to our contacts at Powergen who kindly pointed us at a section of their site that allows you to work out the exact costings of running items when you have the wattage details.

This was ideal because running 5 x modern convector heaters was actually cheaper than running gas central heating on a modern energy saving boiler
The retards still didn't believe it

- Just had a look and I can no longer find this section of the site - just some common details for household appliances.
Look for an electric bill, you'll be able to work out how much a kwh (kilowatt hour) is to a unit (or vice versa, i cant remember which way it goes round).

 

[Clown]

What servers are you running?

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Thanks Kryten,

I know that a 100W lightbulb would cost roughly £60 a year to run 24/7. What I'd like to know is roughly how much my PC is using, given that it won't be anywhere near the 155W max that on online calculator estimated.

For instance the optical and floppy drives are not used at all. Only one of the HDDs has anything on it, and is hardly ticking over most of the time. The CPU is ticking over at 1-3% still since I found that solution. it's probably only the 23W or whatever is estimated for the mobo that is constant.

If so that would add about £15 per month to the electric bill, and I can accept that. But is this a reasonable estimate?

Clown,

are you asking what server software?

I only have Netgear Media server running. The only point of this box at the moment is to have always on access for my Netgear MP101. It saves me switching on my main PC every time.

I will also probably plug one of my printers into it so that I can print from my laptop or Sharon's computer without switching the main one on as well.

RB

 

[Clown]

Yeah I was just curious. I don't really know what to do with my server other than host files

 

[Danya]

It won't be using just 25W even while idle. The CPU will use a bit of power (though P3s are only about 25W flat out), as will the HDD and any pci cards (such as the NIC). Call it about 50W plus PSU inefficiency gives 65W. 65W 24/7 is 1.56 KW/h per day, at 7p per KW/h that's about £40 per year to run.

Without a meter it's all a bit of a rough estimate though.

 

[Rubber Bullets]

Thanks Danya, though that was a bit higher than I'd hoped, but that sort of rough guess was exactly what I wanted.

RB

 

[Tom]

You look at your leccy bill, and find the unit cost of a KWh (kilo watt hour). This tells you how much it costs to run a 1000W device for 1 hour, and should be around £0.07 - £0.10 or so.

You then work out your computer consumption of power as a percentage of a KWh, which in this case is 15.5%

You then determine what 15.5% of a unit of electricty costs. This will be specific to your electricity supplier, but at £0.08 per unit the cost of runnign your computer, per hour, is £0.0124


If you want to determine precisely how much power your computer consumes at any one time, you need to connect an ammeter in series with the live (for safety) connection out of the 13A mains plug, measure the amps drawn, and calculate the power consumption using Power = Volts x Current