Hey guys, just moved into a new bedsit and electric's on the meter! Currently running a 920 D0 @ 3.4Ghz, RIII Gene, 6gb G-Skill Trident ram, 2 HDD's, GTX 460 OC 1gb, 60gb SSD. Was wondering, if going to sandybridge would be worth it on the leccy bill? mainly switching mobo/cpu/ram. any tips, please let me know!
you will have most likely moved house before your costs even break even. i have a 920 @ 4Ghz with a 4870 and my electrics only about £30-50/month IMO not worth it the savings are far too small. EDIT - theres far more power consuming things in the house. lights - change to energy savers washing mahcine - use it less if poss - 2000W + manual washing up dish washer is 1500W+ hell mine spotlights consume 50W a piece and i have 12 in the kitchen !!!! really need to change those bad boys
How much do you run your machine? Do you do folding? Does it sleep most of the day? Is it off most of the day? Your setup at idle probably uses about 130-150w, folding probably around 180-200w and gaming hard probably 250-300w. Just moving the mobo/cpu/ram to SB quad core would probably save you about 10-20w at idle and maybe 30-40w gaming or folding (its 1 less memory stick that consumes around 1-2w at idle and 7-10w under heavy memory use and the CPU itself will likely save around 10w at idle and 20-30w under heavy use). Of course if you went an H67 board and dropped the GTX460 you'd probably save another 15w at idle and 60-80w gaming...but you also wouldn't be able to play very decent games. Frankly, 10-20w at idle and 30-40w hitting the CPU/memory hard is nice, but it isn't all that much either. If the computer was on and idling 24/7 depending on your electricity rates (assuming about £.12 a kw/hr) it probably wouldn't save you more than about £20 a year. If you do lots of folding it might save you around £40 a year. Not really all that much. Now if your electric rates are really high where you are, you might save more. Just multiply your expected electrical load, times 9, times your eletric rate in kw/hrs and that gets your annual cost if you have the machine on 24/7 under that kind of load. If you only use your machine for gaming, surfing, some encoding, etc for a few hours each day it isn't really much of a consideration. I am super green and all, but just using a couple of CFLs instead of incandescents in your place is likely to save you more on your eletric bill.
I have a i5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz and a GTX 460 1Gb @ 800Mhz. Only 1 boot drive as well and 8Gb RAM (2 Dimms) PC draws 100w idle and 250w when folding, sits between 180-220w when gaming. Honestly, its probably not worth it as you will only be saving 20-30w per hour, about 0.2-0.3p. Stick with what you have unless you have the upgrading twitch
Not worth it. But here are some tricks to save power on your computer: > Put your computer to sleep when away, and set to go to sleep after 30min or so, in the case you forget. OR turn it off. > Set your computer to Balance power profile (Vista and Win7 only) > I can help you reduce your GPU power consumption, with a in development software I am working on, where it monitors what you run, and based on what you run, if it detects it's a software that uses the GPU, it set your GPU to normal speed set by the manufacture (or wtv speed you want, you define it), and when not using any GPU demanding software, force the GPU at minimum speed. It for Windows Vista and 7 only at the moment. When it runs, it looks like that when you pop-up the panel: If you are interested, or anyone here is interested just PM me, and I'll provide you with a technical preview version (beta, solid, but missing features which are marked to be not working). It was designed for both laptop and desktop systems, powered (for now) Nvidia GPU's. But to save truely power... look somewhere else.
