I was originally going to call this post “Kill A Whaat?” though after some thought I figured I’d go with something a bit safer; and less obscure.  By less power, I mean that I’m herein searching out how much power each of my common electric devices use.  In order to derive these numbers, I picked up the P3 Kill A Watt, which I just picked up from Newegg.  The device measures the amount of power that it takes to drive whatever it is you plug into it; rather simple, but incredibly useful.

Fiend that I am for data, I’ve started playing with the numbers right off the bat, and I’m interested already in what I’m seeing.

Desktop computer: Intel Core i3-530, H55 chipset

I put together a desktop in the past month or so.  I’ve kept meaning to write something up about it, though I’ll save that for another day.  My setup includes an Intel Core i3-530 processor, an Asus P7H55D-M Evo motherboard, and an Antec EarthWatts EA-380D power supply; among some other components.

The verdict?  It’s rather amazing in terms of power consumption.  The most power I was able to consume was on the order of 80W, at full load with disk access.  General use was around 50W; booting was somewhere around 60W.  The power factor was rather consistently around 0.90, which is quite good.

In sleep mode, the system consumed 1W, which is the same as with the system off with the power supply not switched off in the back.  In this off state, the power factor was down around 0.12, which gives ~8VA.  That’s not all that much power, though it’s enough that I’m going to shut my power strip off when the system is shut down.

Asus VH236H

I picked up this monitor recently, alongside the above system.  I’m rather stunned at how well it performs, for the amount of money I paid.  Sure, it’s not an IPS, 10-bit display; though it also came with no dead pixels, is 16:9, and fits on my desk pretty well.

36W operating seems to be the standard.  With a power factor of ~0.55, this gives somewhere on the order of 65VA.  In sleep mode, it cuts itself off completely: 0W consumed, which is rather impressive.

Conclusion

I’m not giving a complete list here, in part because I’m not all that excited to tell everyone about every piece of electronics that I own.  You also probably don’t give a shit about what my toaster consumes unless you have the same one, which is rather unlikely.  I will say, however, that working out the numbers can be a lot of fun.