Porphyrogenitus
Junior Member
- Oct 12, 2011
- 113
- 72
If your time is worth more than $1.91/hr you're losing money shutting down your PC each night
Back in the stone ages I remember reading about this in PC Magazine. Since time is money, wasting time each day switching tasks and restarting applications is costing you hundreds or thousands a year. It's even more true today, with reduced power consumption and laptop/tablets being more commonplace. Run the numbers for yourself, all you need is a little data:
C[SUB]kWh [/SUB]= Cost / kilowatt hour. Check your bill. In my case its $.127/kWh, yours is similar.
P[SUB]kWatts[/SUB] = Hourly power consumption in kilowatts. We're not counting monitors: these are easy to turn off. Most PC power supplies are .6kw's, but you aren't capping them out 24/7. My power supply is 1kw but everything isn't running at 100% when you're away at night unless you just like running infinite loops while you sleep. .350 is a safe estimate for me, probably .250-.3 for average users.
T[SUB]AFK[/SUB] = Hours away from keyboard between the time you stop working and when you come back to the office. For me, 12.
H[SUB]End[/SUB] = Hours you spend saving, closing programs, "getting ready to shut down tonight" etc. Could do minutes but lets not complicate things. I'll say .1.
H[SUB]Start[/SUB] = Hours it takes you to get restarted every day. Here is where it adds up:
You're spending a serious amount of time here. I'll say .18 hours here for myself, but that is probably far too low.
Now crunch the numbers:
C[SUB]kWh[/SUB]*P[SUB]kWatts[/SUB] * T[SUB]AFK[/SUB] = Total cost of running your PC all night
C[SUB]kWh[/SUB]*P[SUB]kWatts[/SUB] * T[SUB]AFK [/SUB]/ (H[SUB]End + [/SUB]H[SUB]Start[/SUB]) = Hourly earning rate where its no longer worth it to shut down.
$.127 * .350 * 12/ (.1 + .18) = $1.91/hr
Of course these numbers are further compounded if you have employees. Remember this next time the wife gets mad for 'wasting money'
Back in the stone ages I remember reading about this in PC Magazine. Since time is money, wasting time each day switching tasks and restarting applications is costing you hundreds or thousands a year. It's even more true today, with reduced power consumption and laptop/tablets being more commonplace. Run the numbers for yourself, all you need is a little data:
C[SUB]kWh [/SUB]= Cost / kilowatt hour. Check your bill. In my case its $.127/kWh, yours is similar.
P[SUB]kWatts[/SUB] = Hourly power consumption in kilowatts. We're not counting monitors: these are easy to turn off. Most PC power supplies are .6kw's, but you aren't capping them out 24/7. My power supply is 1kw but everything isn't running at 100% when you're away at night unless you just like running infinite loops while you sleep. .350 is a safe estimate for me, probably .250-.3 for average users.
T[SUB]AFK[/SUB] = Hours away from keyboard between the time you stop working and when you come back to the office. For me, 12.
H[SUB]End[/SUB] = Hours you spend saving, closing programs, "getting ready to shut down tonight" etc. Could do minutes but lets not complicate things. I'll say .1.
H[SUB]Start[/SUB] = Hours it takes you to get restarted every day. Here is where it adds up:
- Unless you have a solid state drive you're looking at 3-5 minutes for a full boot (BIOS, windows loading, logging in, and waiting for all your junk to start up).
- You have to remember where you were, and manually re-open each program and the files within it (also carries a small risk of data loss).
- Open cloud services, log in, etc.
- "Checking" things like email, Skype, BHW, PayPal, etc. that you normally have open all day. Each usually requires a login.
You're spending a serious amount of time here. I'll say .18 hours here for myself, but that is probably far too low.
Now crunch the numbers:
C[SUB]kWh[/SUB]*P[SUB]kWatts[/SUB] * T[SUB]AFK[/SUB] = Total cost of running your PC all night
C[SUB]kWh[/SUB]*P[SUB]kWatts[/SUB] * T[SUB]AFK [/SUB]/ (H[SUB]End + [/SUB]H[SUB]Start[/SUB]) = Hourly earning rate where its no longer worth it to shut down.
$.127 * .350 * 12/ (.1 + .18) = $1.91/hr
Of course these numbers are further compounded if you have employees. Remember this next time the wife gets mad for 'wasting money'
