Is it worth turning PC off when not in use for electric cost?

[Bill the Butcher]

I was wondering if it's worth turning my PC off when not using it to save on electric bill, or does keeping it in Sleep mode not make much difference? This would also include the monitor plugged in all the time.

[Wichtelman]

you could google how much wattage your pc uses in sleep mode... roughly 5-10 watts... do the math...

[Electric Cupcake]

Yes.

Cold startups and shut downs puts a bit of wear on things, but if you're not booting up several times per day instead of ordinary starting up in the morning and shutting down at night, it's better than sleep or hibernation.

[A&A]

It depends on how long and how much energy is used.

And in the Windows power plans you can find "turn off the display after".

And Hibernation could be better than sleep or startup.

[ChickenTacos]

Whenever you are not using a powered device, you should turn it off, and, if possible, unplug it/charge the batteries.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Unless you have fast startup switched off in Windows power settings it will never actually shut down and keeps your OS in hibernation. This can cause various boot problems and errors to crop up since nothing gets properly deleted.
Fast startup is basically meaningless anyway in the age of NVME SSDs and wont affect the actual boot up time but it`s still always turned on by default in Windows power settings.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

Originally posted by Rumpelcrutchskin:

Unless you have fast startup switched off in Windows power settings it will never actually shut down and keeps your OS in hibernation. This can cause various boot problems and errors to crop up since nothing gets properly deleted.
Fast startup is basically meaningless anyway in the age of NVME SSDs and wont affect the actual boot up time but it`s still always turned on by default in Windows power settings.

Funny because every time I have seen it on this system, "fast start/fast boot" has always been off and same with that Win11 laptop.

Perhaps it is the "Power Profile" that turns it on because I have always seen it greyed out on 'High Performance Mode' (the power only mode I use).

Perhaps, I killed it in the registry long ago but I don't remember doing anything to that laptop.

[Electric Cupcake]

Fast startup is worse than worthless, since it only interferes if you dualboot.

[Bill the Butcher]

Originally posted by A&A:

It depends on how long and how much energy is used.

And in the Windows power plans you can find "turn off the display after".

And Hibernation could be better than sleep or startup.

What is Hibernation and how is it different than Sleep?

[Electric Cupcake]

Originally posted by Bill the Butcher:

Originally posted by A&A:

It depends on how long and how much energy is used.

And in the Windows power plans you can find "turn off the display after".

And Hibernation could be better than sleep or startup.

What is Hibernation and how is it different than Sleep?

There's s still a trickle of power when a system is in sleep/standy.

Hibernation mode is when it saves the system state to a hidden file and then shuts down. It can cause problems if overused, like hiberfil.sys getting corrupted, or taking up too much space, and the system always skipping the normal POST.

[andreasaspenberg575]

hibernation saves all your work on the harddrive, enabling you to cut power completely. a bad motherboard battery however might prevent the system from resuming. though there is no risk. if your system does not resume, it just starts normally instead. i personally turn off my desktops when they are not in use and use laptops most of the time.

[_I_]

hibernation sounds good on paper
til you see that the os needs to write ~8g of system ram to the drive and restore it on next boot
and never doing a clean boot again until you tell the system to restart

things in the os do get corrupted sometimes, its better to reboot daily, than keep using hibernate

seriously, how hard is it to save your work before fully shutting down the pc?

[Midnight Aurais]

Originally posted by _I_:

hibernation sounds good on paper
til you see that the os needs to write ~8g of system ram to the drive and restore it on next boot
and never doing a clean boot again until you tell the system to restart

things in the os do get corrupted sometimes, its better to reboot daily, than keep using hibernate

seriously, how hard is it to save your work before fully shutting down the pc?

that is why i enter this in cmd as admin "powercfg -h off" you can turn it back on by changing off to on in the command no hibernation is the best hibernation when you turn it off the hibernation file gets wiped do not worry if you set it to on it wil be created again

[Priest]

20 Wat per hour = 175 KW per year thats dependent on your Energy Price 60€ per year (33 cent per KW)

Or equals rough 20-60 Minutes of Playtime per day

[De Hollandse Ezel]

my pc uses in sleep mode still nearly 300w

if I look why.. well..first a lot of parts.. I have 8 sticks of ram, each stick gets power..
-my monitor also keeps drawing power (it will turn black.. it does not turn off)
while 85W is fine for a screen when on.. it does not drop much lower when standbye staying near 50w

still.. most of the draw comes from the psu... itself.
I have a corsair 1500i psu.
it has a very good energy lable.. but that lable only guarantees high efficiency at high draw..
when the draw gets very low (like when in standby) propotionally to what it can deliver.. it;s efficiency goes down the crapper.

so a system may need only 120w.. at just 8% of potential draw.. the eeficiency basicly has dropped from 99.8% at 50 load.. all the way to around 50%

meaning to deliver that 120w to the system.. the psu pulls twice that.

now 1 kwh here costs about 40 eurocent (but thats not including the energy tax)
**every citycen has a limited amount of kwh they can use each year without that tax but as you usually exceed that.. I will count the savings including it.

so than we actually get closer to 60 eurocent per kwh.

if I sleep 7 hours...(and presume I use my pc every hour I am awake which you will not)
-> than that night it will use 0.3x7 = 2.1 kwh (lets round that off to 2 kwh.. since actually my draw is just below 0.3kw(300w)

well now that means each night I not turn it off costs me 1.2 euro.
do that an entire year and thats 365x1.2 = 438 euro down the crapper.

and this dear children is why I hate on the high tdp of any gpu made after the nvidea 2000 series....

I usually pay 4 times the purchase price of a gpu in it's powerdraw over it;s lifetime.
so paying for a 4090 2200 euro instead of the 1400 euro it should cost.
is much less an issue for me.. than it having that 450w powerdraw instead of the 250w it should have

for not only does that mean each hour I use that card costs me AT LEAST 0.2kwh x 60 cent = 12 cent extra
it also means I need a bigger psu.. that whenever I am not using it.. will draw more too.. due lower efficiency..

if I presume I use a gpu for 4-5 years, and 12 hours a day on average (some days all day some days a bit less but I use my pc a lot)
than that extra 200w in tdp means I pay a whoping 2100-2600 euro extra in my powerbill..
-
which is far more than the "800 euro" it;s purchase price is increase vs the price titans used to sell for.
-
hence it's the tdp I most worry about not the purchase price

high powerdraw also makes my house unbearingly hot in summer.

[HypersleepyNaputunia]

The monitor will use 2-5 or so watts per hour
Your pc idk but it will draw some too.

You are basically running a 9 watt light bulb 24 hours a day. 240 watts per day x 30 days.

1 kilowatthour of electricity should cost idk how mich 10 to 20 cents per kwh. So you use 8 kwh a month or about $1.50