On Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 9:36 AM, James <[email protected]> wrote: <SNIP> > > Amp meters are less than $50 USD. They clamp around the > power cord, or any wires inside the computer you can fit > the "clamp" around.
<SNIP> > > hth, > James > > I haven't read this thread but I do use one of these which costs less than $20: http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU/ref=pd_sim_hi_1 Personally I think CPU power consumption is a red herring without including the power consumed by the rest of the box: MB power? Hard drive power? Hard disk power GPU power? DRAM power? The 5 above can easily become the dominant power hogs. I use an Intel i7 980X 6-core hyper-threaded CPU, so that's 12 CPUs in top, which burns _lots_ of power, but I suspect it's not the biggest power consumer when compared to the total of the 6 500GB 7200 RPM hard drives I have in the box. WRT to money spent to run a machine I hope someone stated earlier than this that it's the whole system that matters and not just the CPU. Cheers, Mark
