Try These 8 Tips to Reduce the Power Consumption of Your Computer

| Published: Wednesday, August 3, 2016, 16:13 [IST]

You might be using your desktop computer a lot without knowing the amount of energy that the device actually consumes. You might have the habit of switching off the device for a long period of time without using it.

Try These 8 Tips to Reduce the Power Consumption of Your Computer

This will raise your power bill if it consumes a lot of power. In fact, there are reports that three percent of the overall electricity consumption is from the computers and the related devices. That is a lot of power used by the computers in both the homes and offices.

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An average desktop computer with a strong power supply unit has a total power usage rating between 80 to 250 watts or more. The total usage depends on the additional peripherals, hardware and graphics card installed in the computer.

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You can calculate the overall power consumption of your computer using several tools and utilities that are available. But, you need to finally take the effort to minimize the power that your computer actually consumes.

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Here we have come up with eight such tips that will help you reduce the power consumption of your computer and help you save a considerable amount on your power bill.

Turn Off Computer When Not in Use

To boot the computer faster, you can use Hibernate or Sleep instead of of shutting down the computer. In the Sleep mode, the power consumption of the computer will be low, but if it is put to Hibernate, the computer will use no power at all.

Turn the Monitor Off

You can either turn off the computer's monitor or make it enter the suspend mode. In the suspend mode, the screen will be black, but as soon as you move the mouse or hit a key, it will come back to life. There is no point in using screensavers as these will not save the power consumption in any way.

Upgrade the Hard Drive or SSD

You need to upgrade the mechanical or solid state drives as these are more efficient and faster and reduce the power consumption.

Don't Upgrade the Graphics Adapter

Until and unless you need the extra power for video editing or gaming, you shouldn't upgrade the graphics adapter that came along with the computer. If you need a video card, you can install something that will consume less power.

Replace the Hardware

The older components such as hard drives, processors, RAM, and others are less efficient. If possible, upgrade to newer components that will boost the performance as well as efficiency.

Check Power Options

In Windows computers, check Power Options under System → Control Panel. Over there, you can change the power saving settings such as how and when the computer should sleep. This will automate the low power mode.

Choose a Low Watt Version

If you don't want a very powerful computer, you can try to swap it with a model that is a low wattage version. You can try a small HTPC or media device or an HDMI stick PC.

Suspend Mode

In the BIOS, you need to check the option ACPI Suspend Type that will make sure it is set to S3 instead of S1 or S2. This setting will prevent the computer from powering components such as RAM and CPU in the sleep mode.