Monitor your system and save money with a "Kill A Watt" electricity meter

[John Doe]

Besides its main use for ordinary people, measuring household
device power usage...

For $20 US you can see how much electricity your computer is using
at all times. You might notice that switching from a game to the
desktop reduces consumption by 60 W (that will vary depending on
your system). Forget about guessing whether you need better
cooling... When changing your CPU or video card clock speed
settings, you can see any difference in power consumption. Forget
about guessing about your power supply needs... Instead of using
some grossly inaccurate online power supply calculator, you can
use the meter to determine your real power requirements, and
instead of buying a ridiculously overpowered supply, you could
easily save the cost of the meter.

I know some people are not as interested in monitoring stuff, but
this thing looks like it is fun enough to get mounted very close
to my monitor to be easily visible at all times.

Disclaimer: I could not care less about the company that makes
them. If you know of a competing product, feel free to mention it.

 

[John Doe]

And if you're really curious you can check on different
appliances to see how much power they are using when you think
you've turned them "off".

My surge suppressor, 2.1 Speaker system, and voltage regulator use
40 W when the computer is completely off. So now I hit the voltage
regulator and the surge suppressor switches at night after turning
off the computer. Most other household things seem to be okay. If
I am not mistaken, recharging AA batteries costs about $.01 US
(one penny) per charge. That is an old question that needed
answering, someday I will investigate that and other stuff
further.

Like switching to the desktop from a fullscreen game, minimizing a
windowed (maybe DirectX or whatever) game saves a significant
amount of wattage. It might not be a big deal, but minimizing a
window is very easy to do.

The insides of the device (made in China) look okay. The LCD
module circuit board has a very small surface mount resistor
obviously done by machine. The rest of it is typical handmade
stuff. There are about six (blue) precision resistors, four are
small 1/8 or 1/10 watt. About four transistors, a .2 W 250 V fuse,
one large wattage resistor, some ordinary diodes, and some large
box component. The device gets in the way of a typical outlet, it
covers both sockets. After considering buying a short extension,
instead I grabbed a spare power cord and soldered about 2 feet of
it to the meter. That requires a soldering iron and maybe a rotary
tool to shape the prongs before soldering. Added insulation and
strain relief with hot melt glue to where the power cord meets the
meter. It is now situated near my monitor.