Depending on where you live, and the power tariff charges by your power supplier, you might be feeling the pinch of high electricity bills every month. You might have implemented some few changes around your house to cut down on the power bill; turning off a room when you leave the room, not opening the refrigerator door often, using electronics such as the light bulb, microwave, TV and Home Theaters among that are energy efficient.
However, most people fail to recognize that old desktop computer in their house is a real power hog. You only need to place your hands near the fan outlets for a few minutes and feel how it burns to realize just how much power the desktop computer consumes.
Power consumption is a bigger concern for those old PCs being used as home servers, media center, or video game consoles for an extended period. Modern PCs are better at power consumption than the older models. So if you can replace your old PC with a newer one, the better it will be for your wallet as far as the power bills are concerned.
How to make your PC consume less power
Disable Screensavers: Screensavers start displaying after you have not used your PC for a given time. The monitor will keep staying on with the screensavers playing, but they are not serving any purpose really; other than consuming power. Screensavers were originally meant to save your screen, to prevent still image burning into your screen; a problem with the old monitors. Most current PC monitors do not have this problem; thus, they do not need saving from still using images in motion (screensaver). Not to mention disabling screensavers will go a long way towards saving.
Put your PC in Sleep or Hibernation mode when not in use: You should not leave your PC turn on all the time. If you have to walk away from your PC but don’t want to close your current running apps and opened Windows, set the PC to sleep or hibernate. When you come back, you can resume right where you left off. While in sleep or hibernation mode, the PC uses a fraction of the power compared to when you leave it on while you were away.
Use an SSD instead of the Mechanical Hard Disk: The old mechanical hard drive is not only slower but also uses more power compared to the modern Solid-State Drive (SSD). If you can afford to upgrade to an SSD, your computer will not only run faster with an overall system performance improvement but also, your PC will become less of a power hog.
Use Hardware with Low-Power Usage: Modern hardware are increasingly becoming power-efficient. Hence, if you are replacing a PC hardware always look for the most energy-efficient hardware on the market. Say for instance you are looking for graphics cards, NVIDIA or AMD are high-end power-guzzlers. You are better off with onboard integrated graphics; although they do not offer as good graphics properties. They offer quite a dramatic power save.
The above tips are fundamental ways to make your PC consume less power. There are numerous others, but the above should be more than enough for you to realize a significant relief in your next power bill; in as far as your PC is concerned.