HP Laptop, how to determine how many watts it uses?

[favelle75]

I have an HP Pavilion G6 with a Radeon 6520 GPU.  It gets between 30-40Mhash/s so I have it running just for kicks.  But I wonder how much power its sucking down....it could possibly be COSTING me money?  How do I find out?

[crazyates]

You can either use a Kill-a-wall, and monitor it's draw from the wall.

If you don't have that, look at the power brick. It will give you an output rating, usually something like "12V @ 2.9A" or "19V @ 3.5A", which would be 35W and 65W, respectively. These are the max numbers for your power brick, so you know you won't draw more than those numbers.

[favelle75]

Cool!  Thanks crazy! Power brick says 65W.  So even at max, I am running about 1.5KWh per day. I pay ~ $0.07 for a KWh so it costs me around 10 cents to run the laptop. At 30Mhash/s minimum, am I still making $$?

[crazyates]

your laptop won't suck more power than a standard light bulb

You sure about that? Some of those laptops come with a 95W charger, and can pull some surprising numbers.

[ISAWHIM]

Simple way is to look at the power-adaptor... It provides the power, and thus, indicates the power-rating. (Assume it runs at 90% consumption, when mining. 100% if you kill the charger.)

EG, if the output says 14v @ 20A then it is 14vx20A=280W... Then add 15% to that wattage, as most wall-supplies are 15% inefficient. So, at the wall you will see about 260-300W consumed, to produce 200-280W of output power. (Remember, you battery is charging also, which consumes MORE when it is in a charge-state, and less when resting.)

You can provide more "usable power" by blacking-out your screen, turning off the brightness/backlight, shutting-down "indexing services", turning off "defrag services", disabling blue-tooth, cameras, sound, switching to lower resolution or the output-port, etc... Leaves you with more available power for hashing... but if you are not making over 300MHs, then you are paying to hash, as that is roughly about equal to the power you are using to hash. That is ONLY if you cash-in those coins, which takes-away more value from fees and your time to cash them in... all $3.00 a month.

[ISAWHIM]

your laptop won't suck more power than a standard light bulb

There is no such thing as a "standard" lightbulb...

Perhaps your standard is 60W, mine is about 7W (florescent)... or my screen is my light...

I have an alien-ware laptop that draws over 300W, peak and 200W nominal. (x-Box does 250W)

[ISAWHIM]

Cool!  Thanks crazy! Power brick says 65W.  So even at max, I am running about 1.5KWh per day. I pay ~ $0.07 for a KWh so it costs me around 10 cents to run the laptop. At 30Mhash/s minimum, am I still making $$?

Don't forget AC costs for power to cool the constant 65W you are churning-out... The future replacement of that GPU/laptop when the thing fries from "constant operation", which it is not designed for... The internet power and bandwidth you are also paying for...

65W @ 24H @ 28days = 43680WattHoursMonth = 43KWH...

AC to cool those BTU's... Roughly 500KWH...
Modem-power from bandwidth use... Roughly 15KWH... (About 1/3 of 65W, check the wall-wart for those components. More if it is cable-modem x4 more.)
GPU and CPU and HD wear from use/heat/power... Degrades laptops by 5x faster life... up to 20x faster once enough dust collects on the heat-pipes and is not cleaned-off.

Still worth it?

[favelle75]

Simple way is to look at the power-adaptor... It provides the power, and thus, indicates the power-rating. (Assume it runs at 90% consumption, when mining. 100% if you kill the charger.)

EG, if the output says 14v @ 20A then it is 14vx20A=280W... Then add 15% to that wattage, as most wall-supplies are 15% inefficient. So, at the wall you will see about 260-300W consumed, to produce 200-280W of output power. (Remember, you battery is charging also, which consumes MORE when it is in a charge-state, and less when resting.)

You can provide more "usable power" by blacking-out your screen, turning off the brightness/backlight, shutting-down "indexing services", turning off "defrag services", disabling blue-tooth, cameras, sound, switching to lower resolution or the output-port, etc... Leaves you with more available power for hashing... but if you are not making over 300MHs, then you are paying to hash, as that is roughly about equal to the power you are using to hash. That is ONLY if you cash-in those coins, which takes-away more value from fees and your time to cash them in... all $3.00 a month.

But I am only using 65W.  Surely I don't need 300MHs to break even on 65W?

[favelle75]

Cool!  Thanks crazy! Power brick says 65W.  So even at max, I am running about 1.5KWh per day. I pay ~ $0.07 for a KWh so it costs me around 10 cents to run the laptop. At 30Mhash/s minimum, am I still making $$?

Don't forget AC costs for power to cool the constant 65W you are churning-out... The future replacement of that GPU/laptop when the thing fries from "constant operation", which it is not designed for... The internet power and bandwidth you are also paying for...

65W @ 24H @ 28days = 43680WattHoursMonth = 43KWH...

AC to cool those BTU's... Roughly 500KWH...
Modem-power from bandwidth use... Roughly 15KWH... (About 1/3 of 65W, check the wall-wart for those components. More if it is cable-modem x4 more.)
GPU and CPU and HD wear from use/heat/power... Degrades laptops by 5x faster life... up to 20x faster once enough dust collects on the heat-pipes and is not cleaned-off.

Still worth it?

I live in Canada.....no AC here.  Internet router is always on anyways. Laptop is 3 yars old already....doesn't owe me anything.