The Mother Board

[Twisty]

A filiment bulb draws a high current for a brief period when you start it up, but it lasts less than a second, essentially if you keep the bulb on for half the time then you use half the power.

However if you use a dimmer switch to set the bulb to exactly half the brightness (luminous flux) it will still be drawing far more than half the power.
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[thomas_w_bowman]

For incadesent, turned off even for a short time will save power.

For Fluroscents, you have the starter, which will need a small surge at startup, plus the starter and likely the tube will burn out faster - I think that the cost 'trace-off' for fluroscents is about 20 Min.

For Computer components, a lot depends on how the computer is being used - laptops have some well-developed controls, as to how long to spin unused disks, shut of monitor, etc. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of 'easy' answers - I shut off my computer when it'll be unused for over an hour (but that's because I don't want to 'have to' reboot.)
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[poundu1]

thanks for the insight
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[kltsin]

There are socket meters that can tell the draw of a system in real time, such as conrad electronics
ENERGY-CHECK 3000

I do have a web page that deals with power supply's but there are many stones left unturned.

Any one know the ohms of current graphics cards or where I could find them.
I am in the midst of updating my site and havent touched the power supply page in a few months

http://www.angelfire.com/ex/kltsin/psu_info.html


Poundu1,

It would be impractical to put so much effort into it for many reasons.

First off you would need to run a much longer wire creating more resistance which would drop the effectiveness of the power supply.

Also a power supply not only gives power but has to clean the power given to it and give it at an even flow, anything that would interject such as a splice or sudden draw would drain the psu's components very quickly causing power surges and also heating issues.

As per your latest question, when a system is powered on it will spike far more than its evaluated at causing the other system to crash.
This isnt an issue of wattage its the draw or ohms when a system is powered on, sometimes its 3 fold of is average draw. Getting things spinning like fans uses alot of draw.

There are other considerations like money, time , and risk too.