Dell laptop power consumption watts
I've determined power usage on my desktop and on my server, but I hadn't gotten around to testing the power usage of my laptop. As battery life is always a concern with a laptop, I was particularly curious to see which parts of the laptop draw the most power. So I ran a few tests with my trusty kill-a-watt on my Dell Inspiron 300m. It's an ultaportable 2 pound laptop of late 2003 vintage with the following specs:
Let's start with some baselines:
All subsequent tests were run with the laptop connected to AC power and the battery physically removed from the machine. How much power does the LCD display use?
How much power does the hard drive use?
How much power does the onboard WiFi use?
How much power does the CPU use?
How much power does the integrated video use? Running 3dMark2001 produced a peak power usage of 29 watts. We can subtract the Prime95 number of 26 watts -- which is entirely CPU-only-- to estimate about three watts are used exclusively by the integrated Intel "extreme"* video hardware. Bear in mind the kill-a-watt is only accurate to plus or minus a watt. And these are all rough figures based on a sample size of one laptop. But I think the rules here can be generalized to most laptops. Here's what I learned:
Of course, your mileage may vary. * it's extreme, all right. Extremely crappy. |