I unattached my monitors from my PCI-E video card and attached them to the onboard video card. I'm not using the PCI-E card anymore. Is it using any electricity? Should I uninstall it? Will I save money if I remove it from my system?
Does a graphics card use electricity if it’s installed but not being used
gpugraphics cardintegrated-graphicspower-management
Related Solutions
It doesn't sound like you would benefit from adding a PCI-E video card. It may provide slight benefits, but most likely you wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
If you were to do full screen video playback (DVD Quality), games (especially 3D) or CAD, then you would probably want an upgrade. Dual displays would also benefit, if you card supported that.
One place you might notice a difference is if you are running an LCD that supports DVI input and your on-board video card only has VGA output. I've noticed running a LCD off of VGA you will see slight flicker to the text occasionally.
Basically my advice would be unless you have something wrong with the display the way it is, then don't upgrade. There have been times when the on-board video card has been defective, so adding a new video card fixes the problem, but you didn't mention having any problems.
You could lookup the technical specifications for you specific drive.
External drives that are not host-powered (which have to be wired to a power outlet with an adapter of their own) have at least 4 different power measurements.
- Active -- when disk activity is going on
- Idle -- when disk activity is not going on, but the drive is attached and powered
The drive may or may-not be spinning at this time (that could be two different sub-states). - Standby -- when drive is Idle, Attached but has gone into a standby power & wear saving state.
This is when it takes a little longer to access it again. - Host-shutdown -- this is when the host-PC is shutdown but the drive continues to be powered through its adapter.
This is similar to any other appliance in its 'standby' mode where it is shutdown but the power outlet is still ON.
- Idle -- when disk activity is not going on, but the drive is attached and powered
The tech-specs for these drives will usually show reducing power requirements in ascending order for the above points. And, if the drive does not perform on one of the latter points, it would typically be excluded from the tech-specs (think of that as the fine-print).
As a bottom line, the states of your drive where the disk-platter is not spinning (assuming you are not talking about solid state drives here) will have relatively lower power consumption compared to when it is spinning.
This difference can be usually perceived by keeping your palm on the top of your drive (if its close by). A spin will always show up as a mild vibration.
The Maxtor (Seagate) drive you refer should have a good idle/standby control.
And the power consumption would typically fall significantly once it spins-down.
I hazard it be be around 2w tops after spin-down, but don't go by that :-)
So, it should be fine to leave it wired and powered while your PC is on.
Unless, you keep your PC on most of the time and use the drive very rarely (or do not turn off the drive power when you shutdown your PC) -- in that case, extra efforts towards powering-down the drive when not in use would be worthwhile.
Best Answer
Keep some basic math in mind when figuring out what it is costing you.
Power is billed in kilowatt hours used. At it's most expensive power costs about $0.40 per kilowatt hours. If your computer has a 700w power supply it uses up to .7 kilowatts per hour. That's 16.8 kilowatt hours per day. At $0.40 per hour that's $6.72 per day for the entire computer.
An inactive video card can't use any more than about 10 watts of power (assuming a 5 watt PCIx buss and a second 5 watt power connector). That's 240 watt hours per day, or just under 1 kilowatt hour per 4 days. This is $0.40 every four days or $3.10 per month.