1d ago

Got myself some energy monitoring Zigbee plugs and made an interesting discovery

I'm in the process of getting my Home Assistant environment up and running, and decided to run a test: it turns out that my gaming PC (custom 5800X3D/7900XTX build) uses more power just sitting idle, than both of my storage freezers combined.

Background: In addition to some other things, I bought two "Eightree" brand Zigbee-compatible plugs to see how they fare. One is monitoring the power usage of both freezers on a power strip (don't worry, it's a heavy duty strip meant for this), and the other is measuring the usage of my entire desktop setup (including monitors and the HA server itself, a Lenovo M710q).

After monitoring these for a couple days, I decided that I will shut off my PC unless I'm actively using it. It's not a server, but it does have WOL capability, so if I absolutely need to get into it remotely, it won't be an issue.

Pretty fascinating stuff, and now my wife is completely on board as well; she wants to put a plug on her iMac to see what it draws, as she uses it to hold her cross-stitch files and other things.

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143 comments

I got a UPS cause the breaker to my room likes to trip if I am gaming and someone in the house decides to microwave something for 10 minutes. My desktop, three monitors (2x1080p 60hz + a 1440p 144hz) and my 3d printer all running at full tilt will suck my 1500w UPS dry in about 2 minutes lol.
If I'm not gaming and say just watching YouTube while not 3d printing anything that same UPS can run for almost 15 minutes.
- breaker to my room likes to trip if I am gaming and someone in the house decides to microwave something
  ... Why the hell is your pc on the same breaker as the kitchen??
  The kitchen plugs should have their own dedicated breaker in most modern electrical codes (at least in North America). The voltage drop your pc experiences everytime a high-load item like a microwave or kettle is turned on, on the same circuit, is really rough on your PSU.
  At least you have a UPS which presumably performs some power conditioning, but still. Not great.
  
  You used the magic word, "modern."
  Lots of houses in this world are not modern, and some of them are old enough that they were retrofitted to have electricity, as mine was, rather than even being built with it to begin with. And done so in a haphazard manner when electrical codes were either much more lax than now or didn't exist. And further when the expected power draw for a household was considerably lower, because basically all of it in the 1920's or whatever was only used for lighting and we didn't have all of our current appliances, TV's, computers, 3D printers, or even indoor space heaters.
  So moaning about what ought to be rather than what is really doesn't accomplish anything, especially in OP's case.
  My small house has basically the entire ground floor wired to only two 15 amp circuits.
  
  A lot of people aren't even aware of the concern. That's why I bring it up.
  Paying an electrician to add a breaker is much cheaper than replacing the PC. Tho that's up to OC if they want to pursue that. I'm just putting the info out there for them to consider.
  
  Yeah, no amount of UPS is gonna fix a problem like that. It's more than time to rewire their whole electrical grid at home. That's quite literally a disaster waiting to happen.
  
  That's the best part. It's not in the kitchen. My room is on the complete opposite side of the house. Literally the furthest room from the kitchen.
  Whatever drunk moron wired the house back in the 70s did so in such a confusing manner that electricians give us the "fuck no I'm not fixing that" price when we ask them what it would cost to sort out our completely nonsensical wiring. I think the last guy we talked to quoted us 30k and he pretty much flat out told us nobody will ever want to unfuck our house.
  
  Do everything outside the walls. I had the same problem in my house, I literally killed all the wires inside the walls and did a whole new installation in an industrial style outside the walls. It's way better for maintenance purposes anyway.
  
  See I would have no problem with that but the other people living in this house would have a lot of problems with that. Namely the women. I know for a fact me and the other guys would prefer it but the ladies would never green light something that "ugly" lol.
  
  You're in the same boat as me, except swap 70's for 1920's. I have to tear down all the plaster -- not drywall, actual literal plaster, on lath -- to get at the ground floor wiring. I decided it's fine where it is for now.
  
  Yeah at some point you just say fuck it and limp along until the problem is big enough that it's time for a completely new house or you move.
  In our situation it's one of those things where it just doesn't seem worth it to properly address because if we are gonna have an electrician cut a bunch of holes in our walls to redo all the wiring we may as well have a plumber cut a bunch of holes in our ceiling to insulate all the pipes they installed in the ceiling crawl space without any insulation. And if we have them cutting holes in every wall and every ceiling we may as we lost have them tear the whole goddamn house down and start over properly lol.

143 comments