How much money do you save with an efficient power supply?

The power supply is usually one of the last components to be added to a PC when mounting your own equipment, and for this reason many often opt for cheaper sources in order to reduce the final price of the PC somewhat, But there are also those who prefer to buy a more expensive and efficient source with benefit from greater savings from now on.

In this post we are going to see if it is really worth investing your money in a more expensive and efficient power supply and how much you would save exactly on the electricity bill.

80 Plus certification in power supplies

The 80 Plus program is a voluntary certification system for power supply manufacturers. The term "80 Plus" is slightly complicated, but the central idea is that if a power source achieves this certification, it will only use the energy it needs with a certain energy load. In other words, you will not use more energy than you need.

For example, if your PC requires only 20% of the total power from a 500 watt power supply, the system will not consume more than 100 watts. Only when the PC requires all the possible energy, the power supply will run with 100% of its energy load.

At this time, the 80 Plus program has Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum and Titanium certifications, the latter with an efficiency of up to 96% to 50% charge, as can be seen in the following table.

How much money is actually saved?

Overall, an 80 Plus certified power supply saves you an average of about 85 kilowatt hours per PC per year, which would translate to a tiny amount on your electric bill. If for example you are going to use your computer for 16 hours a day both to play and to perform lighter activities, the saving difference between a PC with 80 Plus and 80 Plus Gold power supply would be a little more than 5 euros of annual savings..

If you really want to save money on the electricity bill with your PC, a better idea would be to turn off the computer when you don't use it or put it in hibernate mode more often. But if you need a power supply and don't know which one to buy, don't hesitate to check out our guide to PC power supplies.

Also tell you that a good power supply does not help you save money, but it does have all your internal components perfectly protected and well fed. And that is very important ?