BasicDog

Have you ever wondered how much electricity the electrical appliances around your house use, we have a number on the back of each appliance but do we actually know how much they are using?

After building my new Home Theatre PC I found myself wondering how much electricity it is using compared to my gaming system, and this lead me to buying a Power meter from my local Maplin shop. The power meter is a very simple device, you plug it into a socket in your house and then put the plug of the hardware you are testing into it and watch the little LCD screen amaze you. The LCD screen can display many different units, including Amps, Volts, Watts and Kilowatt Hours, and since I am used to PC components and appliances such as microwaves being referred to using Watts, I used this as my benchmark unit.

This is the story of how I have managed to build a HD Home Theatre PC (HTPC) for only £135 and in the process managed to make a HTPC that uses an average of around 45w of electricity. Perfect for my living room, my electricity bill and in turn; the planet.

I embarked on my venture to build a media PC for two reasons, the first being to free my gaming system from the living room so I can get some much needed gaming action, and the second was an exercise to see how little money I could use to build a High Def capable PC with a HDMI connection. The components that I used are listed in a moment with their costs; these are mostly bought from ebuyer.com or a market stall in Derby.