How much electricity does a laptop use compared to a desktop?
closed as off topic by random♦ Sep 2 '12 at 1:01 Questions on
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Read more about closed questions here. In specific, my home-brew
gaming rig (Core 2 duo, 8800GTS) runs about 350 watts when
running games, and 250 idle (includes monitor). My old Intel
Dual Core (not Core 2) laptop using integrated graphics drew
around 25 watts when not charging the battery. 45-55 watts when
charging. I haven't had a chance to check the draw on the new i5
laptop. But that's just two datapoints. Discrete graphics
markedly increases power usage on laptops. It's really dependant
on which specific hardware parts you have but you have to think
about the fact that the two main power drains of a normal
computer are Just to give you an