How much power is your console wasting in Standby?

I've seen some pretty bad linkbait headlines related to this... so i'll defer to someone who's already done the math on how 'bad' this actually is:

A GTX 760 (170w) for 8 hours per day would consume 496.4kWh/y. At 5 hours per day (more reasonable) it would consume 310kWh/y, still higher than Xbox One, not counting ANY other forms of power consumption from the PC.

Breaking down the consumption for Xbox One: If we assume they estimated 8 hours of full consumption usage, using it to watch TV, with 16 hours of off time.. let's math! 289kWh/y = 791.8 watts per day. It consumes 15w per hour of time in standby, so 15w * 16 hours = 240w, leaving us with 551.8 watts per day while on, watching TV. Divide that across 8 hours, and you get 68.97w of power draw, comparable to an incandescent light bulb. Drawing peak power at 1/3 of an entire day. That's about $180 in electricity costs over 5 whole years. Perspective: A modest sized top-freezer refrigerator 5-10 years old will cost about $120 per year to run, or $600 over the same time period. Mind you, my math could be a little off based on how much on/off time was used to calculate, but it's a solid rough estimate.
 
I don't leave my Xbox One in standby mode because of reports I read about this closer to launch. I changed the setting to energy preferred which shuts the console all the way down when you turn off instead of going into standby. If I used the system more I would use standby for the convenience but so far I've only used it for exclusive games and occasional Amazon Instant/blu-ray use. It doesn't make sense to me to leave it in standby, wasting electricity when it's not being used for 2-3 weeks at a time. I do leave the PS4 in standby because it is used much more frequently.

There are some disadvantages to shutting down all the way. I can't automatically have system and game updates installed while I'm not playing. I can't remotely purchase a digital game and have it downloaded and waiting for me when I get home. I can't use the Xbox On command to boot up the system and it takes longer to boot up from a complete shutdown too.
 

'Far Cry 4' to be released November 18

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