This article is another version of PC Power Consumption article. If the previous article discusses the power consumed by PC peripherals, such as processor, RAM, graphic card, PCI cards, etc, this article discusses the power consumed by peripherals in your notebook.
Notebook is designed so compact and easy to use, its because of the aim of why the notebook had created. Notebook is designed to break the activity boundaries. The bussinessman, who spent his time not only in the office, needs more just a PC which can be moved easily to support their activities. They need portable, wireless, light and small device which have functions like PC. Yes, the notebook is the answer.
To support its mobility, notebook is designed to consumed very low electric power, it even has battery to support the mobility reason. All peripherals attached to the notebook is designed to consume low power to keep its life longer. This situation brings the penalty to its performance, because its only need little power to operate (the less power, the less performance). The processor and graphic card performance are the most. However, you can not judge the Pentium4 based notebook's performance with Desktop Pentium4 based PC's, even both of them have same clock speed.
The peripherals power demand is only also used when required. But at least they need a couple power to operate in standby mode. The more you install peripherals, you consume more power. It is not a seriuos problem when yours connected to AC power, everything goes well. But the problem goes when you use battery (DC power). The battery has maximum capacity to supply such as power to peripherals installed for specific period, depends on the workload activity. So if you use battery, you must know the peripherals need, so you can decide to use or unuse them.
Here the list of average power consumed by peripherals, remember when you add or activate some devices you consume more power. You can save your battery life by removing unused peripherals when connected with DC power.
| Peripherals | Needs | Percentages | Notes |
| LCD | 5 W | 24% | Needs for about 3 - 8 watts, depends on the brightness |
| Processor | 2 W | 10% | Average value, depends on its performance and power saving used, such as SpeedSteep |
| Chipset | 2.5 W | 12% | More onboard peripherals in chipset, consume more power |
| Graphic Card | 2.5 W | 12% | High-end graphic card can take up to 20% |
| Drive | 2 W | 10% | Additional HDD, DVD-ROM, CD-RW consume more power |
| Audio | 0.5 W | 2% | Activating sound takes more power |
| Wireless Device | 1 W | 5% | Activating device takes more power |
| Power Supply | 2 W | 10% | Operation power to manage the output voltage, direction, etc |
| Misc | 3 W | 15% | Other devices such as RAMs, USB controller, PCCard adapter, etc. |
More about PC power consumed, you can read my PC Power Consumption. If you want to know about processor details, go to x86 Processor section.
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