Energy costs in Australia should be a component of every buying decision you make. The cost of running an old PC which has been re purposed to run your appliance is tempting with the low starting cost, but may be a false economy.

We have taken a look into the total cost of ownership, and the results are astounding.

Our Test Conditions:

• Typical charges in Australia for a kilo Watt-hour (kWh) ranges from 28c to 43c - so for a national average we have used 30c. Please take this into account as your individual rate may be different from our calculation. We took our pricing from Canstar Blue.

• We inflated the Energy rating of the SG-1100, the SG-3100 and the SG-5100 by 50% more than the idle rating. Your real life usage may be different depending on load, attached devices & peripherals etc.

• We took the total unit price that a customer would pay - device, plus shipping, plus GST.

• We used OuterVision to build an approximate Wattage for a computer with no screen. This was the fun part, as the lowest value we could achieve was still 142 Watts. See if you can do better, but our configuration was: 1 x Intel Pentium G4500T, 50% CPU Utilization (the lowest available), 1 x 2GB DDR3, no video card, an SSD hard drive, one single port ethernet card (assuming there is one onboard already), and a single 120mm fan. Nothing else; no keyboard, mouse, screen, or USB devices of any kind. This is our reference config.

The results.

Looking at the running costs exclusively, the real value difference is very well pronounced.  At between $13 to $30 per year, an appliance is paid off quickly.

Ensuring your organisation (or home) works toward a zero-emissions target; it's hard to justify the high energy consumption of a general purpose pc.