Electricity Costs
To calculate the cost per year we assume each machine is used 8 hours a day under light usage. A kWh is £0.2486 (the price cap from 1 January 2025 in the UK).
| Computer | Wh | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| DreamQuest N100 CPU | 12.9 | £9.36 |
| DreamQuest N95 CPU | 13.5 | £9.80 |
| Mini PC Intel NUC 13 Pro i7-1360P CPU | 17.7 | £12.85 |
| Desktop PC Intel i5-12400 CPU (with dedicated graphics card) | 64.5 | £46.82 |
| Desktop PC Intel i5-10400 CPU | 32.1 | £23.30 |
- The annual cost is the electricity cost of the computer only. To calculate the overall running costs, you’ll need to factor in peripherals such as monitors, speakers, external devices etc.
- Power management is enabled in the BIOS for the two desktop machines. The DreamQuest machines and the NUC don’t offer this functionality.
- The Balanced CPU governor is used. We find using the DreamQuest machines and the NUC with their Power Saver CPU governor enabled greatly limits its usability in some basic tasks.
The next table shows the annual electricity cost with each machine headless running at idle and permanently on. This information may be useful if you are thinking of using the machine say as a NAS server and want a baseline running cost. Again, we’ve pricing a kWh at £0.2486 (the price cap from 1 January 2025 in the UK).
| Computer | Wh | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| DreamQuest N100 CPU | 6.5 | £14.16 |
| DreamQuest N95 CPU | 7.8 | £16.99 |
| Mini PC Intel NUC 13 Pro i7-1360P CPU | 12.7 | £27.66 |
| Desktop PC Intel i5-12400 CPU (with dedicated graphics card) | 37.3 | £81.23 |
| Desktop PC Intel i5-10400 CPU | 14.1 | £30.71 |
Specifications
A brief summary of the DreamQuest N100’s specifications.
| DreamQuest N100 | |
|---|---|
| Type | Mobile |
| Processor | Intel N100 E-Core Turbo 3.40 GHz 4 E-Cores 6W TDP |
| Chipset | Intel Alder Lake-N |
| Memory | 16GB DDR4 (3200 MHz) |
| Graphics | Intel UHD Graphics 730 |
| Disk | 512GB CF400 M2 2280 SATA SSD |
A brief summary of the DreamQuest N95’s specifications.
| DreamQuest N95 | |
|---|---|
| Type | Mobile |
| Processor | Intel N95 E-Core Turbo 3.40 GHz 4 E-Cores 15W TDP |
| Chipset | Intel Alder Lake-N |
| Memory | 32GB DDR4 (3200 MHz) |
| Graphics | Intel UHD Graphics 710 |
| Disk | 1TB KingDian M2 2280 SATA SSD |
For reference, these are the specifications of the other machines featured in this article.
| Intel NUC 13 Pro | 12th Gen Intel PC | 10th Gen Intel PC | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Mobile | Desktop | Desktop |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-1360P P-Core Turbo 5.00 GHz E-Core Turbo 3.70 GHz 4 P-Cores 8 threads 8 E-Cores | Intel Core i5-12400F 2.50GHz (Turbo 4.4 GHz) 6 P-Cores 12 threads | Intel Core i5-10400 2.90GHz (Turbo 4.30GHz) 6 P-Cores 12 threads |
| Chipset | Intel Raptor Lake-P | Intel Alder Lake | Intel Comet Lake |
| Memory | 32GB DDR4 (3200 MHz) | 32GB DDR4 (3200 MHz) | 32GB DDR4 (2666 MHz) |
| Graphics | Intel Iris Xe Graphics G7 | Asus NVIDIA RTX 3060 Ti | Intel UHD Graphics 630 |
| Disk | 2TB TEAMGROUP NVMe | 1TB Samsung 980 NVMe 2TB Crucial SSD | 1TB Corsair MP400 NVMe |
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Power Consumption With System Idle
Page 2 – Power Consumption With Light Usage
Page 3 – Power Consumption With CPU Stressed
Page 4 – Electricity Costs / Specifications
Complete list of articles in this series:
| DreamQuest N100 Mini PC | |
|---|---|
| Part 1 | Introduction to the series with an interrogation of the system |
| Part 2 | Benchmarking the DreamQuest N100 Mini PC |
| Part 3 | Power Consumption and Running Costs |