How many watts does a Monero miner use?

A Monero miner does not have one fixed wattage: a laptop may use roughly 20–100 watts, while a desktop mining with its processor may draw 80–300 watts or more at the wall. Your actual power use depends on your hardware, how hard you run it, and whether you mean the mining software’s added power use or the whole computer’s electricity draw.

Typical power ranges

For a rough starting point, these are broad estimates for the whole device while mining, not guaranteed measurements:

• Small, low-power computer: around 10–50 W.
• Laptop: around 20–100 W, though powerful gaming models can use more.
• Everyday desktop: around 80–200 W.
• High-performance desktop: around 150–300 W or more.
• Multi-processor workstation or server: several hundred watts, sometimes over 500 W.

A watt, written as W, measures how quickly a device uses electricity. These ranges overlap because a newer, efficient computer can do more mining work while using less power than an older one.

Your monitor also uses electricity. Include it if you leave it on for mining, but you usually do not need it running once mining has started.

What changes your miner’s wattage?

Monero uses RandomX, its mining algorithm—the set of calculations miners perform to help secure the network. RandomX favors your CPU, the computer’s main processor.

Your power use changes with:

• CPU model: Bigger processors can draw more power, but may also mine more efficiently.
• Mining threads: These are separate streams of work. Running more usually increases power use, though the increase is not perfectly proportional.
• Power settings: Processor power limits and performance settings affect electricity use.
• Other components: Memory, fans, storage, and the power supply all add to the total.

Do not treat your CPU’s advertised power rating as your electricity bill. A rating such as TDP, or thermal design power, mainly helps describe cooling requirements. It is not a measurement of your complete computer’s wall power.

Browser mining does not have a separate standard wattage. A browser miner can still keep your CPU busy, and a lower mining speed does not automatically mean lower electricity use.

How to measure your actual watts

The simplest method is a plug-in electricity meter, placed between your computer’s power plug and the wall socket.

1. Measure your computer while it is on but not mining.
2. Start mining with your usual settings.
3. Wait until temperatures and fan speeds settle.
4. Record the average power draw over several minutes.

For example, if your desktop uses 45 W without mining and 125 W while mining, mining adds about 80 W.

Use that added 80 W when estimating extra electricity for a computer you would already have running. If you keep the computer on specifically to mine, count the full 125 W instead.

For a laptop, measure after its battery has finished charging so charging power does not distort the result.

The bottom line

Expect anything from a few dozen watts to several hundred, depending on your computer. Measure at the wall rather than guessing from a processor label.

To turn watts into electricity use, divide by 1,000 and multiply by running hours. A miner drawing 150 W for 24 hours uses 3.6 kilowatt-hours, the energy units on your electricity bill. Multiply that by your electricity rate to find its daily running cost.