Game Console Energy Usage Comparison

Broadband writes "Modern gaming consoles consume more and more power, dissipate more and more heat and cause a lot more noise with their cooling systems compared to their brethren a decade ago. While it's obvious that an Xbox 360 would have higher energy demands then a Playstation 1, the curious question is by how much? Even more importantly is the question of whether your console might be costing you money while you sleep. Preposterous you say? Actually quite the opposite! We put every console in our lab through rigorous testing to find the answers to these questions and see who the energy hogs really are. "

Comments

Errrrum

[msaver]

While it's obvious that an Xbox 360 would have higher energy demands then a Playstation 1

Probably true, but not obvious.

Re:Errrrum

[William_Lee]

It should be pretty obvious based on common sense. The PS1 is using a much simpler chipset in terms of number of transistors. Each generation of PC chips has consumed more power for the most part. Consoles aren't going to be any different (with the possible exception of thw Wii). In any case, a PS1 is ancient chip technology compared to an Xbox360.

Standby Energy Usage

[Distinguished Hero]

From the writeup: Even more importantly is the question of whether your console might be costing you money while you sleep. Preposterous you say? Actually quite the opposite!

From TFA:
Let's take a look at how much power video game consoles require while in standby/off mode.

Console Energy Leakage kWh Wasted Each Year Annual Cost
  Playstation 1 0.1W 1.752 kWh $0.26
  Playstation 2 2W 17.52 kWh $2.63
  Xbox 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
  Xbox 360 2W 17.52 kWh $2.63
  Gamecube 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53
  Dreamcast 0.2W 3.50 kWh $0.53

USD 2.63 per year for something that cost over USD 300! Oh the humanity!

Re:Standby Energy Usage

[Dubpal]

How about thinking about it in terms of how much energy is being wasted globally by these leaks?

At the moment (according to Wikipedia) 103 million PS2s have been sold worldwide. That's an annual leak of 1.8 terawatts. And what's the impact on the environment of generating that energy?

Re:Standby Energy Usage

[posterlogo]

That's a little harsh don't you think? The point was that these energy leaks are totally unnecessary. It's not a controversial subject -- almost nobody would argue that it would be nice to have fewer leaked energy.

I don't care much for your cherry-picked comparison to "Hollywood fatcats". I'm sure there are probably many MORE conservative/Republican/oil-wealthy/corporate "fatcats" out there as well (you were trying to make a selective attack on "liberals" right?).

As for the people in third world countries, I'm embarrassed than an obviously educated person such as yourself would compare energy leaks in rich-people's houses to family size in third world countries. That is blatantly racist, elitist, and pretty much wrong. I came from a 3rd world country, one of two children. We were fortunate, as are you and most Western families. It has been shown over and over again, that family size often does not follow "rational" patters that should in theory correlate with wealth. In fact, more often it correlates with religion, need for able-bodied workers, and lack of family planning assistance (at this point, the US only offers family assistance in 3rd world countries through abstinance-only programs, rather than the far more effective total approach including contraception). For a more eloquent and clear explanation on birth rate and the factors that effect it, see this wiki article.

In short, people in 3rd world countries will do what they feel is right, or necessary, to survive and live as enriched lives as they can. Your 12 children case is highly exaggerated, as the highest average rate in the world is Niger, with 7.6 children/woman. Now you honestly think we're going to see exponential growth of these families in Niger? How many of those children are going to go on to reproduce, let alone survive their first year? In fact the majority of the top-50 countries in the world for birth rate are in Africa. You think we're seeing exponential growth in population there? In reality, most of the continent is devastated in terms of the death rate.

Anyway, to get back to the point of this thread (which you usurped to make your racist view points public), the grandparent post was attempting to state that on a global scale, energy leaks may make a totally unnecessary (albeit small, and calculable) impact on the environment. I challenge you try and compare children of 3rd world countries as equally unnecessary impacts on the world.

Re:Standby Energy Usage

[Skater]

In other words, "Any small number becomes sufficiently large when multiplied by a large number."

It's easy to take the .2 watts or whatever and multiply it out to make it sound huge. Meanwhile, the number of computers running for people to simply read and post in this article on Slashdot is probably dwarfing that - but no one's complaining about that in this thread.

Re:Standby Energy Usage

[Telvin_3d]

"That's about 1/2 a gallon of gas worth of energy. Notable, but probably not a huge concern"

Well, per person it is not.
On, the other hand, I believe the 360 has at this point sold ~3.5 million units.
That's 1.75 million gallons of gas a year. That is a lot of gas, no matter how you look at it.
Now, fast forward a year after the PS3 has come out. Say, 15 million units sold between them. 7.5 million gallons of gas is worth noticing.

Dreamcast

[Dr. Eggman]

I was pleasently surprised to see they included the Dreamcast, it seems many people forget it was part of the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox generation. I'm happy to see how well the Dreamcast performed as well.

Why?

[zaguar]

... the question of whether your console might be costing you money while you sleep.

Ever thought of turning the damm thing off? Geeze, I don't want to troll, but why don't people just turn the thing off? It's not like it is crunching folding@home or anything that could justify 24-7 usage.

Chaos Tide Flowing

[Doc Ruby]

"Modern gaming consoles consume more and more power, dissipate more and more heat and cause a lot more noise"

When Atari invented the console market in the late 1970s, power costs were an issue only because of the recent energy crisis, heat mattered only if you left your cold beverage on the console, and there was no noise. Now that those problems are all cranked up in a more crowded, less plentiful, overbuilt world, we really have to worry about the power and heat. And now we can see the next crisis: overwhelming noise from all these home machines will first drive us completely mad, then churn up the atmosphere into tiny cyclones, combining with the larger ones to scour our homes into livingroom Grand Canyons.

power costs

[PresidentEnder]

Oh my GAWD! You mean I could lose almost $3.00 a year if I don't unplug my PS2?
But wait! Let's assume that it takes me 30 seconds to get off my lazy ass and move to the entertainment center, move the entertainment center, unplug the PS2 from the power strip, and move the entertainment center back into place so my roommate can still watch TV. I play videogames almost every day, sometimes in two or three seperate sessions. Just for argument's sake, we'll figure I do this 360 times a year. That works out to 10 800 seconds, or 180 minutes, or three hours.
Given that the federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour, that means that if I spend the time unplugging the PS2, then I'll be losing money! (3*5.15 = 15.45, if my redneck math is right, which I think is more than $2.63)

Re:power costs

[Secrity]

It's not just the PS2 that is drawing power while being shut "off". Add the power being drawn by other devices that draw current when are also turned "off"; such as DVD player, TV, receiver, CD player, monitors, radios, computers, paper shredders, battery chargers, etc. My receiver has a power LED that turns ON to tell me that the unit is turned "off" and my DVD player has a power indicator LED that is always on, it changes color to indicate whether the unit is on or "off". Some video tape players even have heaters built into them to keep them warm while the unit is turned off.

Re:Nintendo 64?

[Donniedarkness]

I'd almost bet that it is more efficient than its competitors-- it uses cartridges instead of cd's, so it wouldn't have to spin a cd drive all the time. I'd say the power save from that would be pretty noticable.

TFA OTT

[kestasjk]

So worst case scenario $2.68 per year to leave the console in standby? Not factoring in the discount for power use during off peak times?

When the difference in console prices can be hundreds of dollars and the average life of a console is 4-5 years, and there are much more effective ways to save on your electricity bill, I just don't see what the point of this article is.

Re:TFA OTT

[Aadain2001]

Yes, $3/year of wasted energy doesn't mean much to you or me. But when you expand the scope of this study to beyond just yourself and include not just your friends but everyone in the world who owns these consoles, the purpose becomes much clearer. We have an energy crisis in the world. Our power comes mostly from non-renewable, high pollution sources. The more power we consume as a race, the more polluted our environment becomes, and the more political tentions increase (think US->Middle East).

I would say that this article is but a small piece in the larger issue of our energy efficiency. We are wasting a LOT of energy yearly on issues that are easily solved by a few engineers spending a little more time to find more efficient methods. Look at AMD and Intel lately. They spent the time to greatly reduce their energy consumption. While per-processor it's a decent decrease, when looked at large datacenters or the whole country, the power savings will be epic.

We as a people need to look beyond just our noses or our personal bank accounts. If we can understand how small issues per person can quickly add up to a huge issue for all of us, issues like power leakage would seem much more important.

Many holes in this "research"!:

[Ancient_Hacker]

Oh, the humanity. When a armchair EE like me can poke all these holes, what's to become of us?

• Measuring power is, as the cold fusion guys figured out, is a lot harder than it seems.
• They didnt as far as I could see, mention exactly what equipment they used to measure the power draw of these fine devices.
• If you think, like most people, that electrical power is amps times volts, BRAAAP, you're the weakest link.
• Power is the integral of instantaneous amps times instananeous volts. You can't use a $2.99 Harbor-Freight voltmeter and ammeter to do this.
• All modern power supplies use a rectifier and switching regulator arrangement, which unlike an old steam iron, does not draw amps in proportion to volts. Instead it has a very non-linear power curve, full of sudden peaks and drops, and even some reverse current flowing during every AC cycle!
• The numbers they published are very suspicious-- only ONE significant digit in the lower numbers, which suggests either they rounded them off without telling us, or they used a wattmeter without a low power range.
• Either possibility introuduces anywhere from 25% (by dropping a digit) to 600% (trying to read 2 watts on a 200-watt meter) of error.
• Even if these boxes draw that much power, it's not necessarily a waste. A lot of folks live in houses that require heating during at least part of the year. Every watt of heat from one of these boxes is one less watt of heat the house heating system will have to produce (assuming there's a thermostat involved).
• On the other hand, if you have air-conditioning in use, each watt of heat from these boxes will require an additional 1/EER watt of power from the AC unit. EER's nowadays tend to be in the range of 10 to 14, so that's an extra 7 to 10 percent extra power draw during the hot months.
• All these devices require a TV or monitor, IIRC. Those draw considerable power too, often dwarfing the gaming box's power.

So guys, why do such a half-arsed job of it? Why not be the best?

Re:Damn Terrorists

[dreamchaser]

Funny, but most electrical energy in the US comes from coal mined here in the US. Now, driving your CAR supports mideast oil barons. Easy solution...drill off the East and West Coast as well as in Alaska.

Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needs more electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[kfg]

So you should be concerned over milage in a vehicle that cost you $30,000? What if it had a "sitting in the garage" usage (as many electric cars do), would you be concerned about that?

What logical connection do you see between the cost of acquisition and the cost of operation of an console? Would it make a difference to you if the console only cost $10? Why? A cost is a cost. It's all money out of your pocket and that $20 is a couple of pizzas you didn't get to eat.

Now add up the costs of all the other devices in your house that operate similarly. Your VCR. Your Cable box. Other computuing devices. At minimun wage you might end up working a week to have your stuff doing nothing. A week is a lot of time to invest in nothing.

Which brings us to the real point of interest in the figure, which isn't actually direct financial expense. Add up all the households in the country. You should be interested in the total fuel use of the nation to power devices doing nothing?

I think you should. At any right I am, but YMMV.

KFG

PSone calculation?

[MADnificent]

If you put an article with numbers online, please learn to calculate:

Playstation 1: 0.1Watt * 24h/day * 365days/year = 876Wh = 0.876kWh != 1.752kWh
=> that gives $0.1314

Xbox, Gamecube, Dreamcast use 1.752kWh and cost you $0.2628 per console ;-)

PC energy usage ... consoles are looking efficient

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm less worried about the console than a new desktop PCs. Rumour has it that 1000W and 1200W powersupplies are soon to be standard fair (my spaceheater is only 800W) to support these pigs (and that doesn't include the monitor or peripherials. At the same time we can make pretty capable laptops that draw 30W, so it isn't like energy efficient technology doesn't exist. I can live with a computer that browns out the neighbourhood when I'm in the middle of the latest 3D gaming extravaganza, but I see no justification for a machine that consumes several times more power than maxed out laptop when it is sitting idle. This is a sign of twisted priorities due to weak legislation. PCs are now significantly contributing to stress on our environment, and an aweful lot of it is completely needless -- all PCs should have all low power modes that kick in for un-demanding tasks.

The best advice for now: 1) If you must run your peer-to-peer, do it on a laptop with the screen turned off -- not your ultra-gamer with the 300W video card 2) turn off your desktop when you aren't gaming.

Re:Damn Terrorists

[Anonymous Coward]

>>"yes. A lot of terrorists are also Persian/Iranian, Pakistani, Indian Muslim, Afghan (not Arabs for those who don't know), Indonesian, Chechen, Somali, Sudanese, etc. It's not their "Arabness" that binds most terrorists; it's something else, and if you think really hard, you may be able to figure out what it is"

Don't forget all of the American terrorists. You know, the ones who blow up abortion clinics, and the other ones responsible for the Oklahoma city bombing. We certainly have our fair share.

Re:Damn Terrorists

[Pink Tinkletini]

Crude is more or less fungible. It doesn't matter where it comes from--only that without the Middle East, prices for all types of oil would shoot up dramatically. And that's why we care about Saudi Arabia, even though our oil comes from elsewhere.

Re:So let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

The simple solution is to unplug shit when we aren't using it... right? I mean, my computer speakers have a green light for on, and a red light for "off" -- which means to me I don't consider them off unless I pull the plug. And I have them plug into an easier to access wall socket just for that reason. Same with my computer itself, I know that ATX "off" isn't off, so after I shut the system down I flip the power supply switch. Better than unplugging it since it doesn't switch off the ground wire, as far as I know. It may seem like a little extra hassle to some, but I'd rather the hassle manifest its way through a couple extra motions with my hands than on the electric bill.

Re:You mean Canada and Venuzela barons

[Anonymous Coward]

Canada has the second largest proven oil reserves in the world -- a close second to the middle east. All that oil, and (dimissing a handful of poorly assimilated offspring of new Muslim immigrants) they aren't fanatically dedicated to killing every last American on the planet. They are actually ... well ... *nice*. Perhaps the cold weather offsets the apparent side effects of oil-fumes.

Re:Odd...

[weeb0]

If you add the power consumption (and leak) for an entire town of 100,000 habs. If 30% of the pop has an xbox360, it cost's 600,000$! It's a lot of energy. And that's why, the idle current leak is not essential. Only think in your house how many appliance has a clock on it?! Everything connected (unless there is a hard switch) leak current. We'll have to think about it very soon. A lot of electricity come from diesel or gaz or worst, coal it's a lot of pollution for absolutely nothing when we think the quantity of energy wasted to have the clock on my microwave and my range, on my coffee machine and soon on my fridge and my toaster.

Re:The Point (to me) is...

[jstultz]

You're right, we should consider things in terms of percentages. For example, what percentage of your household's total power consumption per year comes from a plugged in Xbox360? I'll give you a hint: pretty damned close to zero. Similarly, what percentage of the global yearly energy usage do plugged in consoles comprise? I'll give you the same hint again. Just one 100W bulb left on per night is equivalent to 50 Xbox 360s or PS2s left plugged in. It's easy to look at the number of kilowatt hours used per year by these consoles and freak out about it, but it doesn't mean much until you compare it to the total amount of energy used each year, and when you do that you should quickly realize how insignificant it is and that effort to reduce energy consumption is much much better directed elsewhere (for example, replacing incandescent bulbs with fluorescent bulbs whereever possible).

Re:Damn Terrorists

[vux984]

Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needs more electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.

No. Because its not obvious at all.

In fact, it could be argued that in computers that the opposite is more likely. After all a solar powered calculator the size of a credit card can run off the light of a candle and is a more powerful system than a 1960's computer that needed a warehouse and an industrial power supply. We're pretty accusomted to seeing computers deliver more on less.

And I bet if the article had discovered that modern consoles were 10x as powerful, and used less electricity than their previous generations, you would probably have yawned and said:

Did anyone else read this and think 'Gee, go figure. A more powerful system needing less electricity.' Sounds like non-news to me.

Two conflicting statements, both so perfectly reasonable that we would question neither. I think it IS worth reporting which one turned out to be true.

Don't you?

Re:Odd...

[fermion]

If you run air conditioning, the cost must be multiplied by some factor >>1. This will still be under $100 a year, but it is significant. This does not include indirect and opportunity costs of using massive quantatities of electricty.

The interesting part is the massive growth in the consumption of energy. Take to any power distrubition person and they will tell you that meeting that demand, 24X7, is no small task, and conservation would greatly increase the reliability of the power grid, and therefore the quality of life and national security.

Re:PC energy usage ... consoles are looking effici

[dnaumov]

"I'm less worried about the console than a new desktop PCs. Rumour has it that 1000W and 1200W powersupplies are soon to be standard fair (my spaceheater is only 800W) to support these pigs (and that doesn't include the monitor or peripherials."

That is one ridiculous and unfounded rumor. Most PC's these days come with 300-350W power supplies. While it is obvious that power requirements have been risen over the years, the growth isn't anywhere near what you are implying it to be. It took us many years to go from 250W PSUs being standard to 350W PSUs and I don't expect 500W PSUs in off-the-shelf PC's for at least another 2 years. Let alone 1000W or 1200W.

Re:PSone PStwo ?

[ClamIAm]

Well, the PS2 has had a bunch of revisions. If the model used in this article was a version that was a lot higher or lower (in terms of power usage) than the rest, it kind of throws off the comparisons.

Different energy measuring systems?

[Anonymous Coward]

From the article:
The losers here are the Xbox 360 and PS2, however the PS2 is the biggest loser of the group.

I don't understand. Why is the PS2's 2 watts more energy used than the XBox360's 2 watts?

The idea of spending $2.68 just to have a PS2 plugged in the wall is less then desirable.

Again I'm confused. It's not spending $2.68 to plug up the PS2. It's spending $2.68 to plug up the PS2 and leave it plugged in 24/7 for 365 days. What you spend to plug it up is probably in the rough range of 0.0006 cents (assuming there's a burst where it uses 4 watts instead of 2 for initial powerup.)

In conclusion we would uncomfortably leave our 360 plugged in as the ability to power the console on wirelessly is worth the $2.63 a year cost.
I assume this is their so called reason why the PS2's 2 watts are more than the XBox360's 2 watts. Do you really need wireless control 24/7/365? Let's say you do for a moment. Does the extra (rounding up) 3 dollars hurt you that badly to leave the system in all year if you must leave it plugged up all year (don't know about you, but, mine is only plugged in when I actually have been using it recently. I rarely leave it in more than a week or so past that.) Finally, the PS2 can support a remote -- especially the PS2 slim which has it built in. I don't have one because I'm too cheap to buy it when you can use the controller for watching DVDs, but, I seem to recall the remote had a power button. Is there the possibility this can power on the PS2? Oh, and speaking of the PS2, which one did they test? The original probably worst made PS2, or the latest probably best made (and therefore possibly more efficient) PS2s? Are slims worse or better than the immediately previous models?

I might add that Dreamcast, PSX, XBox and I think Gamecube can't be powered on by remote.

All I can say is that I'm not particularly satisfied with this test at all. First of all, it actually would have been useful if they included really old consoles so we can see if things are truly getting worse (it strikes me that a SNES just might be more inefficient than the much more technological Playstation just to toss an example out there.) Not to mention the complete lack of testing of the various versions or even mention of which version they used. Everyone knows the different versions ARE differently made. I have even seen this first hand with several that I took apart to fix various parts on. I might add that the most recent time I saw this was with two that were only one version apart and I was amazed to find that among the really obvious things I could see with the naked eye the power supply had a slightly different layout and the laser had a few changes in the casing and cable. Not many people use clear cases (and it's not officially supported for anyone to) so I really doubt those internal changes were purely cosmetic with no effect on power usage.

Speaking of power leakage, has anyone ever done a study to see how much may be used by just the plugs themselves? Sometimes I wonder if leaving a plug for a device in the wall but the device not actually plugged into it is probably wasting a bit of electricity. Oh, it may be on the order of milliwatts, but, I find it hard to believe it could be nothing at all considering that the plugs themselves still get hot and everything. Or, perhaps a more important question would be, how much do higher end things use? For example, when a computer power supply goes off, it still can sometimes be emitting a tiny high pitched sound if you stick your ear next to it. Considering the lack of any speakers in your typical PSU, I'd imagine it may take a fair amount of power to cause such a noise. Also, let's not forget monitors. Many of us are still using CRTs either because we are too cheap to buy an expensive LCD, or because we don't want to deal with things like the (usually low quality) internal resizing when using a non-native resolution, or even a few feel that CRTs are just plain higher qua

Standby leak is not important

[Makarakalax]

This meme is propagated a lot, but it's not really insightful.

Instead of worrying about 2W, manufacturers could be encouraged to reduce the average power usage of a system in a working (ie not standby state). A saving of 10% on all appliances would be far more significant.

Of course if you argue we, not companies should be responsible, then I point out that using energy saving lightbulbs would have a far, far greater effect on your household energy consumption than switching off devices on standby.

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge proponent of saving oil* and reducing global carbon emissions. But I feel persuading people en-mass to change their behaviour should be directed at something that has a significant effect. This meme is aimed at the wrong factor of ten.

* What will we make drugs and plastic out of once we have burnt away all the oil?

First law of thermodynamics

[a_nonamiss]

Maybe it's all too obvious, but nobody seems to be pointing out that energy is not wasted by any of these consoles. It's not possible to waste energy. Didn't you all learn about the First Law of Thermodynamics in high school? What are they teaching kids these days?

In reality, the XBox 360 isn't wasting more energy, it's just converting more energy into heat. If you live in a climate where the outside temperature is less than the inside temperature, then you aren't wasting any energy at all. You're just contributing to the heating of your home using your game console. Now, if you live in a tropical climate, or it's summer, then you are unnecessarily heating the outside, but the energy isn't being wasted. (For those of you who don't know how an air conditioner works, it doesn't "create" cool air, it just transports heat from the inside of your house to the outide of your house. If you have a heater and an A/C unit running against each other, you are, in actuality, just releasing the stored energy in fuel, then transporting it outside.)

Just a small point, but we tend to let these things slip in our educational system. Energy cannot be "wasted," only converted into a less desirable form.