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The Power Consumption of Modern PCs

Posted by Zonk on from the keep-your-lights-off-to-compensate dept.

janp writes "The power consumption of modern PCs has skyrocketed the past few years. Hardware.Info has done some fairly extensive research on the power usage of various configurations. It turns out the a high-end gaming rig can easily use more than 400 W, and that putting a system in stand-by isn't as saving as you might think. The article has some interesting tips to save on power costs."

3 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Get Laptops or smaller by Salvance · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you're worried about power consumption, you're not going to buy a top of the line gaming rig. You'd probably buy a relatively low powered laptop (or even buy a very underpowered laptop similar to a OLPC machine). Gaming machines will continue to be bigger and bigger power hogs. More power consumption = faster and better gameplay, no way around it.

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    1. Re:Get Laptops or smaller by tomstdenis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Not really. more crap in game IMPLIES more power, but compare say a 486 to a Core 2 Duo. The latter is much more efficient per MIPS than the former.

      To put it another way, to match the power [in MIPS] of a typical 1989 486 desktop, you could do so with far less power consumption today. The problem is few companies write conservative software. Go ahead, make your application inefficient, a new cpu is always around the corner!

      What people seem to forget is that we were doing word processing, vector graphics and all that on old school Mac IIs in the mid to early 80s. Those programs certainly didn't require hundreds of megabytes of ram or gigabytes of disk space. Of course people associate numerical requirements with quality. CPU has more megahurts? It must be better! Game needs a faster GPU? It must be awesomer! etc...

      I'm personally impress with efficiency not bulkyness. Write me a competent word processor that fits on a floppy disk. That'd be a hoot.

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  2. Re:No your math is wrong (follow up) by Darkfred · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Obviously I bought a new refridgerator. A 10 year old refridgerator is just not efficient anymore.

    But the scariest thing I found during my power audit was that each incandescent lightbulb was taking more power than my computer at rest. A single chandelier in my house accounted for 1/4 of my electrical bill.
    By replacing all the lightbulbs with compact flourescent I was able to shave a 3rd off my monthly bill. (still quite high because of an old ac system).

    In conclusion your computer is such a minor contribution to electricity that you shouldn't even be considering it before you fix the big offenders.

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