Slashdot Mirror
Digging Into the Electrical Cost of PC Gaming
New submitter MBAFK writes "My coworker Geoff and I have been taking power meters home to see what the true cost of PC gaming is. Not just the outlay for hardware and software, but what the day-to-day costs really are. If you assume a 20 hour a week habit, and using $0.11 a KWH, actually playing costs Geoff $30.83 a year. If Geoff turns his PC off when he is not using it, he could save $66 a year."
I bought a kill-a-watt meter a while back when I started dabbling in Bitcoin mining and it was a real eye-opener.
It's a very similar problem to OP's situation since Bitcoin mining and gaming both use high performance video cards.
Meanwhile the Geoff and his coworker discuss these types atrocities at their daily meeting at Starbucks while sipping on their third expresso.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
Running PC games can easily take 300-500W with a high-end graphics card. Posting on Facebook probably uses 30-50W on a modern desktop PC (plus whatever the monitor uses in both cases).
If they were using Free Trade Watts, it wouldn't be an issue.
Indeed, I scrap my hardware every 2 months so that I can be absolutely sure that I'm saving money and preserving the environment.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Sleep on a modern machine is pretty damn good. On my main gaming PC if you turn off the monitor and sleep the system it uses 3.18 watts. If you turn the machine off rather than sleep you use 2.92 watts.
Yeah every now and then Slashdot has these silly articles about PC power consumption, "kill a watt" etc.
The power consumption of modern PCs (post P4) has gone down to a level where most home users would usually be better off looking for savings in other areas. Driving more efficiently, not using as much cooling/heating (and making it more efficient - insulation, sealing etc).
As for gaming, sure a high powered gaming rig will use a few hundred watts (and usually less if you're not doing SLI). But that's far from the most energy hungry way of having fun. Your hobby could be drag racing, or hiking/rock climbing somewhere that requires a 1 hour drive, or even baking cakes. FWIW even cycling and other sports might be more energy hungry if you replace the calories burnt by eating more of stuff that requires a fair bit of energy to produce ( e.g. US corn fed beef).
From various sources:
1 pound of beef = 13-15 pounds of CO2 ( http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2009-04-21-carbon-diet_N.htm )
1 kWh = 2.3 pounds of CO2 ( http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html )
so 1 pound of beef = 5.6-6.5kWh
So if all that exercise makes you eat an additional half pound of beef (400kcal), that's about the equivalent of running a 300W gaming rig + monitor for 9 to 10 hours.
In contrast 1 pound of chicken = 1.1 pounds of CO2.
I've even seen many people here who say they still prefer to use incandescent lighting. It doesn't take that many bulbs to use as much as a gaming rig, even fewer for a facebook/browsing PC/notebook. A single fluorescent tube lamp uses about 40W already.
If you are playing PC games the lights all over the house may be turned off. If you were not playing PC games then you might be moving around the house with the lights on. Likewise in winter your heating from the game is just heating your house. Even better it's heating the room you are in, so you can let the house be more cool. If you were not gaming perhaps you would be driving your car somewhere, like your girl friends house, and using gasoline. It could be that gaming saves you money over alternative activities in terms of electricity.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.