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Gaming Computers Offer Huge, Untapped Energy Savings Potential
Required Snark writes: According to Phys.org, a study by Evan Mills at Berkeley Lab shows that "gamers can achieve energy savings of more than 75 percent by changing some settings and swapping out some components, while also improving reliability and performance" because "your average gaming computer is like three refrigerators." Gaming computers represent only 2.5 percent of the global installed personal computer (PC) base but account for 20 percent of the energy use. Mills estimated that gaming computers consumed 75 TWh of electricity globally in 2012, or $10 billion, and projects that will double by 2020 given current sales rates and without efficiency improvements. Potential estimated savings of $18 billion per year globally by 2020, or 120 terawatt hours (TWh) are possible. Mills started the site GreeningtheBeast.org.
You can read the full paper as a PDF.
How is it possible to take 20 pages to say so little that is actually meaningful? It basically boils down to "newer and/or lower performance components draw less power". No shit, Sherlock.
It's also rather misinformed when it comes to the availability of power-consumption information for gaming PC components. My current PC is a self-built gaming PC and I can assure you that when I was putting it together, power consumption information was absolutely something I looked at, because it affected my choice of PSU. And if you go to the manufacturers' websites, power consumption information is usually available upfront. If it's not, or if you want to know how it varies depending on loads, then there are any number of testing, benchmarking and review sites just a google search away.
There is probably an interesting article that could be written about minimising power consumption in a gaming PC, but it's not this one. In reality, power consumption is one aspect of a sensitive series of trade-offs. On graphics cards, for instance, you get get the same brute-force performance from AMD cards as you can from Nvidia cards at (usually) a much lower price - but the trade-off comes in heat and power consumption. So you can base your decision on a balance between how much you care about the up-front purchase costs of the card, vs ongoing power costs, potentially the cost of a new PSU and the noise/discomfort factor of having something that burns with the heat of a billion fiery suns in your PC. Most people building gaming PCs are not blind to this stuff.
The article reads like a lightweight piece of political advocacy for more regulation, trying to solve a problem which increasingly doesn't exist (the general trend over time is towards more power-efficient components and electricity prices act as a further restraint). So the author can, to be blunt, fuck right off.
From the article (I know, I know, but I was curious):
"The huge bottom line here is that gamers don't have to sacrifice performance to save energy," Mills said. "You can have your cake and eat it too. In fact, the efficient systems run cooler and quieter, both of which are desirable attributes among gamers."
...and...
They were able to achieve a 50 percent reduction in energy use while performance remained essentially unchanged. Additional energy savings were achieved through operational settings to certain components, yielding total savings of more than 75 percent.
Which is to say, quite right, it sounds like they are talking about diminishing performance a bit, but if they've figured out some decent ways to cut the amount of energy the system is using, it would sound to me like they may have created some additional headroom for overclockers dealing with overheating. After all, a cooler system may indicate you're leaving untapped potential on the table.
Having looked through their site, it appears that all they've really done is calculate the cost per watt for the performance offered by various components, and have made some swaps to get similarly- or better-performing components that operate at lower wattages, but their research is far from comprehensive. For instance, they posted a market survey that covers the efficiency of 9 PSUs, but PSUs are already rated based on their efficiency (e.g. Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze), and there are significantly more comprehensive lists out there that address the topic of how well the PSUs live up to their claimed standard (and that are also updated regularly as new PSUs hit the market). Likewise, you can find similar work done for other components.
If their site had done a better job of pulling those various resources together so as to provide a better bang-for-your-buck on your utility bill list and was comprehensive enough that I didn't feel like they were leaving out the vast majority of the products aimed at gamers, I'd have been much more favorably-inclined towards them, but this kinda seems like a weekend project done by a father and son team who have environmental aspirations. Merit worthy, certainly, but not worth much consideration from gamers (yet?).