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California To Adopt First US Energy-Saving Rules For Computers (reuters.com)
California regulators were poised on Wednesday to adopt the nation's first mandatory energy efficiency rules for computers and monitors -- devices that account for 3 percent of home electric bills and 7 percent of commercial power costs in the state. From a report on Reuters: The state Energy Commission said that when fully implemented, the plan will save consumers $373 million a year and conserve as much electricity annually as it takes to power all San Francisco's homes. Final approval of the standards, expected at a meeting in Sacramento of the five-member commission, caps a nearly two-year planning process that had input from environmentalists, industry, scientists and consumer groups. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an environmental group that helped devise the standards, has said the new standards would cut greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion in power generation by 700,000 tons a year. The California standards set a benchmark for a machine's overall energy use and leave manufacturers the flexibility to choose which efficiency measures to use to meet it -- an approach that the NRDC says fosters innovation.
You are more likely referring to the maximum load for all 3 of these. 90 W CPU's are labeled as such because that means they might reach as high as 90 W under a full load. However, many of these may not even be able to reach 75 W or 80 W when under a full load. And when you aren't encoding video or gaming, the load may be half that or way less.
I'm not a gamer, but I believe it is the same story for the GPU as well. Those high numbers are only reached while being taxed. They won't be anywhere near that while you are working on a spreadsheet.
Power supplies are also measured by the maximum amount of power they can supply. I can put a 1000 W PSU in my desktop, and it won't make it use any more power than it does now with a 300 W PSU. Ok, maybe a slight difference because of different efficiencies between the two, but they would be similar.
Lastly, the comment before yours was talking about "standby power". When a PC goes into standby mode, it is essentially turning everything off and keeping just enough power to keep information in RAM, and providing a tiny bit of power for other things. As soon as your start to use the PC again and wake it up, it will jump up in power usage.
Typical California thinking. Not everyone is cooling their homes. For the past few months, the vast majority of my utility bill has been heating.
Electronics (that I already manage power settings on, thank-you-very-much) giving off heat is a side benefit to me at least half the year - maybe more.
an approach that the NRDC says fosters innovation.
So, similar to the EPA's fuel additive mandate for a compound that is unavailable to anyone, claiming a mandate "fosters innovation" is actually newspeak for "They're going to have to invent something that doesn't exist right now." The feasibility and cost of which is not even considered.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia