Energy Costs of Gaming PCs

Extra Energy Costs Associated with Gaming PCs

According to a study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the typical gaming computer consumes as much power each year as approximately three refrigerators. This evaluation is just one of the alarming discoveries in the impact of high-performance gaming computers on household energy consumption. Whether we expected it or not, the rising costs of energy bills are here. Join us as we take a closer look at the extra energy costs associated with gaming PCs, so you can take steps to reduce your carbon footprint.

Hardcore Gaming and Higher Energy Consumption
As the great debate between PC games and console games wages on, PC games continue to use a tremendous amount of energy. A recent study printed in Energy Efficiency estimates that at least one billion people around the world engage in some form of digital gaming. Furthermore, PC gaming brands and manufacturers exaggerate the significant potential for energy savings. Some companies claim that central processing units, graphics processing units, power supply units, motherboards, and memory (RAM) have the potential to trim energy by as much as 1.3 to 139.2-fold. However, measurements show that the peak power potential for much of this hardware is considerably lower than most component manufacturers are willing to admit.

On average, a gaming computer consumes approximately 1,400 kWh per year, or the same amount of energy as ten gaming consoles, six standard computers, and appliances around your home. These estimates can be likened to 25 standard electric power plants. What does this mean to you? The kind of power plant that can power entire cities is, instead, running electricity directly to people like you playing Call of Duty, Metal Gear Rising, or Mortal Kombat.

When you use a PC to check social media, send emails, or browse the web, your processor is barely working hard at all. When you use a PC to game, your processor is in peak power mode. Most hardcore gaming PCs spend approximately 4.5 hours per day in peak mode. Consumer PCs, on the other hand, do not intensively compute, so they only spend about one percent of the time at peak power mode.

Learn from Your Energy Consumption Habits
Manufacturers can address the problem of energy consumption by creating efficient PC components. Hard drives, motherboards, and peripherals could all have efficiency ratings. Better liquid cooling systems can also drop overall temperature and effectually reduce overheating to improve system health. However, you can tackle the problem of energy consumption by switching processor and graphics processing settings.

Better yet, outfit your rig with energy efficient settings and gear without compromising on performance. While a 10TB hard drive consumes approximately 10 watts, a solid-state drive of equal size consumes only 2.6 watts. CPUs with a larger number of cores often have better power management features. Invest in bigger RAM memory. You can also reduce the frequency of your graphics card or invest in a motherboard with an integrated video card.

Major electricity providers multiply the amount of kilowatt hours you use per month by their rate per kilowatt-hour to calculate your energy bill. We use “aggregate CPU frequency” when determining how much power your central processing unit is consuming. The higher the frequency, the more energy your datacenter consumes, and the higher your electric bill will be. If you have any questions about this article or need help finding energy efficient hardware, please contact XOTIC PC today for additional information.

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