Energy consumption/energy cost of gaming PC?

0byme75341jo28

Hi,

I've recently moved to college with my gaming PC and am just wondering how much electricity it would be likely to use? We've got pre pay electricity so all my housemates can watch as our credit slowly creeps down, I don't want to be blamed for it unnecessarily if it turns out my PC in fact doesn't use a lot of electricity. I'm willing to top it up a bit myself if my PC is likely the cause. A rough estimation would be fine, I'm just unaware of what I need to do to figure this out, and there isn't a lot on the topic on Google.

I have this PC, but with a r9 270x instead of the r7 370. I won't be playing it for more than 20 hours a week regularly, maybe once every two months, and some weeks I won't be on it at all. It'd be really really helpful if someone could figure this out.

Thanks.

AlmightyCushion

Electricity is about 20c a unit. 1 unit of electricity is a KWh, so 1000 watts being used for a hour will cost 20 cent. The power supply on that computer is 450w so if it was running at 100% for an hour, it would use about 10c worth of electricity. Obviously, it's not going to be running at 100% all the time, that would be ridiculous.

AMD processors are more power hungry than Intel but the 8350 isn't that bad thankfully. According to this (http://www.corsair.com/en/blog/2014/november/fx-8350_power_to_performance) the same processor with a 290x (a much more power hungry card) averages about 325 watts whilst gaming. That'd be about 6 or 7 cents every hour. With your card it would probably only use about 250ish watts whilst gaming (I'm guessing here) so about 5 cents every hour give or take. Regardless of how good or bad my last guesstimation is it's feck all money. The shower or the cooker will use way more electricity.

The_Valeyard

The kettle would be worse than a gaming pc.

ShadowHearth

The_Valeyard wrote: »

The kettle would be worse than a gaming pc.

+1

Kettle, shower, microwave, washing machine. Will be the main ones to worry about.

dreamers75

Missing the usage here, hes in college assuming 6pm to 12pm every day and 24(2x12) hours weekend its about €6 a week.

Small time appliances wont come close to a PC being on for 6 hours.


Fcuk studying like

AlmightyCushion

dreamers75 wrote: »

Missing the usage here, hes in college assuming 6pm to 12pm every day and 24(2x12) hours weekend its about €6 a week.

Small time appliances wont come close to a PC being on for 6 hours.


Fcuk studying like

He says his usage above, 20 hours a week. That's only about a euro every week.

dreamers75

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

He says his usage above, 20 hours a week. That's only about a euro every week.

Its september :pac:

0byme75341jo28

dreamers75 wrote: »

Its september :pac:

A man can dream.... :pac:

nesf

dreamers75 wrote: »

Missing the usage here, hes in college assuming 6pm to 12pm every day and 24(2x12) hours weekend its about €6 a week.

Small time appliances wont come close to a PC being on for 6 hours.


Fcuk studying like

In a shared house I disagree. People don't co-ordinate very well and usually don't cook one meal for all of them etc. Even for one day at 6 hours usage it's not hard to get there with a kettle (10 mins use approx = 1kW, depends on a lot of factors but for multiple people making tea/coffee at different times of day it's not hard to beat 1,500kW which the PC *won't* be drawing anyway over those 6 hours most likely).

People underestimate how energy intensive heating and cooling things is.

AlmightyCushion

nesf wrote: »

In a shared house I disagree. People don't co-ordinate very well and usually don't cook one meal for all of them etc. Even for one day at 6 hours usage it's not hard to get there with a kettle (10 mins use approx = 1kW, depends on a lot of factors but for multiple people making tea/coffee at different times of day it's not hard to beat 1,500kW which the PC *won't* be drawing anyway over those 6 hours most likely).

People underestimate how energy intensive heating and cooling things is.

Most kettles are 3kW so 10 minutes of usage is only 500W. Still a lot mind.

nesf

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Most kettles are 3kW so 10 minutes of usage is only 500W. Still a lot mind.

That's what I get for quickly googling something. :P

But yeah, it's still 2 hours of PC usage (assuming peak) per 10 minutes and in a house with 4 people making tea at different times of the day you'd be shocked how many times a kettle will get boiled. It's the same if the oven or hobs are being used to cook more than one dinner. Or four people showering every morning.

Sonics2k

I've found a definite bonus of having two gaming PC's in the house is we don't need to put on the heating as much.

Digital Solitude

Sonics2k wrote: »

I've found a definite bonus of having two gaming PC's in the house is we don't need to put on the heating as much.

Tell the housemates to stick a mug of water between that 270X and 8350 :pac:

nesf

Sonics2k wrote: »

I've found a definite bonus of having two gaming PC's in the house is we don't need to put on the heating as much.

My wife used to say the same thing about our living room when I was using two reference 6970s...

degrassinoel

Digital Solitude wrote: »

Tell the housemates to stick a mug of water between that 270X and 8350 :pac:

Works for toast too

ShadowHearth

Sonics2k wrote: »

I've found a definite bonus of having two gaming PC's in the house is we don't need to put on the heating as much.

Holy crap yes lol. The living room I got my pc in is always roasting. When I go out of it a wave of cold hits me.

Shiminay

I used to heat my small little bedroom room in a shared flat by playing CoD4 on an 8800 GTX for 15 minutes