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PSU Do you care about PC power consumption?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by SuperHans123, 3 Apr 2022.

  1. SuperHans123

    SuperHans123 Multimodder

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    I'll be honest, up until recently, I really didn't pay any attention and overclocked any graphics card I have owned and set all Windows power plans to 'prefer performance'
    Of late, what with the rising energy costs and the environmental concerns, I am starting to think about it a little bit.
    I saw a good video from the Aussie, 'Tech Yes City' about undervolting your graphics card at the expense of a small amount of performance and was considering giving it a go.

    What power considerations, if any, do you have in terms of your PC?
     
  2. Omnislip

    Omnislip Minimodder

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    I care, not only because I know that it is cost, but also because I know that it is heat, and I know that more heat is more noise.

    Even in the UK summer, my flat is a bit too well-insulated and I can feel it when I push my little 300W machine for a few hours

    I'm keen to stick to my 450W PSU but it doesn't look all that promising given the current direction of GPUs. The 1060/1070/RX480 generation look more impressive with every year that passes, and the Vega 56 I have now is decidedly power-sipping given the way the goalposts have been moving!
     
    Last edited: 3 Apr 2022
  3. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    I already felt nerves about 'how much is this costing me in electric?' when loading up my previous pc [a i5 4440 and GTX 1060... so hardly the thirstiest of parts]...

    A 3995WX and 3090ti? I'd probably be scared to turn the damn thing on...


    'Where's all the heat going to go?', 'is this going to cook itself' is a concern too but, especially right now, elec consumption would be the more pressing concern.
     
  4. adidan

    adidan Guesswork is still work

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    I mean I don't religiously look at the power but I'm certainly not going to go for the higher power draw components of I don't need to.

    My current CPU is a 65W, the only upgrade CPUwise on this board I'm really considering is the 65W 5700X.

    As for GPUs, I guess the roughly equivalent draw would be a 3060 (not an upgrade in my eyes) - a 3070 would be a bit more draw I guess but more of an upgrade.

    But if the 4000 series gobbles power I'm not going to bother, not sure what the AMD/intel offerings will be like.

    So I guess yes, it does come into my mind when considering a build but it doesn't completely restrict it - more of a balance so long as it does what I need.
     
  5. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    Whilst I don't really care I am conscious of it and there are some games where I'll cap performance via frame rate or use power profiles as the extra power is getting me nothing for example RTS and some of my racing games don't need to go to 200+fps nor do they need 5Ghz CPU. As mentioned helps to keep temps and noise in check. I can drop 300w doing this with no discernible difference. I also power down the PC via the smart plug (which does all the monitoring too) when I am finished as there are a few USB connected that don't power down and there's a ~10w static draw there.
     
  6. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    As an SFF veteran, I'm not happy the way GPUs and CPUs have gone recently with increasing power draw and heat to deal with.
    I've not had the money to go top end, but have also chosen parts for their power draw to keep within what older SFX PSUs could drive.
    I had a 300W ceiling for years, I'm now on a Corsair SF600, so have more headroom, and could go to 750W, but wouldn't.
    No idea what GPU I'd go for next even If I could afford one.
     
  7. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Maybe APUs will be 'good enough' but... where's the fun in that?
     
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  8. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    Looks like APUs have a way to before they are muscling in on half decent gaming action.

    My newest SFF build is AMD AM4 APU, and will be an ongoing project as I'm starting off really cheaply.

    I do have an older APU in a rig I inherited, but it's from the disappointing 'gutless' pre AM4 period. It's about Haswell i3 in performance.
     
  9. Mr_Mistoffelees

    Mr_Mistoffelees The Bit-Tech Cat. New Improved Version.

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    I’ve been reading rumours that the new AMD gpus will be more efficient than 40series cards. If that is the case, if I buy a new GPU next year, as is the current plan, it will mark my first red team card since I bought a Radeon HD 3470.
     
    Last edited: 3 Apr 2022
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  10. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    With the the seeming popularity of the Gabe Gear, and fakery and fudgery like FSR... it might not be as far off as it otherwise might've been
     
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  11. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    No, not really.

    I always have power-saving features enabled, so the vast majority of the time my PC is hardly doing anything. Like now - I have a couple of browser tabs open, the usual background stuff (Corsair iCue, Mooltipass software, Behringer FLOW8 control panel, Nvidia crap).... and it draws bugger all power

    upload_2022-4-3_19-33-5.png

    Ditto the GPU - admittedly Afterburner doesn't show the power draw here, but the clock speeds should speak for themselves

    upload_2022-4-3_19-33-58.png

    The amount of time I actually spend gaming is very little these days. Sometimes weeks will go by without me firing up any games at all and sometimes I'll be gaming for ~2-3 hours a day. The vast majority of the time this machine sits in a low-powered state.

    When it comes to energy usage and climate change however... I made sure a long time ago that we switched to fully renewable electricity a while ago. Previously we were with Green Network Energy, but now we're with Octopus. I already do everything I can to minimise my carbon footprint, but ultimately individuals can only do so much. Without wandering off into politics here, our energy/carbon crisis isn't being driven by hobbyists with high-power GPUs. I'm going to do everything I possibly can to reduce electricity usage and use all the power-saving settings I can (except on the TV because they make things look horrible), but I'm not going to beat myself up if my power usage is above normal.

    Having said that... We're already at the point where the power requirements for CPUs and GPUs are pretty damn high. If the 4000-series rumours are to be believed then it's just going to get silly.
     
  12. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    I'll let you know next quarter when the bill comes in.
     
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  13. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    Yes. Absolutely!

    I've always had perf/watt as my biggest yard-stick for generational leaps. Looking back on my GPU's (data from TPU GPU DB):
    upload_2022-4-3_20-38-20.png

    In an ideal world, this graph should be a flat line. And it can be, between 2006 8800GTX and 2017 1070 Ti if I had waited one more generation and got 670 instead of 580.
    upload_2022-4-3_20-7-33.png

    I keep a close eye on my energy use. For 1 hour of gaming, GPU at 100%, I tend to use 0.5 kWh of electricity in addition to other uses in the house. Meaning ~500w for everything PC gaming. Meaning 180 kWh over 1 year almost 1 hour a day, estimate of £54 at 30p/kWh.

    I could perhaps cut it down to 350w by reducing GPU by 100w+ with 6600. Meaning 53% power draw at 68% performance.
    Or less efficient nVidia 3060 at 170w. Meaning 68% power for 73% performance.
    Also cut down CPU to likes of 5700x or enable Eco mode on 5800x. Retaining 80%+ performance for 50w or so.




    Of course, when the sun is shinning and my solar panels are producing excess. I have watercooled my 2080 Ti and will turn up the board power to max 130%, and not worry about any inefficiencies. Because free electricity :p
    But I don't have time to game in the middle of the day :( So currently considering a home battery to time-shift my solar and all electricity to the cheap 8p/kWh period.

    But TBH, it's more cost driven and woo-shinny-home-tech driven than climate driven. So I will be disappointed with next-gen GPU if they draw excess without significant improvement in perf/watt, because this is my yard stick. But I won't beat myself up and compromise on performance if I decided I needed to upgrade.
     
    Last edited: 3 Apr 2022
  14. wolf5ster

    wolf5ster Minimodder

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    I believe my Pallit RTX2060 Storm X sips little power, and at this moment in time I can't see me upgrading anytime soon. Me personally I do care about power consumption.
     
  15. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    I used to on my main system - until I started having issues with my audio interface on resume from sleep and the proposed "fix" was to disable sleep entirely.
    And I thought that's not a very viable fix at all, until I checked and my desktop is 6w idle power consumption, so I don't worry about it there any more.

    But I've always generally chosen and tuned systems with power consumption at the back of my mind. Partly because the concept saving money, but when doing the maths in real terms it's usually very little even over the course of a year. Partly because of the concept of being greener, but again, in real terms little impact. So I guess mostly because I just dig efficiency.
     
  16. creative

    creative 500rwhp

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    nope. lol

    I have to many things on to worry about it. combines with my dual xeon unraid server, pfsense box, laptops, and my 3 x r710s with 2x25disk jbods...

    just ordered solar on saturday so I really dont need to worry about it. lol
     
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  17. Spraduke

    Spraduke Lurker

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    I tend to preferentially pick power efficient hardware (Ryzen 3600 and RTX 3070) but ultimately I don't end up worrying too much about overall power draw (assuming it stays <500-600w at load). I too have solar panels but daytime gaming is virtually zero but actual gaming time is also limited so the annual cost is peanuts versus the hardware!
     
  18. ShakeyJake

    ShakeyJake My name is actually 'Jack'.

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    Not for my desktop pc but I did have it in my mind when choosing parts for the servers.
     
  19. flame696

    flame696 Terminating People Since 1980....

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    I’ve really started to look at power consumption for my PCs as I have 4 of them running at least 4-5 hours a day. I’m still running an i7 2600k with now hopefully a gtx 970 so don’t know if the old part will consume more power then it’s worth??
     
  20. SuperHans123

    SuperHans123 Multimodder

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    What do you use four pcs for?
     

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