Cost of running a gaming pc?
deleted2506931
deleted2506931
My son has a gaming pc that he built,I'm a little concerned about the cost of running it,can anyone tell me how much they think it would cost to run per hour please as i haven't got a clue,we're with octopus and electricity is 27.63 per kw/h
It has a 750 watt power unit
Ryzen 7 3700x cpu
Ge force rtx 2060 6gb graphics card
2 monitors both AsusVG248 24"
It has a 750 watt power unit
Ryzen 7 3700x cpu
Ge force rtx 2060 6gb graphics card
2 monitors both AsusVG248 24"
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If not gaming some phones double up as a PC and are much much cheaper to run, you can also buy a Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 which works well as a computer for anything other than gaming (will run only very lightweight 2d games).
Also there is no point in idling a computer so if it's not going to be used more than 5-10 minutes turn it off or set it to go to sleep. Turn the monitor off after 5 minutes of not using it (standby mode is fine). (edited)
Replying to
If you don't have a monitor you can put between the pc and the mains, then turn off everything in the house(it won't hurt the freezer etc for 10 mins) and watch the reading on your electric meter. Make sure speakers, monitors and any accessories are fully live.
Make it 10 or 15 mins, then multiply usage by 6 or 4 to give yourself a guideline.
It won't be fully accurate, but enough to within pennies on the day
Smart plugs with monitors are available for less than £10, and can be used to check all of your devices (edited)
But to get back on topic the power consumption is dependant on what it's doing, computing devices these days are very good at scaling power use down when it's not absolutely needed (because a lot of them are laptops and battery powered).
Looking at reviews the 3700X's maximum power limit is 90W while an RTX 2060 hits 170W. Add another 100W for any specific manufacturer boosts, draw of the other components and the efficiency of the power supply and I'd say it's likely to be around 350W-400W when being pushed to the maximum.
Some games will do that, but many other things related to gaming won't and power consumption when doing less demanding stuff like watching a stream is probably around 50W or so.
With the details that you've provided, this estimates around 60/year but you're able to get more specific information the more details you put in.
Also this is based on 4 hours/day of gaming. Also no idea what unit cost of electricity they're using. Link below if you wanna plug in more information.
outervision.com/pow…tor
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Things are going to get worse with the next gen where both GPU and CPU TDPs are going up - poor decisions given the energy situation.
Ive under-volted the GPU and limit it to 80% GPU load max but in fact have started to use the Switch a lot more and you can easily see the benefit on the smart meter data. (edited)
You can see my usage went up a lot a weekends when I was mostly gaming online. I'm a mod/admin for a few discord servers so my PC is on 24/7, in Windows Power Save when not in use.
In June I was using 2 monitors but I'm now just using 1 as that helped dropped my usage a bit. In July I was using 2 USB fans through my PC so the usage went up a very small bit again.
Sadly without some form of power monitor you can only make guesses as most PCs throttle power usage so it will vary depending on use. I would budget for £1/day
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It changes between idle and playing intense games.
At idle (office work, watch youtube) it does around 120W. At load (playing fortnite for example), it can do 250-290W if my memory serves me correct. Running through the calculator, its pretty cheap even with the current price cap, if you play 2 hours, surf for 2, probably less than 40p day. Im not sure about your current setup, but it must be in that ballpark
but running 2 monitors may well make the gfx card idle at a higher mhz (higher power draw) when not gaming,
that's the reason i've always just stuck to one monitor
Also on a side note, same principle FPS in game doesn't change benchmarks on games was 105-120 in far cry and with second screen on a YouTube video guide it was 103 minimum but max was 126 even more somehow haha so again the difference is basically nothing.
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My rig is pretty much the same spec as mentioned in this so can nab those figures but it is possible to work out exactly using those calculations.
Kitguru found system power consumption on an overclocked i9-10900k with an RTX 3060 to average 300W on Cyberpunk:
kitguru.net/com…30/