[SOLVED] Does my gaming pc use a lot of electricity?

[okjak808]

Before I start explaining I’ll be listing my pc specs first.

specs:

Case: NZXT H510

MOBO: Asus P8H61-M LE/CSM R2.0 M-ATX

CPU: Core i7-3770 (water cooled antec h20 620)

RAM: Super talent 8GB 1333mhz DDR3 ram
(16gb Corsair XMS3 delivering maybe tmr)

GPU: Gtx 970 founders edition (overclocked on MSI AB, 200+ core clock, 400+ Memory, core voltage never touched).

SSD: Toshiba Q pro 120GB

HDD: Toshiba 500GB 5,400RPM

PSU: Corsair RM750, year 2019 80plus gold

2 120mm fans (NZXT Aer something idk).


Alright so this is my gaming pc. Though I’m very concerned about it using too much wattage. My grandparents would get upset whenever I play on it, and tbh I understand that it’s hard to pay bills especially this year due to the coronavirus. I don’t play all day and mostly I game for about 4 hours max, other then that I often surf the web or watch YouTube. Most of the times I would use my PC for online classes which between periods would last up to 6 hours. I often force myself to take breaks, or prevent myself from staying up late to save electricity.

I did use PSU calculators on many webs to see how much wattage my pc would use, I usually get less than 400 watts, or to be specific 337 watts but I’m not sure if PSU calculators are accurate. I also heard that PSU with higher 80plus ratings are more efficient which I think uses less power under load I think? I’m not sure because I don’t really understand 80plus ratings.

I just really need to know if I’m the only family member in this house who uses a lot of electricity causing the bills to be high. I’m 18 and I’m still trying to get a job, if you guys are unfamiliar with state ids, or permit it’s some sort of identification I need in order for me to apply for a job or even create a bank account. Plus most of the DMV’s are closed due to the coronavirus which makes it harder for me to get a job.


I don’t even use my ceiling fan, or lights unless I really need it, even though in Hawaii at my location can get hot (unsure ambient temp).

Besides the issue with my house related stuff my main questions is, does my pc really use a lot of electricity?

thank you if you made it this f

 

[BogdanH]

Keep in mind, that all PSU "calculators" show max possible power consumption at full load. That is, your PC will consume 337W (per hour) if CPU and GPU are at 100% load, all fans full spinning and all drives running.
Every PSU has losses. That is, for doing it's job, PSU consumes some power too. How much power that is, depends on it's efficiency (80Plus rating). Very rough explanation: If PSU efficiency is 90% and PC internals consume 337W, then whole PC (including PSU), will consume about 370W. Also don't forget the monitor, which also consumes about 50W.
That is, when "heavy" gaming, your complete rig consumes about 420W per hour. Or about 2000W (2kW) in 5 hours of gaming.
Is that a lot? Well, depends on what you compare.. but yes, it sums up over the time -there's a reason why there's so much talk about "power efficiency"!
Anyway, when normally using PC (not gaming), you can assume complete rig consumes about 100-150W.

 

[USAFRet]

It actually costs less than it appears.

Lets assume 350watts, for 6 hours per day. Every day.

That comes out to $7.50 per month. (Depending on your local electricity cost).
Add in the monitor, and it is still under $10/month.

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/energy-cost-calculator.html

 

[BogdanH]

It actually costs less than it appears.

-agree!
But quite depends on view angle. For someone who normally pays $30/month, $10 can be an important increase.

 

[okjak808]

Keep in mind, that all PSU "calculators" show max possible power consumption at full load. That is, your PC will consume 337W (per hour) if CPU and GPU are at 100% load, all fans full spinning and all drives running.
Every PSU has losses. That is, for doing it's job, PSU consumes some power too. How much power that is, depends on it's efficiency (80Plus rating). Very rough explanation: If PSU efficiency is 90% and PC internals consume 337W, then whole PC (including PSU), will consume about 370W. Also don't forget the monitor, which also consumes about 50W.
That is, when "heavy" gaming, your complete rig consumes about 420W per hour. Or about 2000W (2kW) in 5 hours of gaming.
Is that a lot? Well, depends on what you compare.. but yes, it sums up over the time -there's a reason why there's so much talk about "power efficiency"!
Anyway, when normally using PC (not gaming), you can assume complete rig consumes about 100-150W.

Right I forgot to include my monitor, I think it uses 75 watts. It's a gaming acer monitor having 75hz. I also forgot that if I were game which I would use 420 per hour then yeah it adds up, so I guess it is a lot of electricity use, thank you very much for your reply.

 

[okjak808]

It actually costs less than it appears.

Lets assume 350watts, for 6 hours per day. Every day.

That comes out to $7.50 per month. (Depending on your local electricity cost).
Add in the monitor, and it is still under $10/month.

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/energy-cost-calculator.html

Well even though it may not seem a lot as I thought it would be, I won't take advantage of that like using my computer all day because I don't actually use a lot of electricity

 

[USAFRet]

Well even though it may not seem a lot as I thought it would be, I won't take advantage of that like using my computer all day because I don't actually use a lot of electricity

I'm not saying you should abuse it.

But many people not used to PC's see all that power and assume it is sucking up huge amounts of electricity.

 

[assasin32]

Kill A Watt would shut down the concern pretty quick and give you an accurate picture if your willing to spend a little for the device, if the math and calculators on the estimated electricity usage and cost doesn’t work.

 

[hotaru.hino]

I highly recommend buying a Kill-A-Watt, they're like $20.

Though as other people mentioned, websites that calculate power consumption typically assume everything's fully loaded. The last time I bothered with them, it claimed the PC I had would use around 450W. I ran the worst thing I could at the time that wasn't a "power virus", Crysis 3, and it barely went over half that from the wall. So that wasn't even factoring in efficiency.

Most of my builds in the past decade, which typically was something like an i5 or i7 with a 70 or 80 level NVIDIA GPU, have floated around 230W on the lower end to 300W on the upper end.

 

[USAFRet]

I highly recommend buying a Kill-A-Watt, they're like $20.

Though as other people mentioned, websites that calculate power consumption typically assume everything's fully loaded. The last time I bothered with them, it claimed the PC I had would use around 450W. I ran the worst thing I could at the time that wasn't a "power virus", Crysis 3, and it barely went over half that from the wall. So that wasn't even factoring in efficiency.

Most of my builds in the past decade, which typically was something like an i5 or i7 with a 70 or 80 level NVIDIA GPU, have floated around 230W on the lower end to 300W on the upper end.

My new GTR Pro HTPC is on a killawatt.
Currently, 10 watts at idle.

 

[okjak808]

I'm not saying you should abuse it.

But many people not used to PC's see all that power and assume it is sucking up huge amounts of electricity.

Exactly the case with my grandparents which is understandable because they don’t know much about technology. The reason why they think it’s using soo much electricity is because of the size of my case.

 

[okjak808]

Kill A Watt would shut down the concern pretty quick and give you an accurate picture if your willing to spend a little for the device, if the math and calculators on the estimated electricity usage and cost doesn’t work.

Even so they don’t know much about wattage, but this would prove myself that I know my pc is efficient.

 

[okjak808]

I highly recommend buying a Kill-A-Watt, they're like $20.

Though as other people mentioned, websites that calculate power consumption typically assume everything's fully loaded. The last time I bothered with them, it claimed the PC I had would use around 450W. I ran the worst thing I could at the time that wasn't a "power virus", Crysis 3, and it barely went over half that from the wall. So that wasn't even factoring in efficiency.

Most of my builds in the past decade, which typically was something like an i5 or i7 with a 70 or 80 level NVIDIA GPU, have floated around 230W on the lower end to 300W on the upper end.

I was really thinking about getting one of those too but I thought they costed a lot, maybe I’ll go to Walmart this week and see if they have, thank you very much.

 

[okjak808]

My new GTR Pro HTPC is on a killawatt.
Currently, 10 watts at idle.

My new GTR Pro HTPC is on a killawatt.
Currently, 10 watts at idle.

Wow 10 watts that’s a very low wattage pc!

 

[okjak808]

Sorry everyone if I’m making any errors I’m using my iPhone device and it’s pretty difficult for me than on my pc...

again thank you all for the replies this made me a lot better, though I’ll be happy to accept more replies if possible, thank you again!

 

[BogdanH]

Just for comparison:
-ceiling ventilator uses between 50-100W per hour,
-average LCD TV uses about 90W/h,
-vacuum cleaner uses (in average) about 1000W/h,
-electric iron consumes 2000-2500W, but as it turns on/off during use, actual power consumption is in average about 1200W/h.
-old "classic" electric bulb consumes about 80W/h (depending on power). LED bulb of similar light intensity consumes only 12-15W/h.

 

[assasin32]

LED's in my house consume even less than that, their usually 6-7 watts, and my bedside lamp is max of 3 watts (when not being dimmed) I think, though that one will only output 300lumens I think. The switch from incandescent made a very noticeable temperature difference in the house. The only incandescent bulbs I have left are the ones in the bathroom because 200+ watts of "wasted" heat from powering those decorative lightbulbs around the mirror sure do help on cold days.

So yeah if your using old incandescent bulbs and swap it out for them you may offset the computer completely.

If their still concerned about the power usage, you can drop the PC back to stock to conserve power or even under volt it. Than run games at 768p at 30fps or half refresh rate, though I would do that windowed or drop your monitor resolution (without stretching) so you get the black borders so it is still pixel perfect and not upscaling into a blurred mess. This would probably make your power usage while gaming plummet by a fairly good degree.

 

[okjak808]

LED's in my house consume even less than that, their usually 6-7 watts, and my bedside lamp is max of 3 watts (when not being dimmed) I think, though that one will only output 300lumens I think. The switch from incandescent made a very noticeable temperature difference in the house. The only incandescent bulbs I have left are the ones in the bathroom because 200+ watts of "wasted" heat from powering those decorative lightbulbs around the mirror sure do help on cold days.

So yeah if your using old incandescent bulbs and swap it out for them you may offset the computer completely.

If their still concerned about the power usage, you can drop the PC back to stock to conserve power or even under volt it. Than run games at 768p at 30fps or half refresh rate, though I would do that windowed or drop your monitor resolution (without stretching) so you get the black borders so it is still pixel perfect and not upscaling into a blurred mess. This would probably make your power usage while gaming plummet by a fairly good degree.

well yeah I can’t really do that because the light bulbs on my ceiling fan are like the smaller ones so I would have to go to the store and look for the right size. Although most the lights in our apartment should be modern as for the ceiling fans we got 2 months ago so they’re still new. Tried doing research about mines in my room to see how much wattage it uses but can’t really find it.

also I did research about my monitor it’s an Acer sa230 and surprised that it only uses 25 watts even with the power saving mode off, pretty impressive. Though I forgot to mention that I do have a speaker connected to my pc, it’s a Bose sl3 Bluetooth, but I’m using the AUX port cause my mobo does not support Bluetooth. It uses around 18 watts and I only use it for YouTube or music, while gaming I use my headphones instead.

thank you all for your replies hope you’re having a safe and good day/night!