What is the Best way to lower Electricity Bills on a High-end Gaming PC?

[Zynchro]

The title pretty much explains it all.

I've underclocked/undervolted my CPU and GPU, to use less Voltage than normal, but i want to lower my bills furthermore. I've also lowered Monitor brightness on both of my 1080p screens.
I want to lower my electricity bills without performance loss on my PC.
Please post your solutions and ideas!
Here are my PC specs, if you're ever going to need them:

CPU: Intel i7-6700k Skylake 4.2GHz
RAM: HyperX Fury DDR4 2666MHz 2x8
GPU: ASUS GTX 980Ti STRIX
PSU: Corsair RM750X
OS: Windows 10
SSD: Samsung EVO 850 1TB SSD
HDD: Seagate Barracuda 3TB HDD

...and no, i wont switch PC hardware to something more energy saving.

Thanks in advance.

 

[vrumor]

If you game a couple of hours a day, turn it off when you arent using it. That wont overburden anyones bill.

 

[Zynchro]

If you game a couple of hours a day, turn it off when you arent using it. That wont overburden anyones bill.

Sorry, but aren't most people doing that theses days?

 

[USAFRet]

Have you actually analyzed how much (or how little) your system is actually using?

You might be chasing a non-event.

 

[Onus]

I'm a stickler for low power use also, however I don't believe that you'll see much difference (more than a few cents per month) unless you simply use it less. You have an efficient PSU, you've already underclocked / undervolted, so there's not much left. If you play on lowered settings (e.g. "High" rather than "Ultra"), you'll put a little less load on your graphics card, but that's about it.

 

[Dunlop0078]

You have already lost performance if you undercloked the cpu. How much are you paying for electricity that your computer affects your bill this much? Do you have your computer under full load for many hours everyday? I mean lowering monitor brighteness to save power? That would be a matter of a few cents a month on my bill.

There is always a trade off, if you want to use less power you will more than likely get less performance. One thing may be to turn on the EPU in the bios, make sure sync all cores is turned off in the bios, change the power plan in windows to power saving, change the power plan in nvidia control panel to power saving. The part that is going to consume the most power in your rig is the 980 ti, the most energy savings you will likely be able to muster will come from reigning that 980 ti in a bit thorough undercloking and under voting as well as software power plans. All of the things I just mentioned may affect performance in some way.

 

[Sylvvester]

You can play games using low settings and cap your framerate to 30fps.

 

[captaincharisma]

if you want to save power then trade your gaming pc in for a playstation or xbox

 

[Zynchro]

You have already lost performance if you undercloked the cpu. How much are you paying for electricity that your computer affects your bill this much? Do you have your computer under full load for many hours everyday? I mean lowering monitor brighteness to save power? That would be a matter of a few cents a month on my bill.

There is always a trade off, if you want to use less power you will more than likely get less performance. One thing may be to turn on the EPU in the bios, make sure sync all cores is turned off in the bios, change the power plan in windows to power saving, change the power plan in nvidia control panel to power saving. The part that is going to consume the most power in your rig is the 980 ti, the most energy savings you will likely be able to muster will come from reigning that 980 ti in a bit thorough undercloking and under voting as well as software power plans. All of the things I just mentioned may affect performance in some way.

Thanks,

I've already tried to use power saving instead of balanced, that results in a huge performance loss. Went from 60 FPS to 20 FPS in most games.

My electricity bill is around $60-$70 a month.

 

[13thmonkey]

You have already lost performance if you undercloked the cpu. How much are you paying for electricity that your computer affects your bill this much? Do you have your computer under full load for many hours everyday? I mean lowering monitor brighteness to save power? That would be a matter of a few cents a month on my bill.

There is always a trade off, if you want to use less power you will more than likely get less performance. One thing may be to turn on the EPU in the bios, make sure sync all cores is turned off in the bios, change the power plan in windows to power saving, change the power plan in nvidia control panel to power saving. The part that is going to consume the most power in your rig is the 980 ti, the most energy savings you will likely be able to muster will come from reigning that 980 ti in a bit thorough undercloking and under voting as well as software power plans. All of the things I just mentioned may affect performance in some way.

Thanks,

I've already tried to use power saving instead of balanced, that results in a huge performance loss. Went from 60 FPS to 20 FPS in most games.

My electricity bill is around $60-$70 a month.

I would expect that $5 of that is the PC ($0.15/unit = 5/0.15 = 33 units. which on say 330W from the wall = 100 hours of usage per month. so 3-4 hours per day.

So what can you save, you might be able to reduce that by 50W fully loaded usage = so 280W from the wall @100hours per month = 28 units per month x$0.15 = $4.20 so you can save 80c.

Now lets say that you're actually doing 200hrs of gaming, that would mean that the same reduction could save you $1.60 per month.

Turning the light off whilst gaming would have a bigger effect than saving 50W.

 

[faalin]

You have a 750W PSU, at peak your probably only using say 500W. A normal hair dryer on high heat uses an average of 1500W, change all the light bulbs in the house over to LED.

By changing the voltage just slightly on your cpu and gpu might save you a $1 for the month. Pick one of these up and start testing things in the house https://www.amazon.com/P3-P4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

 

[dudeman509]

Other stuff in your house generally uses more power than your PC. Mine uses ~300W when gaming. Really not that much.

Something like a clothes dryer can be anywhere from 2500-6000W depending on the size. A typical electric water heater is 4500-5500 and runs for an hour or more.

I'd recommend picking up a Kill-A-Watt if you don't have one. Turning off/unplugging appliances that use a good bit of standby power (you'd be surprised at what some pull down when "off") may save you a buck or two.

 

[gdmaclew]

You could "borrow" something like this...

https://www.amazon.ca/P3-P3IP4400-Electricity-Usage-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU

From your local library if they have them.
Or buy one if you are really into saving electricity.

 

[USAFRet]

Yep.
The PC is a minor player in the monthly elec bill. Tweaking config and settings, might gain you $3/year. And will almost certainly impact performance.

Turn off one monitor while gaming gives you a much better return.

 

[helpstar]

or you could power off your PC for one month and have a look at your bill then, to compare the bill from last month

washing machine and fridge are drawing much more power too

if you have an electric heating, that would draw the most.

 

[Solandri]

As others have said, turn it off when not in use, which you're probably doing already. If your electricity price is the U.S. average of $0.12 per kWh, then something left on 24/7 for a year costs about $1 per Watt. So a PC which burns 50 Watts when idle will use at least $50 of electricity if left on all the time for a year. Likewise, a PC which uses 200 Watts when gaming but is used just 2 hours/day (1/12th of a day) will cost you $200/12 = $16.7 in a year.

Get one of these to measure the actual power consumption by the PC (and other things in your house). Modern CPUs and lately GPUs have gotten to be very power-thrifty when idle. So it may not actually be consuming as much power as you fear.

https://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4460-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B000RGF29Q

The biggest power consumers for the average household is the heating / air conditioning bill. So in the winter running the PC may actually be free, since its electricity use ends up heating your house (it's the same as running an electric space heater). But in the summer you're paying double since first you have to pay to run the PC, then pay to run the air conditioner to pump the heat the PC generates out of the house. You may actually be better off putting the PC outside on the patio, and running the cables for the monitor, mouse, and keyboard through the door (use weather sealing foam to fill any gap to prevent loss of cooled air). Or if you're willing to suffer the slightly degraded image quality, put the PC outside, run an ethernet cable through a crack in the window or even use 802.11ac WiFi, and use the gaming PC remotely via Steam In-Home Streaming.

Edit: Consider replacing the 980 TI with a 10x0 GPU. Maxwell (the 8xx and 9xx series) was manufactured on 28nm lithography. Pascal is manufactured on 16nm so is able to provide much more performance at the same or lower power consumption. I'm not sure this would be worth it financially since GPUs depreciate like crazy. But if the overall goal is to reduce power consumption regardless of cost, this is an option.

 

[helpstar]

it´s a big overview of things, that can help saving energy:
https://energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/09/f18/61628_BK_EERE-EnergySavers_w150.pdf

 

[Zynchro]

I really weren't expecting that many answers, holy crap...!

Thank you guys!

 

[Corwin65]

Had a client ask me why his PC was using so much electricity as he used it 3 hours per day then shut off and unplugged it.

Come to find out he has 2 TV's running 24/7 cause he needs the sound, and can't sleep without it, and he has 2 freezers, and industrial sized dryer and washing machines running at least 8 hours a day.