I have a Watt-Meter right on my PC plug next to my monitor so I can always see how much I consume. It’s crazy how much the monitors alone take up, it’s kind 40 KW/h each. I’m considering removing one of them.
KW/h is a measure of total energy, not instantaneous power. Your watt meter was saying that since last reset of the value it measured 40 KW/h of energy use. That’s not an insignificant amount - a Chevy Bolt can go around 180 miles on 40KW/h. Watts, or kilowatts, are instantaneous power. That same Bolt can easily pull 100KW while accelerating and if it could somehow do that for an hour, it would have used 100KW/h. It could never make it the whole hour as it has a 65KW/h battery, so it would run out after 39 minutes.
What you’re describing is kWh, not kW/h. You need to multiply power with time to get back to energy. An appliance using 1kW of power for 1h “uses” 1kWh of energy. The same appliance running for 2h requires 2kWh instead.
kW/h doesn’t really make sense as a unit, although it could technically describe the rate at which energy consumption changes over time.
Do you mean kW or kWh?
Neither hopefully. The former at least is a unit of power, but 40 kW is enough to heat up a whole apartment building.
In reality a large and older monitor might use a couple hundred watts. A small modern 24" will probably use closer to 50 W (guesstimating), which is still a decent chunk of the power draw of a budget build.
True, they probably ment to say 40W, or as the EU energy label likes to say: 40kWh/1000h
But seriously though, I cut off a good 30-40% from my GPUs power limit and would you look at that, I still enjoy the games I play.
Have to run most of them at low to medium settings anyway, so might as well.
Only thing left to improve it further would be undervolting, I should try that at some point.
Undervolt it too. Depending on what GPU you have, you might drop an additional 20-40% without a performance hit. An older GTX1070 I used to have dropped power consumption by 40%. The energy savings weren’t that big, but it was nice and quiet
Currently using a GTX 970 on EndeavourOS, I believe tuxclocker can do undervolting, haven’t tried it yet
Undervolting has the added benefit of reducing silicon degradation. I don’t know how much it’ll help your GPU, considering it’s age, but it’s something
I’ve put it through absolute overclocking hell, and it still runs as happily as it always did, so there’s that.
I game on lower resolution because a lot of modern games are too hyper detailed for me and I get lost in the crisp information density. That and I hate the sound of computer fans
- Buying Noctua NH-D15 because it keeps the CPU the coolest
- Buying 360mm AIO because it is the most silent
I’ve been replaying FFXIV recently and I had the game running at the maximum refresh rate of my monitor and it was making the fans run harder. it took me way too long to realise that I should just go a setting down for refresh rate instead of altering fan speeds.
I get lost in the crisp information density.
Man you’re gonna hate this thing called the real world. I hear the pixels are mere nanometers across
That’s the crisp part. A lot of modern games seem to be obsessed with making every single pixel pop out at you. Rummaging around outside is not like that it’s softer. A real world comparison would be something like malls which are obsessed with making every inch of visible space distinctly pop. I also hate being in malls
Oh like too saturated and colorful. Yeah I get that
Gaming on a lower resolution because I’m playing a JRPG from the 90s.
Gaming on lower resolution because it’s a pixel art game
Gaming on 8K because it’s a pixel art game
This person gets it.
Gaming on a lower resolution because it’s not a pixel art game, but I wish it were
Your comment is objectively better then mine.
Thanks, but yours actually made a good point, whereas mine is just silly
And then it’s blurry because technology is amazing.
Sometimes I’ll lower resolution or quality just so a game loads quicker.
Just set a frame limit
Already set. I’m not that competitive player and my reflexes are worse than a sloth’s. So I didn’t even bother to buy a higher refresh rate monitor than 60.
Not only does this reduce GPU power usage but CPU as well.
It ticks me off when i see twitch streamers with the fps displayed and its running at 300+ fps. What a waste of electricity, money and hardware.
Eh, more frames means better latency, but up to what point it still makes sense is a whole other story.
Turn on Nvidia reflex/AMD Anti-Lag and you got both, lower latency and lower power usage
Reflex at 100 fps still won’t compare to 300 fps without Reflex though
I wonder why, because technically it should be pretty much the same thing
Reflex just shaves off the extra overhead you’d get from having the gpu run at its limit. It won’t make a low framerate have the same latency as a drastically higher one
I know, that’s exactly what I am talking about
you might not see a difference between 100fps and 300fps for example, but the feel is certainly there, because those frames are still being rendered and is more information. it can be the difference between landing a headshot and missing for pro players, even if the refresh rate is lower, so its not wasted at all.
for pro players
Exactly. Most people aren’t pro players however. I’ve also seen this with games like Baldur’s Gate fwiw.
Not only that but people seem to do it sometimes just to flex, when turning on VSync is an objectively better experience with less screen tearing. There’s ZERO reason to drive 300fps when your monitor is only capable of 144Hz.
vsuck sucks, rwsl ones use vrr
You know the VSync setting had to be enabled in a lot of games for VRR to work right?
Gaming on low resolution because the game is premised on low poly fun, not high end graphics covering for mediocre gameplay.
Gaming on lower resolution because 480p just feels like home.
*drooling*
Nice cucumber you got there.
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Gaming on lower resolution because electricity prices are high.
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Gaming on lower resolution because it removes obstacles and gives a tactical advantage.
- Gaming on a new GPU because it’s faster
- Gaming on an old GPU because it’s VRAM is dying and sometimes the walls disappear
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Retro gaming… Low res… CRT filter with the warped edges and blooooooom effects… this is the ideal way to play your SNES games. Try it with Super Metroid, that shit is straight up unnerving and beautiful.
Games that drop framerate when game loses focus are fun. Something like Wurm or RS don’t need fancier framerate when I’m not even looking!
Every game can do this. It’s a setting in your GPU’s control panel.
This is why I do love that my PC is powered by renewable energy. It blows my mind how expensive power is everywhere else, plus I don’t wanna game if it means I gotta roll coal like huge parts of the world.
Quebec / BC moment
Current state of the world
