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I’ve always thought of gaming as a virtuous low-impact form of entertainment, insofar as it displaces real-world pursuits like foreign ski holidays, gasoline-po
by jl6 5y ago
I’ve always thought of gaming as a virtuous low-impact form of entertainment, insofar as it displaces real-world pursuits like foreign ski holidays, gasoline-powered road trips, or land-hogging golf courses.
But burning nearly a kilowatt on a gaming rig feels like a step too far. Sure, the power could be sourced from wind or solar plants, but there’s still a level of excessive conspicuous consumption going on here that doesn’t sit right with me.
- unglaublich 5y agoWhy? Your home heating consumes 5-50kW. In colder climates, the power consumption will be compensated by less home heating.
- tgv 5y agoEven if, in warmer climates the offset will be doubled by the AC.
- fomine3 5y ago5kW minimum, seriously? Not 5kWh/day?
- bestouff 5y agoif you compare that with an inefficient electric heater. Otherwise, your gaming gear will consume way more electricity for the same heating power than, say, a heat pump.
- tgb 5y agoTrue but doesn't change the conclusions dramatically, does it? If a heat pump is twice as efficient as electrical heating then you're still displacing half the wattage from your rig with reduced heating. On the other hand, taking heat into account just makes matters worse in the summer, and I haven't known a gamer who takes half the year off.
- timw4mail 5y agoAn electric heater is ~100% efficient. The power generation is much less efficient. The heat pump can be effectively more than 100% efficient, but that's because it's moving heat.
- denton-scratch 5y agoWhat's an "inefficient electric heater"? Is that a device that generates more light than heat? Surely all the energy you put into any machine is eventually going to turn into heat? Hmm - perhaps there are heaters that generate heat mechanically, and the resulting losses are sonic.
- nicoburns 5y agoThere are electric heat pumps which move heat from the ground into your space which use drastically less energy than electric heaters that convert electricity into heat directly.
- denton-scratch 5y agoSure; but that's because a heat pump has the potential to be > 100% "efficient" (which isn't real efficiency, in the thermodynamic sense).
- stefan_ 5y agoIt's a trivial amount of power and even better, we have already electrified all the components! Computers don't require us to go out and replace all the combustion engine vehicles still around. Clean up the grid and that's it.
- chaosbutters314 5y agoif you crunch the numbers on how much solar (desertec has a fun graphic on this for the interested) and wind power we could produce if politicians actually cared about fighting climate change, there is nearly an infinite supply of power for humanity. This isnt even including fossil fuels, nuclear/fusion, biomass/trash, and hydro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed....
- Raidion 5y agoLots of sunlight, but limited amounts of manufacturing and rare earth metals for solar and limited amounts of energy storage for times when solar and wind aren't available. Solar and Wind are terrific, but they're not a free lunch. What drives down the price of energy, drives up the cost of wind/solar/batteries.
- Retric 5y agoWhen you double battery production over 5 years prices go down not up. It’s a function of economies of scale. It’s one of the major reasons EV ranges keep increasing the batteries are less expensive.
- nitrogen 5y agoexcessive conspicuous consumption Energy is a proxy for accomplishment and development. Humanity's #1 goal should be to maximize energy use per capita while minimizing energy use per activity, such that every human is doing as many desirable activities as possible. Gaming at 1kW for an hour costs 30 cents or less in electricity. As others have mentioned indirectly, going for a Sunday drive to see the changing leaves uses more energy. A space heater uses more power.
- stirfish 5y ago>minimizing energy use per activity Maybe this is what feels off? A kilowatt feels like too much for a videogame. This isn't a bitcoin mining thing, is it?
- colejohnson66 5y agoIf we take a game console or PC running at 250 watts (made up number), 4 hours is already a kilowatt-hour. Kilowatt-hours sounds like a lot, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not.
- merb 5y agomy rtx 3070 uses like 70-80% on average when I play new world. my cpu (5600x) is very low (~25%), but I probably blow like ~250 watt or more per hour and I do not have a expensive setup (no rgb, etc.)
- hulitu 5y agoWhy so negative. I think gaming is the future. We can heat houses and have fun. If only will be able to store the heat. Why make better chips when the user do not care ?
- dragontamer 5y ago> But burning nearly a kilowatt on a gaming rig feels like a step too far. How much energy does a golf cart use? Cause those golfers are using a golf-cart for miles when their legs are perfectly acceptable (and golf-carts are illegal in professional play)
- DeathArrow 5y agoAny human endeavor consumes energy.
- dotancohen 5y agoSex is good for 100 calories per minute. Google tells me thats a bit over 5 watts.
- lrem 5y agoYou lost "kilo" when querying. Or, more likely, your source lost it.
- robbedpeter 5y ago100 kcal ~= 6973 watts Multiple sources say it's about 100 kcal per hour, not minute. At any rate, that's about 7kW.
- jayd16 5y agoI wonder how much energy was spent getting to that 5 watts.
- dotancohen 5y agoTime, my friend, time. Women need time invested in them. Not money, not energy. Time.
- sz4kerto 5y agoIt's really low impact though. Even if your rig consumes a kW, you're still not driving anywhere (in a car that consumes at least an order of magnitude more), or going out to a restaurant (that's air conditioned), etc.
- nuerow 5y ago> It's really low impact though. Even if your rig consumes a kW, you're still not driving anywhere If google didn't failed me, a good car mileage is equivalent to around 20kWh per 100 miles. Therefore, a 100 mile drive is loosely equivalent to a day or two gaming with one of these rigs.
- causi 5y agoDoing the math based on the energy content of gasoline gives 96 kilowatt-hours for a car getting 40 miles per gallon, going up to 106 if you include the energy cost of refining a gallon of gasoline from oil.
- turtlebits 5y agoLots of things are a huge waste of electricity. Ever use your oven? At 12% efficiency you're wasting over 1kw of electricity. Unless energy prices rise, it's literally pennies.
- noja 5y agoThis line of argumentation drives me insane, and it's so pervasive right now. Why should I walk to our friends' house down the road? After all, I drive to work, so why not drive there too? Why should I use less plastic? After all, I already use some plastic, so why not use more? Why should I eat less meat? After all, I already eat some meat, why eat less?
- evandijk70 5y agoI think the environmental problem should be approached like a budget - figure out how much we can spend, and than allocate it accordingly. We have to avoid being 'penny wise and pound foolish' with the environment. If I look at my own environmental footprint, the biggest changes I can make are in my heating, my flying, my driving and I am trying to change those things (working from home, and changing my holiday destinations) Will be looking into isolating my house as well. Gaming does not even register compared to those, as it does for most people.
- noobermin 5y agoIt will start to matter if it costs ~3KWh's of gaming per day. Probably even more if this is meant for serious gamers, they will game more than 3 hours per day. It doesn't matter it's genshin impact or animal crossing but it definitely starts to matter when your gaming costs almost two orders of magnitude up in power from the typical case.
- turtlebits 5y ago3KWh a day is $0.30 or less than $10/month. (in Seattle).
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- rowanG077 5y agoRest assured that almost no gamer will have a card that uses that much power.
- tiotempestade 5y agoExactly why I decided to comment, only to find you already touched the topic :) This is getting out of control! Nvidia/AMD: build more efficient GPUs!
- evandijk70 5y agoDefinitely agree that a kilowatt seems very high for gaming and starts to have an environmental impact. Still, driving a car at 100kph takes around 20 kW of power, so driving somewhere is still a bigger burden on the environment than gaming.
- noobermin 5y agoThat's peak power. You don't run at 100kph straight for hours but you will run your gaming rig at say 500W for three hours in a day (particularly for people willing to shell out money for such a gaming rig). The total energy per day might not be that different, you'd have to account for how much is involved in commuting in traffic.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThat's not peak power. 20kW is around 30hp. Peak power for an average north American car is more like 150kW(!).
- tweetle_beetle 5y agoThe grandparent gave specific examples of "foreign ski holidays, gasoline-powered road trips". Extra context for those was provided with an example benchmark by the child comment. Original hypothesis was not about everyday car use.
- rjsw 5y ago> You don't run at 100kph straight for hours Plenty of people going on ski trips in Europe will run their car at 130kph for hours.
- causi 5y agoMy daily commute is 48.6 miles, at about 30 miles/gallon. 1.62 gallons per day, which when combining the energy content of the gas (38.685 kwhr/gal) and the refining energy cost (4 kwhr/gal) is a daily vehicle energy usage of 69.15 kilowatt-hours, plus whatever I use getting lunch. The greenhouse effect of my gaming rig is next to irrelevant.
- jayd16 5y agoProbably not worth judging the entire sector by the peak theoretical output of one connector that might be relegated to industrial use.