4 ms·

I have a fairly high end gaming PC, and have hooked it up to measure the power used in a typical week over 4 weeks. I found it cost me about $12/month, which gi

I have a fairly high end gaming PC, and have hooked it up to measure the power used in a typical week over 4 weeks. I found it cost me about $12/month, which given my electricity bill has much larger administration and other fees, is minimal. I don't think people who don't run a datacenter care that much about the difference in power draw between an AMD or intel cpu.

chii 4y ago
i bet the cooling in a data center costs way more than the electricity used in the chips.
- bryondowd 4y ago
  Wouldn't efficiency affect the cost of cooling, given that the excess energy becomes heat?
- smueller1234 4y ago
  It depends. Look up PUE for data centers. Because I work for Google, I recall, for example, that we build very efficient data centers: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/ Ie. just 10% overhead.
throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
yeah. it is very entertaining/annoying to see carbon zealots bark at high-end PCs, as if they run under 100% CPU+GPU load 24x7
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  Maybe the zealots actually bring up this point as well... To me a high end computer looks wasteful because it was recently built and caused another computer to hit the landfill (usually). It would be more efficient to replace a computer on a 5 or 10 year cycle rather than a 1 or 2 year cycle, but then you'd have a high end computer for a much lower percentage of the time.
  - throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
    they might, and like always, they'd be wrong. high end hardware doesn't go to landfills until it's dead for example, 4790K + GTX 980 is a 8 year old computer. a high end PC from 6 years ago has a GTX 1080 in it, look up how much that costs still you'd be crazy to throw something like that away instead of selling it for about 400$ or giving it away to friends or family >It would be more efficient to replace a computer on a 5 or 10 year cycle if you only use it to check emails and procrastinate on the internet, then yeah. but people who buy 2000$+ worth of hardware usually do something more productive or entertaining than that. and like I said, when they do buy it, whatever they had before is usually sold off to recoup part of the new hardware cost. that's how it worked with hardware for as long as I can remember you know what does go into landfills? disposable garbage phones, designed to be resistant to repair and maintenance, and made unbearably slow by forced software updates when it's time for you to consume the new product. and I find it very ironic that these zealots we're talking about have a great affinity for the products from that particular company
rtp4me 4y ago
On the contrary. We keep a keen eye on power draw for our colo racks because our data center provider charges a lot for any power overages. $12/mo sounds great at home. However, having +20 servers/blades/network gear drawing 2-3Amps each quickly approaches the 80% limit of our 2x 30A circuits. Regardless of CPU architecture, power draw is a big deal.
- datalopers 4y ago
  You’re literally reinforcing his point.

chii 4y ago

i bet the cooling in a data center costs way more than the electricity used in the chips.

bryondowd 4y ago
Wouldn't efficiency affect the cost of cooling, given that the excess energy becomes heat?
smueller1234 4y ago
It depends. Look up PUE for data centers. Because I work for Google, I recall, for example, that we build very efficient data centers: https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/ https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/efficiency/ Ie. just 10% overhead.

throwaway0x7E6 4y ago

yeah. it is very entertaining/annoying to see carbon zealots bark at high-end PCs, as if they run under 100% CPU+GPU load 24x7

BenjiWiebe 4y ago
Maybe the zealots actually bring up this point as well... To me a high end computer looks wasteful because it was recently built and caused another computer to hit the landfill (usually). It would be more efficient to replace a computer on a 5 or 10 year cycle rather than a 1 or 2 year cycle, but then you'd have a high end computer for a much lower percentage of the time.
- throwaway0x7E6 4y ago
  they might, and like always, they'd be wrong. high end hardware doesn't go to landfills until it's dead for example, 4790K + GTX 980 is a 8 year old computer. a high end PC from 6 years ago has a GTX 1080 in it, look up how much that costs still you'd be crazy to throw something like that away instead of selling it for about 400$ or giving it away to friends or family >It would be more efficient to replace a computer on a 5 or 10 year cycle if you only use it to check emails and procrastinate on the internet, then yeah. but people who buy 2000$+ worth of hardware usually do something more productive or entertaining than that. and like I said, when they do buy it, whatever they had before is usually sold off to recoup part of the new hardware cost. that's how it worked with hardware for as long as I can remember you know what does go into landfills? disposable garbage phones, designed to be resistant to repair and maintenance, and made unbearably slow by forced software updates when it's time for you to consume the new product. and I find it very ironic that these zealots we're talking about have a great affinity for the products from that particular company

rtp4me 4y ago

On the contrary. We keep a keen eye on power draw for our colo racks because our data center provider charges a lot for any power overages. $12/mo sounds great at home. However, having +20 servers/blades/network gear drawing 2-3Amps each quickly approaches the 80% limit of our 2x 30A circuits. Regardless of CPU architecture, power draw is a big deal.

datalopers 4y ago
You’re literally reinforcing his point.