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I would say that people who regularly invest in top end hardware don't care as much about power bills. Otherwise power efficient chips is the norm (laptops, pho

I would say that people who regularly invest in top end hardware don't care as much about power bills. Otherwise power efficient chips is the norm (laptops, phones, etc).

giobox 4y ago
This is slowly changing IMO - I'm seeing concern over energy use even on forums discussing high end hardware builds as cost of energy mounts in Europe. Previously no one really ever mentioned this other than to laugh at poor thermals. If some of Nvidia's next generation 4xxx series GPUs are close to 1000w draw as many rumors suggest, the total draw of a high spec Intel/Nvidia system is going to probably have similar running costs to an electric space heater when playing demanding games. The existing 3090ti is already a 500w part, which not so long ago was enough to power a whole system in addition to the GPU.
- 2fast4you 4y ago
  And probably the heat output of a space heater as well. I had to move my tower into another room because it kept the whole room way too hot
  - xen2xen1 4y ago
    The pilot light on my furnace went out years ago. I only noticed because when I opened the door to the room with my computer a light but noticeable heat blast hit me. It took a second, but I turned around and checked my furnace, etc instead of going in the room. It really was a revelation about how much heat those things produce.
- nightski 4y ago
  The power cost of running my enthusiast build is on the order of a few dollars a month. Now I am all for being green but there are things in my household that are much more of a concern than this. Huge datacenters full of these chips is one thing. A personal computer for hacking & gaming probably not such a big deal.
  - barrkel 4y ago
    24h x 30 days x .5kW x 0.25 CHF/kWh gives me 90 CHF a month to run my PC, assuming it never sleeps. Have you run the calculation? It's worthwhile configuring suspend for PCs these days. My 3090 never seems to go below 120W, for one thing.
    - maccard 4y ago
      And double that number if you're in the UK.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - nightski 4y ago
      I use suspend on my PC and I definitely do not run it 24h, or anywhere close to that. Also power is $0.08/kWh where I live.
      - gambiting 4y ago
        That's insanely cheap power, use it while you can. I'm paying £0.40/kWh, so about 46 cents per kWh.
      - brewdad 4y ago
        Really? My power is some of the cheapest in the country and we pay ~13 cents/kWh. It's a little misleading though since my bill breaks out generation and distribution costs into separate line items. They are both billed per kWH though and add up to 13 cents.
        nightski 4y ago
        Yes. We have a fixed basic connection charge of $20. So it's really close to your $0.13/kWh when that is taken into account. I wasn't trying to be misleading though because the point is the basic charge does not increase with usage. So for each additional kWh we add to that it's only $0.089/kWh.
- chris11 4y ago
  It's worse than that. Gamer's Nexus had a video a few months ago about power transients becoming a bigger problem. Power spikes can double the amount of power needed. It doesn't really impact average power useage, but it can cause a psu's ocp to shut down the machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ
- gambiting 4y ago
  Yeah exactly this. I have a 3080 with a 5900X, would consider myself an enthusiast, and after recent price hike to my tariff here in the UK electricity usage is definitely something that's on my mind. Like, it hasn't stopped me gaming yet, but I'm very acutely aware that I'm using £1 worth of electricity every few hours of play - it adds up.
  - bufferoverflow 4y ago
    > £1 worth of electricity every few hours of play I hope you make a lot more per hour of work. Stop worrying about that.
    - epolanski 4y ago
      Whether he does or not it's none of your business, and it doesn't change the fact that those are high prices and sources of environmental issues. This power draw is getting out of hand on desktop, consoles and x86 laptops and is largely a symptom of lack of competition and lack of technological advances.
      - lmm 4y ago
        > those are high prices By any reasonable measure they're not. £1 for "a few hours" of fun is a very cheap hobby.
    - gambiting 4y ago
      I mean, thank you for the thoughtful advice about my finances, but it doesn't help in the slightest. Life is getting a LOT more expensive lately, with everything going up in price - I'm seeing my grocery bills double, energy bills triple, spending lots more money on petrol, on eating out, on taking my family out for trips, and yes - on gaming too. Is that £1 every few hours making me destitute? No, absolutely not and I'm extremely privileged to be able to afford it. But at the same time every £1 taken for this isn't a pound saved, or spent on my kid, or on literally anything other more productive. So yes, I can "easily" afford it, but it doesn't mean that the energy consumption of my gaming rig hasn't affected how I think about it. Any future hardware upgrades will also be impacted by this - there is no way I'm buying a GPU with 500W TDP, even if again, I can afford the energy bills.
- kllrnohj 4y ago
  > If some of Nvidia's next generation 4xxx series GPUs are close to 1000w draw as many rumors suggest Those rumors are for millisecond long transient spikes, not an average of anything. So basically the rumor is a 500w peak load. Just like how the current 350-400w GPUs have transient spikes to upwards of 800w. It's not a problem in terms of power consumption (although obviously the increase from 400w to 500w would be), rather it's an issue with over-current protection in power supplies tripping. It's a "need bigger capacitors" type problem.
secondcoming 4y ago
> don't care as much about power bills Not yet!
musicale 4y ago
> that people who regularly invest in top end hardware don't care as much about power bills It adds up, especially in data centers where you end up needing even more megawatts of power and cooling capacity.

I would say that people who regularly invest in top end hardware don't care as much about power bills. Otherwise power efficient chips is the norm (laptops, phones, etc).

giobox 4y ago

This is slowly changing IMO - I'm seeing concern over energy use even on forums discussing high end hardware builds as cost of energy mounts in Europe. Previously no one really ever mentioned this other than to laugh at poor thermals. If some of Nvidia's next generation 4xxx series GPUs are close to 1000w draw as many rumors suggest, the total draw of a high spec Intel/Nvidia system is going to probably have similar running costs to an electric space heater when playing demanding games. The existing 3090ti is already a 500w part, which not so long ago was enough to power a whole system in addition to the GPU.

2fast4you 4y ago
And probably the heat output of a space heater as well. I had to move my tower into another room because it kept the whole room way too hot
- xen2xen1 4y ago
  The pilot light on my furnace went out years ago. I only noticed because when I opened the door to the room with my computer a light but noticeable heat blast hit me. It took a second, but I turned around and checked my furnace, etc instead of going in the room. It really was a revelation about how much heat those things produce.
nightski 4y ago
The power cost of running my enthusiast build is on the order of a few dollars a month. Now I am all for being green but there are things in my household that are much more of a concern than this. Huge datacenters full of these chips is one thing. A personal computer for hacking & gaming probably not such a big deal.
- barrkel 4y ago
  24h x 30 days x .5kW x 0.25 CHF/kWh gives me 90 CHF a month to run my PC, assuming it never sleeps. Have you run the calculation? It's worthwhile configuring suspend for PCs these days. My 3090 never seems to go below 120W, for one thing.
  - maccard 4y ago
    And double that number if you're in the UK.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nightski 4y ago
    I use suspend on my PC and I definitely do not run it 24h, or anywhere close to that. Also power is $0.08/kWh where I live.
    - gambiting 4y ago
      That's insanely cheap power, use it while you can. I'm paying £0.40/kWh, so about 46 cents per kWh.
    - brewdad 4y ago
      Really? My power is some of the cheapest in the country and we pay ~13 cents/kWh. It's a little misleading though since my bill breaks out generation and distribution costs into separate line items. They are both billed per kWH though and add up to 13 cents.
      - nightski 4y ago
        Yes. We have a fixed basic connection charge of $20. So it's really close to your $0.13/kWh when that is taken into account. I wasn't trying to be misleading though because the point is the basic charge does not increase with usage. So for each additional kWh we add to that it's only $0.089/kWh.
chris11 4y ago
It's worse than that. Gamer's Nexus had a video a few months ago about power transients becoming a bigger problem. Power spikes can double the amount of power needed. It doesn't really impact average power useage, but it can cause a psu's ocp to shut down the machine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnRyyCsuHFQ
gambiting 4y ago
Yeah exactly this. I have a 3080 with a 5900X, would consider myself an enthusiast, and after recent price hike to my tariff here in the UK electricity usage is definitely something that's on my mind. Like, it hasn't stopped me gaming yet, but I'm very acutely aware that I'm using £1 worth of electricity every few hours of play - it adds up.
- bufferoverflow 4y ago
  > £1 worth of electricity every few hours of play I hope you make a lot more per hour of work. Stop worrying about that.
  - epolanski 4y ago
    Whether he does or not it's none of your business, and it doesn't change the fact that those are high prices and sources of environmental issues. This power draw is getting out of hand on desktop, consoles and x86 laptops and is largely a symptom of lack of competition and lack of technological advances.
    - lmm 4y ago
      > those are high prices By any reasonable measure they're not. £1 for "a few hours" of fun is a very cheap hobby.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    I mean, thank you for the thoughtful advice about my finances, but it doesn't help in the slightest. Life is getting a LOT more expensive lately, with everything going up in price - I'm seeing my grocery bills double, energy bills triple, spending lots more money on petrol, on eating out, on taking my family out for trips, and yes - on gaming too. Is that £1 every few hours making me destitute? No, absolutely not and I'm extremely privileged to be able to afford it. But at the same time every £1 taken for this isn't a pound saved, or spent on my kid, or on literally anything other more productive. So yes, I can "easily" afford it, but it doesn't mean that the energy consumption of my gaming rig hasn't affected how I think about it. Any future hardware upgrades will also be impacted by this - there is no way I'm buying a GPU with 500W TDP, even if again, I can afford the energy bills.
kllrnohj 4y ago
> If some of Nvidia's next generation 4xxx series GPUs are close to 1000w draw as many rumors suggest Those rumors are for millisecond long transient spikes, not an average of anything. So basically the rumor is a 500w peak load. Just like how the current 350-400w GPUs have transient spikes to upwards of 800w. It's not a problem in terms of power consumption (although obviously the increase from 400w to 500w would be), rather it's an issue with over-current protection in power supplies tripping. It's a "need bigger capacitors" type problem.

secondcoming 4y ago

> don't care as much about power bills Not yet!

musicale 4y ago

> that people who regularly invest in top end hardware don't care as much about power bills It adds up, especially in data centers where you end up needing even more megawatts of power and cooling capacity.