Saving power on PC

[Casper_r3]

Hi,

 

So basically what happen was my computer and monitor are draining my electricity. We top up £10(12.79 USD) and that would last us about a week before I got my PC build and now we had to top up twice since Monday. 

I would like some solutions to lower the power consumption while being able to play games for a long time. 

 

My Specs: 

MOBO: asrock h310m-hdv 

RAM: HyperX Fury 8GB 2400MHZ DDR4

GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1050(Single Fan)

CPU: Pentium Gold G5400 

Fan: 3x ARCTIC F12 Silent Fans 

CPU Fan:Stock Intel Cooler 

PSU: Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite V2 400 watt 80+ 

Case: AVP Vision LED Mid Tower

SSD: 120GB Kingston A400 SSD 

Hard Drive: Some old 1TB hard drive from my old laptop 

Monitor: AOC G2460VQ6

Mouse: Turtle Beach Grip 500(Getting a steel series 110)

Keyboard: Aukey Mechanical keyboard 

Blue Snowball Ice and Turtle Beach headset also plugged in.

 

I would apraciet any help.

Many thanks,

Casperr_r3

[NelizMastr]

And this prepaid electricity system is all you can get? Seems archaic. We just pay as much as is used.

 

What you can do to reduce power draw is get a better PSU with a higher efficiency rating. Your 80+ white PSU will draw more power from the wall than the system really consumes. 

[Nicnac]

Kind if a though one. You already have very efficient hardware. The graphics card draws most of the power usually and you have the best gaming card there is at 75W. anything below that is going to severely impact your gaming performance. The only thing you can do about it is undervolt but you will get worse framerates. Don't really know if it's worth it having a bad gaming experience for a few watts. Check if you monitor has some sort of eco mode where you maybe don't need extremely fast reaction time in games or extremely high refresh rates. Other than that there is unfortunately not much you can do. Gaming uses a lot of electricty. Back when I had a 750W system we payed like 400EUR extra a year....

 

Edit: yea the psu isn't really efficient but still don't get your hopes up: even with a very efficient psu, undervolted card and cpu your savings will be minimal. I'd guess 2 pounds at most.

[Casper_r3]

1 minute ago, Nicnac said:

Kind if a though one. You already have very efficient hardware. The graphics card draws most of the power usually and you have the best gaming card there is at 75W. anything below that is going to severely impact your gaming performance. The only thing you can do about it is undervolt but you will get worse framerates. Don't really know if it's worth it having a bad gaming experience for a few watts. Check if you monitor has some sort of eco mode where you maybe don't need extremely fast reaction time in games or extremely high refresh rates. Other than that there is unfortunately not much you can do. Gaming uses a lot of electricty. Back when I had a 750W system we payed like 400EUR extra a year....

That's scary to think paying 400EUR extra... But I've set the monitor to eco mode and I play CSGO mainly and my monitor is only 60hz looking to get a 144hz but suppose I'll have to pay like 20 GBP extra 

[Nicnac]

1 minute ago, Casper_r3 said:

That's scary to think paying 400EUR extra... But I've set the monitor to eco mode and I play CSGO mainly and my monitor is only 60hz looking to get a 144hz but suppose I'll have to pay like 20 GBP extra 

yea but that was back in high school when I played way too much anyways lol. My parents soon intervened ^^

For CS:GO you want all that high refresh rate and also undervolting your cpu and gpu would be catastrophic for the game. Unfortunately electricity is expensive for us Europeans  And it honestly looks like it will be even worse in the near future with Nuclear power plants in Belgium being down for the winter. Energy prices in Germany are already increasing  

[XR6]

24 minutes ago, Casper_r3 said:

Hi,

 

So basically what happen was my computer and monitor are draining my electricity. We top up £10(12.79 USD) and that would last us about a week before I got my PC build and now we had to top up twice since Monday. 

I would like some solutions to lower the power consumption while being able to play games for a long time. 

 

My Specs: 

MOBO: asrock h310m-hdv 

RAM: HyperX Fury 8GB 2400MHZ DDR4

GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1050(Single Fan)

CPU: Pentium Gold G5400 

Fan: 3x ARCTIC F12 Silent Fans 

CPU Fan:Stock Intel Cooler 

PSU: Cooler Master MasterWatt Lite V2 400 watt 80+ 

Case: AVP Vision LED Mid Tower

SSD: 120GB Kingston A400 SSD 

Hard Drive: Some old 1TB hard drive from my old laptop 

Monitor: AOC G2460VQ6

Mouse: Turtle Beach Grip 500(Getting a steel series 110)

Keyboard: Aukey Mechanical keyboard 

Blue Snowball Ice and Turtle Beach headset also plugged in.

 

I would apraciet any help.

Many thanks,

Casperr_r3

You already have a pretty low power consumption PC (400W is low for a PC) so there's not a lot you can do. I'd just try to either top up a bit more money. Also @NelizMastr, we do have a pay for what you use system in the UK (I've got that), but most homes still run on top up systems atm. 

[IntMD]

 

49 minutes ago, Casper_r3 said:

-snip-

How much are you paying for a kWH? Even at my exorbitant rate for living on a small island with a monopoly on electricity, that £10 would be 62.5kWH, which even my old X99 system with a 14 core cpu would struggle to use in 3 days, never mind 2 lots of that...

[NelizMastr]

37 minutes ago, 1kv said:

You already have a pretty low power consumption PC (400W is low for a PC) so there's not a lot you can do. I'd just try to either top up a bit more money. Also @NelizMastr, we do have a pay for what you use system in the UK (I've got that), but most homes still run on top up systems atm. 

Yikes. Good luck to you all then. I couldn't deal with that as I run some home servers. Can't have stuff turn off when I go over my "power cap". Perhaps May should focus on that rather than fiddling about with the Brexit deal that will fall through anyway  

[XR6]

6 minutes ago, IntMD said:

 

How much are you paying for a kWH? Even at my exorbitant rate for living on a small island with a monopoly on electricity, that £10 would be 62.5kWH, which even my old X99 system with a 14 core cpu would struggle to use in 3 days, never mind 2 lots of that...

Depends who provides your power... British Gas charge 12p per kWH (that's excluding VAT too!). If the IOM was in the EU it'd be a different story.

[IntMD]

1 minute ago, 1kv said:

Depends who provides your power... British Gas charge 12p per kWH (that's excluding VAT too!). If the IOM was in the EU it'd be a different story.

I know, that's why I was asking them how much they were being charged. Ours is about 16p per kWH and I'd struggle to get my much more power hungry PC to use £10-15 in 3 days at full usage.

[XR6]

1 minute ago, IntMD said:

I know, that's why I was asking them how much they were being charged. Ours is about 16p per kWH and I'd struggle to get my much more power hungry PC to use £10-15 in 3 days at full usage.

Ah, right then. Hopefully the situation should get better in the UK after Brexit but I'm not counting on it..

[IntMD]

9 minutes ago, 1kv said:

Ah, right then. Hopefully the situation should get better in the UK after Brexit but I'm not counting on it..

It'll get worse. Pound will drop and as oil/gas etc. is priced in USD, the UK will be screwed electricity wise in particular. Also, the shops all buy their computer stock in USD from the suppliers, so screwed there as well.

[XR6]

7 minutes ago, IntMD said:

It'll get worse. Pound will drop and as oil/gas etc. is priced in USD, the UK will be screwed electricity wise in particular. Also, the shops all buy their computer stock in USD from the suppliers, so screwed there as well.

Yep. Not a good situation..

[straight_stewie]

So this undervolting thing is not that simple. If you really want to optimize for power efficiency (it seems as if you have no choice), there is a possibility that you can slightly undervolt your GPU and CPU without reducing the clocks or losing stability. Be aware that this may be a challenge and will temporarily increase your bill (stability testing will generally draw near maximum power). And that's all for minimal savings. 

It seems as if you're stuck between a rock and a hard place here. You may not find a solution other than to increase your income.

[-rascal-]

1. How long (hours) do you typically use your PC for gaming everyday?
2. How long (hours) if the PC on a single day?
3. Do you turn off the PC when not in use, or keep it powered on/idle?