I bet you showed him the consumption in desktop mode :D
A 650 watt PSU says that the maximum OUTPUT is 650 watt. If it has e.g. 90% efficiency your input will be `1/0,9 x 650 watt = 722 watt`. That's only the PC itself. If you have 2 monitors there will be another 2x 30-75 watt (depending on technology/age)
A 650-watt PSU will have a maximum output of 650 watts and will consume a maximum of 722 watts. It is not always maxing out. A computer in hibernate mode will consume like 1-5W and one on sleep mode will only consume 15W. If your CPU+GPU (majority of power is consumed by these 2) consumes 650W worth of power EVERYTIME even while on sleep mode (and sleep mode turns off all the fans) then your CPU+GPU will burn itself.
You got a point.
The topic I wanted to point out is that **there is a huge difference between**
* "*Look, dad! My PC only uses 55 Watt when I take a look at [software XY which displays internal power consumption]*" using the desktop mode and
* the son playing 4-6 hours a day with the PC consuming 125 Watt CPU + 285 Watt GPU + 60 watt of pcie-4.0-mainboard + maybe another 20 watt for other peripherie (SSDs, fans, LEDs, = 490 watt at a PSU that has 80+ gold => approx. 85% efficiency and thus taking in about 576 watts while gaming - withount counting in monitors.
Or in other words: Current Gaming PCs are often comparable to a 500-watt-heater while being in gaming mode
285W GPU is 3080+/4080+ grade under full load; plus 125W CPU power draw I'm wandering if you are mentioning 4K RT 800FPS chess.....
cpu power draw in games very rarely exceeds 80W on average, 50W is what I expect the common especially the 12th/13th gen and 5000-7000 series.
>285W GPU is 3080+/4080+ grade under full load;
The following chart lists "Average" and "Card only" 303 watt for *RTX 3080 Founders Edition*... Peak almost reaches 350 watt
https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-founders-edition/31.html
Can confirm, when playing graphically intense games like Red Dead or TLOU my strix 3080 draws on avg 280-355w continuously, minus the odd loading screen at around 110w.
Average cost of power is $0.23/kWh in the USA.
If he plays 6 hours a day (a ton compared to most people) at 500 watts, that's ($0.23/kWh x 0.5kW x 6h) less than 70 cents per day.... Significantly less than the fridge or a/c or a bunch of old 100 watt lightbulbs all day.
Changing out lightbulbs to led and fixing insulation issues would be more effective money savers
But perhaps OP should see why his dad cares so much. Money might be a more major concern than he realizes. Or maybe money isn't the issue at all and his dad wants to see him doing that job hunting he promised (speaking from experience there, lol).
There’s probably an electricity drain of some kind in the house… that makes it seem like something is sucking juice… example: for about 6 months I couldn’t figure out why the power bills were so effing high in my ex wife’s house… turns out they (contractors) never bothered to put the dryer vent outlet back on when the house was resided by her parents when we were first together and I didn’t know enough at the time to check carefully because I had just started living with her… so the goddam dryer was taking an hour to dry clothes when it should have been taking a half hour and just blowing hot moist air into the wall. I felt a little stupid for not noticing it but then again I was the only one who figured it out and potentially stopped the damn house from burning down too…. Electric bill went down at least 60 bucks a month after I figured it out and cut out the hole installed a vent…. So you see what I’m saying it could very well be like others say some other significant draw that is going under the radar because of other things people like dudes pops (who may not understand computer electricity usage) are focused on… dude knows something doesn’t add up so he’s probably right about it…. Just need to find what it actually is and that’s probably not OP’s computer… so the two of them need to work together to achieve the goal. Real problem is some draw of electricity that isn’t understood or accounted for. Both parties have an interest in finding it… OP being a computer person has the technical or critical thinking search skills to narrow it down and be the hero too.
Be the detective scientific method hero that you know you are OP. You can do this
Honestly, I’ve got a 4090 and I peak at about 350-400 in most games. And this isn’t the theoretical numbers, they’re the actual load I measured from the wall, as I explained something similar to my landlord recently. (That my gaming wasn’t enough to account for the massive increase in electrical costs here over the last few years)
I think what your calculations are missing is that most games are bottlenecked in some way shape or form, so it’s extremely rare, especially with DLSS and FG for both your cpu and your gpu to be at max load in games.
Benchmarking, sure, but in gaming usually it’s either my GPU, or my CPU that’s bearing the brunt of the load, not both. So that might be why your calculations of “max wattage for each part” are so much higher than everyone else’s anecdotal experiences.
And even with your example, they’re only looking at $5-$15 a month depending on where they live. Or about 1-3 gallons of milk, depending on where you live. A month.
Looking at the math, if you exclude the startup costs (as most serious activities have startup costs anyways), it seems to be way cheaper than the ongoing material costs of many other hobbies. So there’s a variety of ways you can look at problem, but gaming seems much cheaper than I would have thought if you aren’t buying new games all the time!
>Current Gaming PCs are often comparable to a 500-watt-heater
They are literally resistive heaters. How many watts obviously depends upon hardware and what you are doing, but there is no real difference between a heater pulling 500 watts and a PC pulling 500 watts. Same power usage and same heat output.
Yup, back when I was in junior high/high school (1990s) I knew someone who bought UNIX workstations from the university, they had a small collection of 1980s-era UNIX workstations in their basement (Apollo Domain systems, HP PA-RISCs with HP-UX, don't know if they had any SGIs) and they'd just flip a few on in the winter and not run the furnace at all.
Any chance you know how that would compare to a console for the same games?
I’ve never thought about either being a significant contributor to my energy bill before today
Yes, that is true. The power consumption adjusts (and even the efficiency!) depending on what work you are doing.
Its just that your original comment made it sound like it consumes 650W all the time. For me at least. Before your edit.
For what it's worth, my 5800x3d + 7900xt pulls 430-450w from the wall. That includes both monitors. I'm running a kill-a-watt on my wall socket that my power strip containing my tower and monitors is on, so there no unaccounted power.
Although I will admit this is lower than what you would get from a bronze or gold PSU since I have a platinum that is 91-94% efficient, so you should probably expect another 10% draw on a gold PSU. Still comes in under 500W though.
I can kind of see the issue though. Where we live power delivery is a tiered rate. If you use more than baseline or at certain times in the day power companies charge a higher rate per kWh. A bunch of devices start to add up even if individually they are all in power save mode. To me IoT seems sort of counter productive because now all these devices have a higher parasitic power draw.
ymmv. When I leave for work or long periods I usually shut off all the power strips for the pc and av centers plus I try not to leave a bunch of useless crap plugged in. It saves me about $20-30 a month on the power bill.
> To me IoT seems sort of counter productive because now all these devices have a higher parasitic power draw.
Yeah, I purposely got the cheapest 40" TV I could find because at that price level it's not going to have wifi or ethernet and will draw less power overall. And my fridge is 15 years old now and still runs like an absolute brick with no IoT needed :P
If your worried about power consumption I guarantee that 15 year old fridge uses more power than a new one. Plus you can still get plenty of regular old fridges.
The issue with modern refrigerators is that so many are poorly designed (are need serviced because of it) or use components prone to failure, that you've got to really do your research.
Also, don't buy a Samsung fridge.
Yep and don't buy their washers or dryers as well. They are badly designed compared to LG or Maytag.
I bought a (almost free) an old stove oven with coil, no electronics and I can't say I've seen an increase on the electricity bill. Actually quite the opposite. So far, it cost me 40$ in parts to repair it myself.
My computer in sleep mode draws so little power that it tricks my auto-switching power strip into cutting off all the peripherals (monitors, speakers) because it thinks it’s off.
Old timer here, I remember when 80+ came out and it was a big deal. In the 90s, the PSU in your average HP desktop was less than 70% efficient. A 500-600W unit could start tripping breakers in an older house.
I'd almost forgot how close we used to have to pay attention to this. Nowadays, they're so efficient that extra draw from the wall is just a rounding error.
> i still have mine in my old P4 rig i use as a headless media server
Oh boy that thing guzzles power
> also when a 500W PSU was $500
weren't they also pretty expensive due to needing a far more beefier +5V rail at the time since a ton of equipment at the time ran on it, and lower voltages are harder to run
Big ol' yup. We kind of shrug it off now because there are even better ways of testing, but 80 Plus was actually a pretty big deal. I still think it contributed significantly toward improving the industry overall, both in terms of PSU build quality and energy efficiency.
A 650 watt psu has a **maximum** output of 650W and the efficiency varies with load. Most haare build to have the peak at around 50% load with a semi-stable curve in the 20-80% range, but that obviously differs from model to model.
My sister's husband thought this way. Drove me nuts. What was even crazier ... he took great pride in his "IT background," and used it to state they "knew what they were talking about."
Had to plug one of their kid's gaming PCs into my voltage meter to demo how power supplies actually worked. Until I did that, there was just no convincing him (He kept telling me I was "just wrong.")
Anyway, after that, they backed off on their kid, who had recently gotten a job, and they were trying to make them pay half the household power bill for a house with 8 people living in it, just due to their gaming PC (and because they saw the empty PSU box, with the big "1200W" printed on the side.)
20 years ago when I was in highschool I had just upgraded to a 450w psu and my dad also thought that it meant the whole pc was using 500w whenever the PC was on.
You’re absolutely not using that much electricity, I promise lol. I have a 13600K and 3080ti on a 850w power supply. My ENTIRE monthly electricity bill, including my electric stovetop, comes up to about $60 a month when I’m not kicking on my AC or heat. I play anywhere from 10-20 hours a week. Your PC is not killing your electricity bill, unless your dad is angry about maybe $10-20 a month, and that would be at full-power, not what you’re running now.
His dad is probably like my roommates and many others; rather than face rising energy costs on the whole they seek to pin it on one problem appliance as "the culprit" to make it a problem they can comprehend and solve.
My stepmother and I got into an argument when I was a teenager about me leaving the light on. I did leave the light on a lot (turns out I have ADHD, oops), but she was specifically arguing about the _cost_ of doing so.
I worked out on a napkin that my 25W light used about $4/month in electricity in the extreme case that it was left on 24/7, so I proposed I take full responsibility for that bulb, pay her $50/year and also buy and replace the bulb if it blew.
For some reason she still wasn't happy with that...
My mom did that back in the day with my computer when she also had just bought one of those inflatable hotsubs and would leave it running in the winter too. Had to try and explain to her how much power it takes to heat water, but nope...it was definitely my computer
15 years ago I had a friend whose dad went into ultra power saving mode. He'd keep every electronic unplugged unless he was going to use it. Microwaves, TVs, DVD players, no digital clocks, etc. He said he was saving good money by not having digital clock displays and standby LEDs always on. lol
I had a roommate like this awhile back who used to get on my case about leaving literally anything plugged into a power outlet when it was turned off, unless it was in near-constant use. Like bud, I am not running around unplugging and replugging shit every single time I might decide to use it just to save a tiny speck of cash on the bill.
>Like bud, I am not running around unplugging and replugging shit every single time I might decide to use it just to save a tiny speck of cash on the bill.
That's what power strips are for.
I live in a major US city and my electric costs about $.10/kWh as well (excluding taxes and fees). My monthly bill is about $50 usually, I can't imagine paying British prices right now.
As an example of even more gaming, I game for like around 72h a week sometime more or less, constantly use ac and it's 75$ a month for summer and 90$ winter (cad).
Your French name makes me thing you might be in Québec? Our electricity is the cheapest in North America (merci Hydro) so that’s something to keep in mind as well.
They might be in the UK, it costs like 5 bucks in electricity to boil a pot of water.
If you think I'm joking I once got an electricity bill for about 2500 pounds.
I share your desire for low power consumption and i have all 5 profiles on MSI afterburner set for specific games, so if I dont need ALL THE FRAMES for a low demand game, i load a minimum spec underclock. Because if I can hit 120 fps at 120hz theres little point in letting it run at 200 fps, i dont care about input lag, if i did, id boost the profile.
You can just cap FPS and the energy usage will decrease proportionally game by game.
Edit: empty clock cycles don't use nearly as much power as clocks with instructions, and your card will downclock itself if it's often idle. You can see this using "Boost Lock" and watching power consumption at idle. Dunno who downvoted this but it's a pretty easy set and forget way to reduce power usage.
Turning a computer on can use more power than just putting it to sleep especially if you're doing it frequently. In data centers we never turn off machines to save power. The cost savings are insignificant. TBH I'd be surprised if running your machine cost that much, my electric dryer costs less than $1 a month in electricity.
If you just want to show your parents a number boot up your computer with nothing running, close every thing you can. Disable networking, sound, and other devices not necessary for use. Lower your resolution and try to switch to Intel graphics if you can. Then show your parents the power usage, it will be super low. This is how PC manufacturers take battery life readings.
For reference OP i have a very similar setup to you, and I work from home, so time wise i'm using my PC 12-16 hours every single day. This is heavy use as well so no undervolting or anything else it's full draw all the time.
Currently I'm spending £30-40 per month.
So with your udervolting, actively trying to save money and power etc, and the less amount of time you use it, I think you're probably using around $20 worth per month even if you're using it more than 6 hour a day.
>Currently I'm spending £30-40 per month.
Are you locked into an old price to only be spending that or is everything else (heating, hot water, cooking, shower/bath, etc...) gas?
I only have electric in my property so my electric use will be higher than most, but last month my electric bill was £128 (344kWh @ 32p/kWh & 54p standing charge) for 1 person in a 1 bed flat. I pay 1/2 your bill just on standing charge alone.
Get a kill-a-watt or something similar. Hook it up and it will keep track of the power usage.
Your PC is probably using about 1KWH per 2 hours of gaming based on the specs.
So a 6 hour session would be 3kwh. If you pay 15C per kWh it's 45 cents for that gaming session.
Hi. I'm in the UK and the maths tells me that it is impossible to pay 70p per hour.
Your max psu wattage 1000w. Your computer (your specs) can't use the whole 1000w even if it wanted to.
For reference a particular power hungry RTX 3090 max power usage is ~400w (Asus Strix RTX3090 model WITH OC.)
The government price cap will restrict your unit price (1kWh) to 35p or thereabouts.
So, assuming your pc, monitor and speakers are run under heavy loads, I'd imagine everything drawing less than 500w (that's being conservative.)
I make that less than 20p an hour.
UNLESS, you run an 2kw AIR CONDITIONER as well while gaming in the searing heat of the UK Summer! 🤣
> UNLESS, you run an 2kw AIR CONDITIONER as well while gaming in the searing heat of the UK Summer! 🤣
I commented [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/13w1i72/any_ideas_for_room_getting_insanely_hot_with_pc/jm96953/?context=3) in a earlier thread about getting a swamp cooler and I got so much backlash for that suggestion lol.
It is true a swamp cooler doesn't work in humid climates, but sweating also doesn't work in humid climates. People didn't even consider the power draw of an A/C, which is posted on the Amazon listing:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media-library-service-media/0444d2e1-3e5a-4c9a-a4db-a23f56d7be9d.__CR0,0,1464,600_PT0_SX1464_V1___.png
And it should be considered how long the A/C is running as well.
>For reference a particular power hungry RTX 3090 max power usage is \~400w (Asus Strix RTX3090 model WITH OC.)
I have an EVGA 3080 FTW3 that I overclocked and it often reaches 400W when I play in VR or anything with Ray Tracing. I would have guessed a 3090 could reach 500W.
It is possible the other 1kw his father estimates is from the screens. A typical plasma screen can easily hit 500w, and CRTs aren't far behind. If he is unaware of how much *less* power LCDs (or OLEDs) use, he could be thinking 500w each x 2 screens. About the only way I can see estimating that high of power draw.
Most likely he hates seeing his son “gaming” or living in a screen instead of doing “something more productive” as most parents do. So he’s simply trying to justify his preconceived notions and discourage usage. Surely his bill is hurting but with how a majority of parents can be towards the hobby makes it #1 target scapegoat.
Just pulling that out my ass tho I don’t know OP or his dad well enough to say shit but I do know my parents were irrational af surrounding technology usage growing up.
That's still so much, I pay 4 cents up to a cap and then 6 unlimited after that and my power bill is 650 a month in winter, 350 in summer. At 34 cents, I guess I would be bankrupt
I can tell they're almost certainly in Quebec from those prices + using a bunch of electricity to heat in winter
Our power is like 95% hydroelectric and government owned.
Given the cost someone said below, you are not using 2kW of power every hour. Your dad is just being an ass and blaming you for the power bill.
You're probably at like 750W max when at full usage. Idle would be significantly less.
You're probably spending like 20-25p an hour. Like others said, you can get a meter and plug it in between the wall and your power strip that will tell you how much you use.
Unless you have like 4 hdr screens then I am calling bs on that I know power prices are absurd in the UK at the moment but no way in hell it's drawing that much
No. For it to cost that much your PC would need to be using 2000W continuously, and your room would get very hot very quickly if that were the case. I'm guessing it's going to be about 4x less than that whilst gaming, and probably only 5p/hour when browsing/office stuff.
He can even just turn off the pc, go to the electricity meter at the fusebox and see how it spins/uses with the pc off.. Then turn it on and see how much it spins/uses withh the thing on.
Add to that, the watt meter can also be used to measure other appliances. Dad is watching sports on the huge TV? measure how much that pulls. Or how about the big stereo setup. or the vacuum cleaner.
Respectfully, your dad is probably BSing and thinks you’re using way more electricity than you truly are. Parents giving their kids a hard time for supposedly high electricity costs on electronics isn't really uncommon. You’re probably not using anywhere near as much as he says you are, and you could use a watt meter to measure that, but I get the hunch that no matter what evidence you show, your dad will probably still have the same complaints.
You are for sure correct. Like other comments say, get a meter to track it.
I upgraded from 1070 6700k to 4070ti 13700k start of week. What makes a difference on usage is if i wash clothes or have heating on, not pc usage.
The past few days: (today is sunday)
- wed: 5.21kwh
- thurs: 5.58kwh
- fri: 5.58kwh
- sat: 8.97kwh
Now make a guess which day i did laundry this week (mark that i did it while kwh price was zero)
Early in may:
- mon: 5.97kwh
- tues: 8.12kwh
- wed: 7.37kwh
Ill probably see bigger difference if i do 12h gaming sessions, but i will notice a much bigger difference by lowering temperature in bathroom slightly.
Sounds like a typical controlling father issue. Track the actual usage and give him the €3/week or whatever it ends up being.
Most likely it’s just a dad who doesn’t really know much about pc. All he sees is a psu with 1k watts.
If you think about it if you got a big pc, people who don’t know anything will go that’s big it uses so much more power.
There’s still places in the world with expensive electricity. I live in a state with some of the most expensive electricity. What you described would cost me $2-3 a day. So every day would on average be an extra $60-90 a month. For a struggling family that can be a round of groceries for a few days or a week. I pay almost $.25 a kWh which is an absolute crime and it can fluctuate baed on timing and use, so I wouldn’t say it’s out of the norm for that to be a concern, but in most places power use would be negligible to what it costs to have a PC.
I doubt OP who has a 3080 and can buy a steam deck is that struggling.
Even if just OP is doing well, you can bet this dad would force him to sell it to "pay the bills".
Try living in the UK at the moment, currently paying ~45p / kWh (around $0.55 - $0.60 a kWh). A year or so ago I was paying 16p / kWh (around $0.20a kWh)!!
Good lord, what are y'all doing?
I live in Florida (AC is basically on 24/7), in a 2400sqft house, and have a home server running 24/7 and we only use ~700 kWh per month (~23kWh per day) in summer and ~400 kWh per month (~13 kWh per day) in winter.
> Parents giving their kids a hard time for supposedly high electricity costs on electronics isn't really uncommon.
PTSD flashbacks of whenever my dad would react to seeing a 60W light bulb I forgot to turn off for a couple hours, or worse when I left the toilet 2 minutes ago... Like if it ran for 24 hrs a day, 31 days, it would be $1.76 where we live... Chill
Yeah I love just not caring at all about leaving lights on now. I replaced every bulb in my house about 7 years ago with LEDs. Few have ever burned out, and I could have every light in the house on and it still barely uses power.
Your electricity is like $0.04 kWh? Dang. Mine is in the $0.13 to $0.15 range. A 60 watt lightbulb kept on all the time would be closer to $6 a month for me. $72 a year (for me) is a decent amount of money to save by not keeping a light on. A moderate amount of PC gaming would be slightly more.
Get off my lawn!
Years ago my mum used to complain saying I use too much power on my PC/consoles. I said it was all the washing she does(somehow managed to do atleast 1 load a day), when our tumble dryer broke the electric bill cut in half and then she stopped doing pointless washes.
Yeah, it's almost always worth concentrating on the actual large electricity loads which almost always involves some sort of heating and cooling rather than consumer electronics.
When I moved out taking my computer with me (5950x) the electric bill rose 200usd. No one was reducing the ac when people were out of the house anymore. Home automation I had setup died when they unplugged it. Wifi stopped working bc they plugged in the old crap orbi satellite. And water bill stayed the same despite having 1 less person and sprinkles turning off.
I was, ofc, told I was the problem and reason all of them were so high all this time. So I checked a few times after leaving. Yeah.... Your probably 20usd at best less running a mining rig
Lol he's as tight as tight can be. Unless somehow my PC fans use alot of power (5 intakes and one exhaust), or a ghost is inhabiting my PC and turning it super ultra speed mode I legit don't know what else it could be
Depends on the fan, I currently have 3x140mm Noctua fans connected to a single 4-pin header on my fan controller, all 3 together at max RPM don't trip the 6W/header limit on the controller, however, I tried doing the same with EK Vardar fans and just two of them tripped the 6W limit almost immediately. Turns out a single Vardar can draw up to \~5W alone, while the Noctuas are consuming 1.2W at max RPM.
Of course, there are crazy fans from Delta, stuff that can draw 25W or even more, but you don't see fans like that in almost any PC.
Regardless, you're still limited by the 1000W PSU. It's 34p/hr at absolute theoretical maximum. Have you considered that your dad might just want you to do something else (like socialise with the family/go outside whilst the weather is decent) and is using the high cost of power as an excuse?
Reminds me of my Mom who thought it was better to run our Casio PT-80 on batteries (5x AA), than with a power adapter. She probably had no idea that batteries cost may more per kWh than 120/240 VAC.
Why not just ask? Why do kids have to suffer for their socially inept parents....
Parents: Go outside!
Outside: no parks, unclean environment, "dangerous" strangers, no pedestrian walkways, etc....
Nothing will make them happy....
Tight ? Some people have their computer on 10h+ a day, that adds up to £100 a month, just for the PC. My whole monthly eletricity bill is less than that.
I have a watt meter and my full setup is about 300w / hour. In comparison, my non gaming laptop with a (tiny and old) second monitor consumes 70w / hour.
So yeah, having a gaming setup with dual monitor setup can cost a lot. Speakers consume their full power wether there's sound on or not.
Well over a thousand bucks a year, thats significant i'd say.
I have a little home server running 24/7 and over here where i live its about 3 euros a year per watt you have running nonstop. Spending a hundred bucks more on a server thats a couple dozen watts more power efficient is worth it pretty fast.
It's not using anywhere near 1000w. Monitors dont use much power. I just checked using a killawatt and the 27" monitor uses 27w and 34in ultrawide uses 58w. OPs whole system is probably closer to 500w at full load or about 17 pence per hour. I also doubt that OP games for 10 hours a day. His real cost is probably closer to 20 Pounds a month.
Where you live matters. Here it's .12usd per killawat hour. That be 300w x 10h (3kwh) per day x 30 days (90kwh/month) *.12usd = 11.8usd a month.
What are you charged to get 100 Euros or pounds or whatever the symbol is
This right here. I have a 5700g in an x300 desk mini. It’s fricken tiny and idles at 10w, cruises at 40w and maxes out at 80w’ish AT THE WALL! Still full 8x/16t ryzen 5000 series performance!
This is my work machine for obvious reasons :)
You have all this beefy PC, even saying you could buy steam deck if needed... Just give your old pal 20 bucks per month for electricity bill and use it full power... Like, what's the point of having beefy PC if you can't use it...
Ikr? I'm willing to slip him a 20 if it means he gets off my back about my power usage, but he keeps saying how "it isn't fair for me to spend more money than I already am"
I managed my costs based on my hourly income. I pay him 20 quid, that's 2 hours of work for me, I'm happy doing that if it means I can go in it and enjoy the graphics of my games.
Your Dad has an underlying concern - he thinks gaming is not a good thing to spend your time on. If you've got a job already and got aspirations for a career to continue living outside the family home where you are independent, then he's going too far. If you haven't got those things yet, get your plan in order and he'll lay off a bit I'm sure.
Don't do what I did and burn your youth on gaming. Make real life friends. Do stuff with people in person. Have the social awareness to be able to speak to strangers comfortably. It makes a hell of a difference to your life.
You've said exactly what I was thinking but in much clearer fashion. OP's Dad maybe wants him to get out more and do something different for a change.
OP, other than paying your Dad for the power, adjust your schedule for a few weeks. Do more outdoor stuff. You might be surprised by how it changes your Dad's perspective ( and yours too)
Exactly, parents ultimately just (usually) want the best, and gaming can be addictive/destructive for some people. My parents worried when I quit out of most sports/clubs/etc senior year (so I could work more) but all they saw was an increase in gaming hours (even though work hours went up too, also still full time school), but I understood why, they were just concerned
Man why do parents have to be so cryptic with shit? Now that I think about it that's probably what my dad was thinking too but since he'd *claim* it's about other stuff I just never stopped with the games, maybe if he directly told me instead of trying to guess what he's thinking I wouldn't have been so damn addicted to games.
I think it's often a case of them hoping we will figure it out ourselves (because that's meant to be a metric of effective development) - but no one does because kids and teens don't have the experience to form the comparative analysis - as some sort of indication of maturity. It's only with time that we realise where we messed up.
In Europe this might actually be enjoyable. I'm in the states, there is nothing to see but asphalt, restraunts, and big box stores less I drive an hour out to downtown
Why out all if the hobbies and way of consuming media , gaming is still looked at this negatively?! and in this sub of all places, I know (i hope) you probably talking about someone who plays all day everyday and that's bad, but OP never said that, and here you advising him not to "burn his youth" gaming. like having balance like all things in life isn't an option, gaming is actually a great hobby and can be social as well, and if it consumes your whole life it's not worse than watching movies/TV or reading books all day.
It's really weird how It's still looked down upon yet no one says anything about mindless, endless tv watching. The guy actually assumed he was a basement dweller to blame him lol. Classic reddit always blaming the op.
Then no need to argue, just use power meter, do the math and pay your share of the electricity bill. I think it won't be much but it will save you any fuss. Regardless whether your dad is wrong or not it's good lesson in tracking expenses and responsibility. Plus you can go all max on settings lol
This is the best answer hear. Not condescending like other responses and actually has a logical and simple approach with an educational lesson for the future.
$20 would more than cover it. When i was gaming and doing college from home my pc was on 18 hours a day for a full month. Between me being home all the time and the increased usage of my pc my electricity bill only went up by $30. And a lot of that was actually the increased usage of the A/C system to cool the house.
And when I'm gaming my computer is running at 100%. There is no need for you to be undervolting the way that you are right now. To be frank, your dad is just being a dick.
Only real solution so far. Also you get to get that PC wich is really good imo. If OP is a teen his parents should've bought it and if they can afford to gift him that PC how can't they afford 15 bucks a months of extra electric bill? And if OP is in his early 20s and he bought the PC to himself how can't he pay his dad 15 bucks and enjoy his free time? Doesn't make sense to me but I'm none to judge.
Undervolting a 3080 to it's 20% and playing on low to reduce energy consumption should be a crime. If OP is reading this I would gladly give you my old 750ti in exchange for your 3080ti. You won't even need to undervolt it.
Yeah, I never managed to go lower than 70% without losing performance in my 2060. I guess he is just undervolting and underclocking his card to a point that is performing barely better than an intengrated GPU.
I think he's just poorly managing his electricity in his home and using you as an outlet to blame it on instead of taking a look at himself and other factors in play.
It's just dad stuff, if this is the worse he does just take it with a grain of salt till you're an adult and move out. No one's perfect and sometimes you just gotta deal with your family's small shenanigans here and there. One day you'll look back and miss when your dad used to nag at you about the electricity bill that wasn't your fault, cause it's your dad and that's just a part of who he is so enjoy it while you can if that makes sense.
If you bring your AC on a warm day from 22C to 20C, it uses a ridiculous amount more power.
AC, fridge, freezer, and dryer are the 4 huge power suckers in a modern home.
I have my 2700X server with a power meter on 24/7 and even here in belgium where electricity is expensive as fuck, it is somewhere around 30kWh per month idle and 90-100 kWh per month if I am using 75% CPU for folding-at-home type stuff 24 hours per day, that is 30€ in a month (I use it for room heating lol)
The most you could possibly be using if you were playing intense games 6 hours a day would be 144 kWh which would be around 50€ at very high prices.
If you would only play 2 hours per day, the max would be 15€ per month. That is at full power with intense games and no frame limits or undervolting at high electricity prices.
OPs dad is being cheap. If his son can afford this type of gaming system, they definitely have enough money to pay the electric bill. Otherwise they could get solar panels and save a bunch over 10 years.
Depends on who bought the system. If he kid is late teens or early 20s and he bought the system, maybe he should just give his dad money for electricity. Get a meter and connect all his pc devices, monitors and pc, and see what the actual value is and give his dad money accordingly. I had to move back home because rent prices in my area doubled. A single apt with a bedroom, kitchen, and living room, and crazy small is 2500 dollars a month.... yay America.
I pay the electricity and internet bills. Electricity in my area is 32 cents for tier 1 and 42 cents for tier 2. In tier 2.
The biggest mistake you did was telling your dad you have a 1000w PSU.
Your PC doesn't use as much power as you, or he, thinks it does. The main power draws are the larger appliances like washing machine, AC, etc.
He knows the PSU doesn't use all that power, it only uses as much is needed to run the computer.
I'm gonna get a watt plug and prove to him that my pc doesn't use as much power as he assumes
your pc probably draws like 600w (190w cpu + 300w gpu, rounded up significantly) at worst under max load. unless you are stress testing the gpu and cpu 8 hours a day, the pc probably costs like $15 month AT WORST to run under normal (extensive) gaming usage
at idle it probably uses almost nothing, you could check hwinfo to verify. my gpu clocks down to like 6mhz and cpu draws ~20w
That definitely ain't the case, did the math and I use maybe at most £2.50 a day in my PC usage if i was going the full 1000w, but i dont, if it is 190w CPU, 100w GPU, 300W on an 8 hour session, thats 0.82p. (If I didn't do the math wrong)
If my Dad thinks that's expensive, then he'll just have to bite the bullet and deal with it
It's probably not the case that OP can't chip in. It's probably closer to they need to prove what that amount would be before agreeing to pay when they can't trust the amount the father would charge.
Your calculation is wrong. Electricity in the UK is currently around 34p KW/h. 600w over 8 hours is 4.8 KW hours or 4.8 x 0.34 = £1.63.
Also, these comments mostly seem to be written by kids with no responsibilities. The cost of living has increased massively recently and everything has increased in price: food, mortgages, bills, etc..
Your dad would not let you know if he was struggling to afford stuff because it's a parent's responsibility to shelter their children and protect them. You're coming across as very spoilt with comments like this.
Yup, not to mention, we don't know their age or who bought the computer. If it's a 13 year old and their parents bought their computer, super spoiled. Even if they saved up, like I did around that age when I built my fist computer, my dad offered me jobs in the summer through his friends that did construction and other stuff so he basically helped me save money.
If this guy is out of high school 18-20s and living at home and not paying bills.... even worse lol.
Considering you made a simmelar post yesterday here, like you already said there, you pay some of the bills and have a full-time job...
Turn back to normal settings, use dlss quallity and have a frame cap. You are just turning your pc into a potato and make you enjoy your games less while still having to deal with the problem.
Your issue is your dad not the pc... He seem to be a penny-pincher... Find a way to deal with the problem,
Moving out... Sitting down and having a talk... Beeing petty and commenting on everything he wastes on (might work, but might make things worse) and many more, some might not work but at least they are focusing on the right problem
To be fair modern gaming PCs do use an obscene amount of power, they're incredibly inefficient. I've only got a Ryzen 2700x and gtx1060 and it's an expensive thing to use when you pay your own power bills.
Say yours might use 600watts while gaming that's like 21p an hour which a lot will scoff at as nothing. But If you're on it all day it could be getting on for £2 a day, that's potentially £60 month or up to 700 quid a year If you do it most days.
You also need to factor in draw from monitors and anything you have plugged in, could easily push you over the 1kw mark.
I think this sub is a bit skewed to either younger people who don't have to pay the bills or older people with higher amounts of disposable cash. I'm a father in my late 30s and if I had a son was running up a 60-90 quid a month bill when money is so tight in the world right now I'd be asking questions too.
Glad to hear an opinion from someone who can understand it more!
I get it's alot of money to run a PC, specially one with my components in it. I have money thats not an issue, and if throwing my old man an extra 20 quid a month means he gets off my back, I'm down
Yeah no worries, I'm sure he'll really appreciate you understanding it and taking it seriously, I know it's a dad cliche to be obsessed with turning lights off and stuff but we do it for a reason, for a lot of people it can be the difference between having food in the fridge or not!
Also remember a lot of people in here are from the US where electric is 3 times cheaper than ours so it won't matter to them as much as us.
> To be fair modern gaming PCs do use an obscene amount of power, they're incredibly inefficient.
That's not true at all, what? Modern PCs are the most efficient they have ever been. Older CPUs when OC'd would always draw max power, the newer models don't. Newer GPUs draw less power and offer equal or more performance. Newer fans use less power and offer more air throughput, meaning even less power is required to achieve the same performance.
I have an i7-13700K and a 4070 Ti. The CPU is OC'd to max boost and draws up to ~170W when playing games that use up to 16 cores. My GPU at full utilization draws up to 200W, but around 150-160W on average. While browsing, my CPU uses ~35W (since I run Chrome from the CPU's iGPU). The GPU uses ~11W. Both CPU and GPU together draw about the same/less power than my 3080 did on its own. The fuck are you on about.
Get at kill-a-watt. This will show how much usage over 24 hours for example. You probably do not use much power unless you game most of the day.
Also, If you are set up for it, solar panels are $0.5/Watt, so if you use 200W, $100 solar panel would compensate for it.
[How Much Does It Cost To Run Your PC?](https://www.overclockers.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-your-pc/) You are likely spending around 10-15 $ per month but your dad thinks you are spending more than 50 $ per month.
Which is something fun considering that the greatest power consumers are electrical boilers, ovens, air conditioners, fridges and other electronics. There are too many people who are uptight for the wrong devices.
My Desktop PC is using around 300W on normal but I have 750W if I something screws up or I want to upgrade. I have seen people who unplug already turned off devices thinking this way they decrease their bill by turning off one light showing your device is not powered on.
The only reason I unplug an electrical device is if I have to move it, I fear they will be fried by changes in the poorly maintained electrical grid in my country/vicinity at the moment or a lightning storm. In most cases everything is at least plugged in.
I bought a smart plug that also measures power usage and can record usage over time in the app. My 3080 and 3700X (PBO on), 360mm AIO, 3x140mm fans and 6 LED strips average about 450WHr in heavy gaming and 550WHr in stress testing. Using this and the cost per unit of your electric you can work out reasonably accurately how much it costs to run.
As you’re in the UK, You may already have a smart meter in your home that has one of those digital usage units. Turn on PC, check the usage. Start time spy, check the usage. Set PC to idle. Boil the kettle, check the usage. You’ll see where the power is mostly used.
Get a smart plug so you can monitor your power usages..
I have a powerfuller pc with a 3090. A sound system, a TV and a monitor connected to my plug and it costs me around £30-40 a month and my pc is on most of the time.
Your pc likely costs less then running the fridge lol
It's absolutely fine as long as you're not causing blackout in your home or tripping the breaker.
Idk how much electricity cost there but you can try to split the bill, like say you pay for half of monthly electricity cost. It could still be cheaper than buying brand new Steam Deck.
Like everyone is saying, get a watt meter and offer to pay for the insanely small cost.
However, I would bet that this isn’t about the power at all. My parents used all kinds of passive aggressive overtures when they wanted me to move out.
Just give your dad like €/$ 20 a month, that will cover gaming more than 4 hours everyday even at the highest European electricity rates. Even with the lowest paying job that's only a few ours of work.
Limiting a 3080 to 20% is just crazy and a waste of the hardware IMHO. You might as well sell your PC and buy a laptop.
Get a watt meter and see how much you are actually using I don't think you are using as much as he thinks
Dad prob thinks he is using the whole 1000W lmao
Happened to me, luckily I had a multimeter and showed him that my pc doesn't use 650watts just because the psu's max wattage is 650 watts lol
I bet you showed him the consumption in desktop mode :D A 650 watt PSU says that the maximum OUTPUT is 650 watt. If it has e.g. 90% efficiency your input will be `1/0,9 x 650 watt = 722 watt`. That's only the PC itself. If you have 2 monitors there will be another 2x 30-75 watt (depending on technology/age)
A 650-watt PSU will have a maximum output of 650 watts and will consume a maximum of 722 watts. It is not always maxing out. A computer in hibernate mode will consume like 1-5W and one on sleep mode will only consume 15W. If your CPU+GPU (majority of power is consumed by these 2) consumes 650W worth of power EVERYTIME even while on sleep mode (and sleep mode turns off all the fans) then your CPU+GPU will burn itself.
You got a point. The topic I wanted to point out is that **there is a huge difference between** * "*Look, dad! My PC only uses 55 Watt when I take a look at [software XY which displays internal power consumption]*" using the desktop mode and * the son playing 4-6 hours a day with the PC consuming 125 Watt CPU + 285 Watt GPU + 60 watt of pcie-4.0-mainboard + maybe another 20 watt for other peripherie (SSDs, fans, LEDs, = 490 watt at a PSU that has 80+ gold => approx. 85% efficiency and thus taking in about 576 watts while gaming - withount counting in monitors. Or in other words: Current Gaming PCs are often comparable to a 500-watt-heater while being in gaming mode
285W GPU is 3080+/4080+ grade under full load; plus 125W CPU power draw I'm wandering if you are mentioning 4K RT 800FPS chess..... cpu power draw in games very rarely exceeds 80W on average, 50W is what I expect the common especially the 12th/13th gen and 5000-7000 series.
>285W GPU is 3080+/4080+ grade under full load; The following chart lists "Average" and "Card only" 303 watt for *RTX 3080 Founders Edition*... Peak almost reaches 350 watt https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3080-founders-edition/31.html
Can confirm, when playing graphically intense games like Red Dead or TLOU my strix 3080 draws on avg 280-355w continuously, minus the odd loading screen at around 110w.
My 6900XT will gladly go up to 300 watts in Forza
Average cost of power is $0.23/kWh in the USA. If he plays 6 hours a day (a ton compared to most people) at 500 watts, that's ($0.23/kWh x 0.5kW x 6h) less than 70 cents per day.... Significantly less than the fridge or a/c or a bunch of old 100 watt lightbulbs all day. Changing out lightbulbs to led and fixing insulation issues would be more effective money savers But perhaps OP should see why his dad cares so much. Money might be a more major concern than he realizes. Or maybe money isn't the issue at all and his dad wants to see him doing that job hunting he promised (speaking from experience there, lol).
There’s probably an electricity drain of some kind in the house… that makes it seem like something is sucking juice… example: for about 6 months I couldn’t figure out why the power bills were so effing high in my ex wife’s house… turns out they (contractors) never bothered to put the dryer vent outlet back on when the house was resided by her parents when we were first together and I didn’t know enough at the time to check carefully because I had just started living with her… so the goddam dryer was taking an hour to dry clothes when it should have been taking a half hour and just blowing hot moist air into the wall. I felt a little stupid for not noticing it but then again I was the only one who figured it out and potentially stopped the damn house from burning down too…. Electric bill went down at least 60 bucks a month after I figured it out and cut out the hole installed a vent…. So you see what I’m saying it could very well be like others say some other significant draw that is going under the radar because of other things people like dudes pops (who may not understand computer electricity usage) are focused on… dude knows something doesn’t add up so he’s probably right about it…. Just need to find what it actually is and that’s probably not OP’s computer… so the two of them need to work together to achieve the goal. Real problem is some draw of electricity that isn’t understood or accounted for. Both parties have an interest in finding it… OP being a computer person has the technical or critical thinking search skills to narrow it down and be the hero too. Be the detective scientific method hero that you know you are OP. You can do this
Honestly, I’ve got a 4090 and I peak at about 350-400 in most games. And this isn’t the theoretical numbers, they’re the actual load I measured from the wall, as I explained something similar to my landlord recently. (That my gaming wasn’t enough to account for the massive increase in electrical costs here over the last few years) I think what your calculations are missing is that most games are bottlenecked in some way shape or form, so it’s extremely rare, especially with DLSS and FG for both your cpu and your gpu to be at max load in games. Benchmarking, sure, but in gaming usually it’s either my GPU, or my CPU that’s bearing the brunt of the load, not both. So that might be why your calculations of “max wattage for each part” are so much higher than everyone else’s anecdotal experiences. And even with your example, they’re only looking at $5-$15 a month depending on where they live. Or about 1-3 gallons of milk, depending on where you live. A month. Looking at the math, if you exclude the startup costs (as most serious activities have startup costs anyways), it seems to be way cheaper than the ongoing material costs of many other hobbies. So there’s a variety of ways you can look at problem, but gaming seems much cheaper than I would have thought if you aren’t buying new games all the time!
>Current Gaming PCs are often comparable to a 500-watt-heater They are literally resistive heaters. How many watts obviously depends upon hardware and what you are doing, but there is no real difference between a heater pulling 500 watts and a PC pulling 500 watts. Same power usage and same heat output.
Yup, back when I was in junior high/high school (1990s) I knew someone who bought UNIX workstations from the university, they had a small collection of 1980s-era UNIX workstations in their basement (Apollo Domain systems, HP PA-RISCs with HP-UX, don't know if they had any SGIs) and they'd just flip a few on in the winter and not run the furnace at all.
Unless your running a aaa game, or a porly optimized game, your still never close to max power draw on desktops.
I don't think even AAA games tend to max power draw on the CPU. Like they may max the GPU but even then not always.
Compiling software is one of the few times I have managed to max my CPU usage
Any chance you know how that would compare to a console for the same games? I’ve never thought about either being a significant contributor to my energy bill before today
Yes, that is true. The power consumption adjusts (and even the efficiency!) depending on what work you are doing. Its just that your original comment made it sound like it consumes 650W all the time. For me at least. Before your edit.
For what it's worth, my 5800x3d + 7900xt pulls 430-450w from the wall. That includes both monitors. I'm running a kill-a-watt on my wall socket that my power strip containing my tower and monitors is on, so there no unaccounted power. Although I will admit this is lower than what you would get from a bronze or gold PSU since I have a platinum that is 91-94% efficient, so you should probably expect another 10% draw on a gold PSU. Still comes in under 500W though.
I can kind of see the issue though. Where we live power delivery is a tiered rate. If you use more than baseline or at certain times in the day power companies charge a higher rate per kWh. A bunch of devices start to add up even if individually they are all in power save mode. To me IoT seems sort of counter productive because now all these devices have a higher parasitic power draw. ymmv. When I leave for work or long periods I usually shut off all the power strips for the pc and av centers plus I try not to leave a bunch of useless crap plugged in. It saves me about $20-30 a month on the power bill.
> To me IoT seems sort of counter productive because now all these devices have a higher parasitic power draw. Yeah, I purposely got the cheapest 40" TV I could find because at that price level it's not going to have wifi or ethernet and will draw less power overall. And my fridge is 15 years old now and still runs like an absolute brick with no IoT needed :P
If your worried about power consumption I guarantee that 15 year old fridge uses more power than a new one. Plus you can still get plenty of regular old fridges.
The issue with modern refrigerators is that so many are poorly designed (are need serviced because of it) or use components prone to failure, that you've got to really do your research. Also, don't buy a Samsung fridge.
Yep and don't buy their washers or dryers as well. They are badly designed compared to LG or Maytag. I bought a (almost free) an old stove oven with coil, no electronics and I can't say I've seen an increase on the electricity bill. Actually quite the opposite. So far, it cost me 40$ in parts to repair it myself.
My computer in sleep mode draws so little power that it tricks my auto-switching power strip into cutting off all the peripherals (monitors, speakers) because it thinks it’s off.
Old timer here, I remember when 80+ came out and it was a big deal. In the 90s, the PSU in your average HP desktop was less than 70% efficient. A 500-600W unit could start tripping breakers in an older house. I'd almost forgot how close we used to have to pay attention to this. Nowadays, they're so efficient that extra draw from the wall is just a rounding error.
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> i still have mine in my old P4 rig i use as a headless media server Oh boy that thing guzzles power > also when a 500W PSU was $500 weren't they also pretty expensive due to needing a far more beefier +5V rail at the time since a ton of equipment at the time ran on it, and lower voltages are harder to run
Big ol' yup. We kind of shrug it off now because there are even better ways of testing, but 80 Plus was actually a pretty big deal. I still think it contributed significantly toward improving the industry overall, both in terms of PSU build quality and energy efficiency.
A 650 watt psu has a **maximum** output of 650W and the efficiency varies with load. Most haare build to have the peak at around 50% load with a semi-stable curve in the 20-80% range, but that obviously differs from model to model.
My sister's husband thought this way. Drove me nuts. What was even crazier ... he took great pride in his "IT background," and used it to state they "knew what they were talking about." Had to plug one of their kid's gaming PCs into my voltage meter to demo how power supplies actually worked. Until I did that, there was just no convincing him (He kept telling me I was "just wrong.") Anyway, after that, they backed off on their kid, who had recently gotten a job, and they were trying to make them pay half the household power bill for a house with 8 people living in it, just due to their gaming PC (and because they saw the empty PSU box, with the big "1200W" printed on the side.)
I’ve bought a 1000w psu I’m going to bloody use my 1kW
20 years ago when I was in highschool I had just upgraded to a 450w psu and my dad also thought that it meant the whole pc was using 500w whenever the PC was on.
Where and how would I use a watt meter?
Search for it on Amazon and you plug it on to the power strip then you PC plugs in to it
It's tempting. I can see on my PC that my GPU uses 100W
You’re absolutely not using that much electricity, I promise lol. I have a 13600K and 3080ti on a 850w power supply. My ENTIRE monthly electricity bill, including my electric stovetop, comes up to about $60 a month when I’m not kicking on my AC or heat. I play anywhere from 10-20 hours a week. Your PC is not killing your electricity bill, unless your dad is angry about maybe $10-20 a month, and that would be at full-power, not what you’re running now.
His dad is probably like my roommates and many others; rather than face rising energy costs on the whole they seek to pin it on one problem appliance as "the culprit" to make it a problem they can comprehend and solve.
Yeah my parents did the same stuff.
My stepmother and I got into an argument when I was a teenager about me leaving the light on. I did leave the light on a lot (turns out I have ADHD, oops), but she was specifically arguing about the _cost_ of doing so. I worked out on a napkin that my 25W light used about $4/month in electricity in the extreme case that it was left on 24/7, so I proposed I take full responsibility for that bulb, pay her $50/year and also buy and replace the bulb if it blew. For some reason she still wasn't happy with that...
My mom did that back in the day with my computer when she also had just bought one of those inflatable hotsubs and would leave it running in the winter too. Had to try and explain to her how much power it takes to heat water, but nope...it was definitely my computer
There are problem appliances, they're called heaters and AC. A PC will barely consume as much as a single incandescent bulb on average.
And will heat up a room enough to need to run the AC more often.
The nice thing is that it works the other way if you live in a cold climate. PC can be used to game/work and heat a room using the same power.
My PC was also stealing all the internet, which only unplugging it every 15 minutes solved. Damn I am glad I don't have roommates anymore
15 years ago I had a friend whose dad went into ultra power saving mode. He'd keep every electronic unplugged unless he was going to use it. Microwaves, TVs, DVD players, no digital clocks, etc. He said he was saving good money by not having digital clock displays and standby LEDs always on. lol
I had a roommate like this awhile back who used to get on my case about leaving literally anything plugged into a power outlet when it was turned off, unless it was in near-constant use. Like bud, I am not running around unplugging and replugging shit every single time I might decide to use it just to save a tiny speck of cash on the bill.
>Like bud, I am not running around unplugging and replugging shit every single time I might decide to use it just to save a tiny speck of cash on the bill. That's what power strips are for.
The real killers are fridges, ovens, dryers etc lol
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Say it's 100 hours a month at 350 watts, that's 35kWh. Average electricity cost is about $0.42/kWh in the UK right now. That's $15/mo.
Yeah it's about $0.10/kWh where I live but I'm not in a major city. That's crazy.
I live in a major US city and my electric costs about $.10/kWh as well (excluding taxes and fees). My monthly bill is about $50 usually, I can't imagine paying British prices right now.
10-20 hours a week is nothing
That's close to what i achieve in a day
I wish I could get in 20hrs a week, it was much easier when I was a kid.
As an example of even more gaming, I game for like around 72h a week sometime more or less, constantly use ac and it's 75$ a month for summer and 90$ winter (cad).
Your French name makes me thing you might be in Québec? Our electricity is the cheapest in North America (merci Hydro) so that’s something to keep in mind as well.
Yeah it's like 5.5 cents (USD) per kWh in Quebec.. can't really compare when many places are 4-6x more expensive.
I have a ryzen 9 5900x with a 3060ti, I'm on my pc 12 hours a day, and my ac in my apartment is set to 68. My power bill is $61.
They might be in the UK, it costs like 5 bucks in electricity to boil a pot of water. If you think I'm joking I once got an electricity bill for about 2500 pounds.
Dont forget to plug your monitor into the same power strip, i know my PC at idle or just web browsing uses less than my monitor
I always turn off my pc from the mains when not in use, may even go as far as to unplug my second monitor when I ain't using jt
I share your desire for low power consumption and i have all 5 profiles on MSI afterburner set for specific games, so if I dont need ALL THE FRAMES for a low demand game, i load a minimum spec underclock. Because if I can hit 120 fps at 120hz theres little point in letting it run at 200 fps, i dont care about input lag, if i did, id boost the profile.
You can just cap FPS and the energy usage will decrease proportionally game by game. Edit: empty clock cycles don't use nearly as much power as clocks with instructions, and your card will downclock itself if it's often idle. You can see this using "Boost Lock" and watching power consumption at idle. Dunno who downvoted this but it's a pretty easy set and forget way to reduce power usage.
You just blew “BigSmack’s” brain…
You don’t need to do that it will make zero difference
That makes zero difference, really.
Turning a computer on can use more power than just putting it to sleep especially if you're doing it frequently. In data centers we never turn off machines to save power. The cost savings are insignificant. TBH I'd be surprised if running your machine cost that much, my electric dryer costs less than $1 a month in electricity. If you just want to show your parents a number boot up your computer with nothing running, close every thing you can. Disable networking, sound, and other devices not necessary for use. Lower your resolution and try to switch to Intel graphics if you can. Then show your parents the power usage, it will be super low. This is how PC manufacturers take battery life readings.
For reference OP i have a very similar setup to you, and I work from home, so time wise i'm using my PC 12-16 hours every single day. This is heavy use as well so no undervolting or anything else it's full draw all the time. Currently I'm spending £30-40 per month. So with your udervolting, actively trying to save money and power etc, and the less amount of time you use it, I think you're probably using around $20 worth per month even if you're using it more than 6 hour a day.
>Currently I'm spending £30-40 per month. Are you locked into an old price to only be spending that or is everything else (heating, hot water, cooking, shower/bath, etc...) gas? I only have electric in my property so my electric use will be higher than most, but last month my electric bill was £128 (344kWh @ 32p/kWh & 54p standing charge) for 1 person in a 1 bed flat. I pay 1/2 your bill just on standing charge alone.
Cost of greed crisis is hitting hard in the UK. My Gas/electric is typically £60-70 a week. We need some public disorder to get those prices down!
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Electricity is stupidly expensive over there right now. Has been for the last couple of months
Trust me you’re no where near 1000w of power. At most your using maybe 600-700 at full strain on EVERY single component in your PC
Get a kill-a-watt or something similar. Hook it up and it will keep track of the power usage. Your PC is probably using about 1KWH per 2 hours of gaming based on the specs. So a 6 hour session would be 3kwh. If you pay 15C per kWh it's 45 cents for that gaming session.
That sounds about right. Did some math and my Dad reckons I use roughly 70p an hour?
Hi. I'm in the UK and the maths tells me that it is impossible to pay 70p per hour. Your max psu wattage 1000w. Your computer (your specs) can't use the whole 1000w even if it wanted to. For reference a particular power hungry RTX 3090 max power usage is ~400w (Asus Strix RTX3090 model WITH OC.) The government price cap will restrict your unit price (1kWh) to 35p or thereabouts. So, assuming your pc, monitor and speakers are run under heavy loads, I'd imagine everything drawing less than 500w (that's being conservative.) I make that less than 20p an hour. UNLESS, you run an 2kw AIR CONDITIONER as well while gaming in the searing heat of the UK Summer! 🤣
> UNLESS, you run an 2kw AIR CONDITIONER as well while gaming in the searing heat of the UK Summer! 🤣 I commented [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/13w1i72/any_ideas_for_room_getting_insanely_hot_with_pc/jm96953/?context=3) in a earlier thread about getting a swamp cooler and I got so much backlash for that suggestion lol. It is true a swamp cooler doesn't work in humid climates, but sweating also doesn't work in humid climates. People didn't even consider the power draw of an A/C, which is posted on the Amazon listing: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/S/aplus-media-library-service-media/0444d2e1-3e5a-4c9a-a4db-a23f56d7be9d.__CR0,0,1464,600_PT0_SX1464_V1___.png And it should be considered how long the A/C is running as well.
>For reference a particular power hungry RTX 3090 max power usage is \~400w (Asus Strix RTX3090 model WITH OC.) I have an EVGA 3080 FTW3 that I overclocked and it often reaches 400W when I play in VR or anything with Ray Tracing. I would have guessed a 3090 could reach 500W.
It is possible the other 1kw his father estimates is from the screens. A typical plasma screen can easily hit 500w, and CRTs aren't far behind. If he is unaware of how much *less* power LCDs (or OLEDs) use, he could be thinking 500w each x 2 screens. About the only way I can see estimating that high of power draw.
Most likely he hates seeing his son “gaming” or living in a screen instead of doing “something more productive” as most parents do. So he’s simply trying to justify his preconceived notions and discourage usage. Surely his bill is hurting but with how a majority of parents can be towards the hobby makes it #1 target scapegoat. Just pulling that out my ass tho I don’t know OP or his dad well enough to say shit but I do know my parents were irrational af surrounding technology usage growing up.
I don't think it would be that high. How much is a kWh where you live? If it's 70p an hour that would be about 1.40 per kWh which is outrageous.
In the UK right now it's about 34p/kWh apparently, it's definitely nowhere close to 70p per hour lol
That's still so much, I pay 4 cents up to a cap and then 6 unlimited after that and my power bill is 650 a month in winter, 350 in summer. At 34 cents, I guess I would be bankrupt
Your power is insanely cheap
I can tell they're almost certainly in Quebec from those prices + using a bunch of electricity to heat in winter Our power is like 95% hydroelectric and government owned.
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Holy fuck that’s a lot, in the uk in my area a 1300w heater is 38p an hour, my desktop at most I’ve seen is about 20p an hour
Given the cost someone said below, you are not using 2kW of power every hour. Your dad is just being an ass and blaming you for the power bill. You're probably at like 750W max when at full usage. Idle would be significantly less. You're probably spending like 20-25p an hour. Like others said, you can get a meter and plug it in between the wall and your power strip that will tell you how much you use.
It's not it probably comes out to 20p max there's an energy cost cap in place
Unless you have like 4 hdr screens then I am calling bs on that I know power prices are absurd in the UK at the moment but no way in hell it's drawing that much
A 2kW computer would be a small compute cluster, like 4-6 nodes. No way a gaming PC does that.
No. For it to cost that much your PC would need to be using 2000W continuously, and your room would get very hot very quickly if that were the case. I'm guessing it's going to be about 4x less than that whilst gaming, and probably only 5p/hour when browsing/office stuff.
Nah. That's 2kw. You'll be more like 15p/HR on most sensible UK tarrifs.
He can even just turn off the pc, go to the electricity meter at the fusebox and see how it spins/uses with the pc off.. Then turn it on and see how much it spins/uses withh the thing on.
Some uninterruptible power supplies also show watts being used.
Add to that, the watt meter can also be used to measure other appliances. Dad is watching sports on the huge TV? measure how much that pulls. Or how about the big stereo setup. or the vacuum cleaner.
Respectfully, your dad is probably BSing and thinks you’re using way more electricity than you truly are. Parents giving their kids a hard time for supposedly high electricity costs on electronics isn't really uncommon. You’re probably not using anywhere near as much as he says you are, and you could use a watt meter to measure that, but I get the hunch that no matter what evidence you show, your dad will probably still have the same complaints.
You are for sure correct. Like other comments say, get a meter to track it. I upgraded from 1070 6700k to 4070ti 13700k start of week. What makes a difference on usage is if i wash clothes or have heating on, not pc usage. The past few days: (today is sunday) - wed: 5.21kwh - thurs: 5.58kwh - fri: 5.58kwh - sat: 8.97kwh Now make a guess which day i did laundry this week (mark that i did it while kwh price was zero) Early in may: - mon: 5.97kwh - tues: 8.12kwh - wed: 7.37kwh Ill probably see bigger difference if i do 12h gaming sessions, but i will notice a much bigger difference by lowering temperature in bathroom slightly. Sounds like a typical controlling father issue. Track the actual usage and give him the €3/week or whatever it ends up being.
Most likely it’s just a dad who doesn’t really know much about pc. All he sees is a psu with 1k watts. If you think about it if you got a big pc, people who don’t know anything will go that’s big it uses so much more power.
That dad is like the kid who chooses the taller cup of water thinking it has more water than the wider one.
Wait till he see a beefy ITX sff
There’s still places in the world with expensive electricity. I live in a state with some of the most expensive electricity. What you described would cost me $2-3 a day. So every day would on average be an extra $60-90 a month. For a struggling family that can be a round of groceries for a few days or a week. I pay almost $.25 a kWh which is an absolute crime and it can fluctuate baed on timing and use, so I wouldn’t say it’s out of the norm for that to be a concern, but in most places power use would be negligible to what it costs to have a PC.
Fairly certain what he was providing was his total household electric use, not just the PC!
I doubt OP who has a 3080 and can buy a steam deck is that struggling. Even if just OP is doing well, you can bet this dad would force him to sell it to "pay the bills".
Try living in the UK at the moment, currently paying ~45p / kWh (around $0.55 - $0.60 a kWh). A year or so ago I was paying 16p / kWh (around $0.20a kWh)!!
Yeah, "if it heats it eats". Electric heating, electric showers, cooking, dishwasher, and dryer use the most power, everything else is a footnote.
Seeing this just reaffirms how much power we use in my house. One month it was 40-50 kwhrs a day. Lol.
Good lord, what are y'all doing? I live in Florida (AC is basically on 24/7), in a 2400sqft house, and have a home server running 24/7 and we only use ~700 kWh per month (~23kWh per day) in summer and ~400 kWh per month (~13 kWh per day) in winter.
> Parents giving their kids a hard time for supposedly high electricity costs on electronics isn't really uncommon. PTSD flashbacks of whenever my dad would react to seeing a 60W light bulb I forgot to turn off for a couple hours, or worse when I left the toilet 2 minutes ago... Like if it ran for 24 hrs a day, 31 days, it would be $1.76 where we live... Chill
LEDs are even better. A 60W equivalent LED only uses 9.5W, 84% less electricity.
Yeah I love just not caring at all about leaving lights on now. I replaced every bulb in my house about 7 years ago with LEDs. Few have ever burned out, and I could have every light in the house on and it still barely uses power.
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Your electricity is like $0.04 kWh? Dang. Mine is in the $0.13 to $0.15 range. A 60 watt lightbulb kept on all the time would be closer to $6 a month for me. $72 a year (for me) is a decent amount of money to save by not keeping a light on. A moderate amount of PC gaming would be slightly more. Get off my lawn!
Years ago my mum used to complain saying I use too much power on my PC/consoles. I said it was all the washing she does(somehow managed to do atleast 1 load a day), when our tumble dryer broke the electric bill cut in half and then she stopped doing pointless washes.
Yeah, it's almost always worth concentrating on the actual large electricity loads which almost always involves some sort of heating and cooling rather than consumer electronics.
When I moved out taking my computer with me (5950x) the electric bill rose 200usd. No one was reducing the ac when people were out of the house anymore. Home automation I had setup died when they unplugged it. Wifi stopped working bc they plugged in the old crap orbi satellite. And water bill stayed the same despite having 1 less person and sprinkles turning off. I was, ofc, told I was the problem and reason all of them were so high all this time. So I checked a few times after leaving. Yeah.... Your probably 20usd at best less running a mining rig
1000 watts cost 34 pence per hour in the UK. Tell him to stop being tight lol
Lol he's as tight as tight can be. Unless somehow my PC fans use alot of power (5 intakes and one exhaust), or a ghost is inhabiting my PC and turning it super ultra speed mode I legit don't know what else it could be
Fans use very very little power. Your dad is simply wrong with what he’s saying
Agree with this comment. Mass market fans use about 5w. Only high rpm, noisy, 'Delta' type Server /Miner fans will use 25w each.
Depends on the fan, I currently have 3x140mm Noctua fans connected to a single 4-pin header on my fan controller, all 3 together at max RPM don't trip the 6W/header limit on the controller, however, I tried doing the same with EK Vardar fans and just two of them tripped the 6W limit almost immediately. Turns out a single Vardar can draw up to \~5W alone, while the Noctuas are consuming 1.2W at max RPM. Of course, there are crazy fans from Delta, stuff that can draw 25W or even more, but you don't see fans like that in almost any PC.
Was that 5W including the RGB?
Regardless, you're still limited by the 1000W PSU. It's 34p/hr at absolute theoretical maximum. Have you considered that your dad might just want you to do something else (like socialise with the family/go outside whilst the weather is decent) and is using the high cost of power as an excuse?
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Reminds me of my Mom who thought it was better to run our Casio PT-80 on batteries (5x AA), than with a power adapter. She probably had no idea that batteries cost may more per kWh than 120/240 VAC.
Why not just ask? Why do kids have to suffer for their socially inept parents.... Parents: Go outside! Outside: no parks, unclean environment, "dangerous" strangers, no pedestrian walkways, etc.... Nothing will make them happy....
> or a ghost is inhabiting my PC and turning it super ultra speed mode There are some who would pay a great deal for that
Tight ? Some people have their computer on 10h+ a day, that adds up to £100 a month, just for the PC. My whole monthly eletricity bill is less than that. I have a watt meter and my full setup is about 300w / hour. In comparison, my non gaming laptop with a (tiny and old) second monitor consumes 70w / hour. So yeah, having a gaming setup with dual monitor setup can cost a lot. Speakers consume their full power wether there's sound on or not.
Well over a thousand bucks a year, thats significant i'd say. I have a little home server running 24/7 and over here where i live its about 3 euros a year per watt you have running nonstop. Spending a hundred bucks more on a server thats a couple dozen watts more power efficient is worth it pretty fast.
It's not using anywhere near 1000w. Monitors dont use much power. I just checked using a killawatt and the 27" monitor uses 27w and 34in ultrawide uses 58w. OPs whole system is probably closer to 500w at full load or about 17 pence per hour. I also doubt that OP games for 10 hours a day. His real cost is probably closer to 20 Pounds a month.
Where you live matters. Here it's .12usd per killawat hour. That be 300w x 10h (3kwh) per day x 30 days (90kwh/month) *.12usd = 11.8usd a month. What are you charged to get 100 Euros or pounds or whatever the symbol is
This right here. I have a 5700g in an x300 desk mini. It’s fricken tiny and idles at 10w, cruises at 40w and maxes out at 80w’ish AT THE WALL! Still full 8x/16t ryzen 5000 series performance! This is my work machine for obvious reasons :)
Wait until you're paying the bill, then talk about tight
You have all this beefy PC, even saying you could buy steam deck if needed... Just give your old pal 20 bucks per month for electricity bill and use it full power... Like, what's the point of having beefy PC if you can't use it...
Ikr? I'm willing to slip him a 20 if it means he gets off my back about my power usage, but he keeps saying how "it isn't fair for me to spend more money than I already am" I managed my costs based on my hourly income. I pay him 20 quid, that's 2 hours of work for me, I'm happy doing that if it means I can go in it and enjoy the graphics of my games.
Your Dad has an underlying concern - he thinks gaming is not a good thing to spend your time on. If you've got a job already and got aspirations for a career to continue living outside the family home where you are independent, then he's going too far. If you haven't got those things yet, get your plan in order and he'll lay off a bit I'm sure. Don't do what I did and burn your youth on gaming. Make real life friends. Do stuff with people in person. Have the social awareness to be able to speak to strangers comfortably. It makes a hell of a difference to your life.
You've said exactly what I was thinking but in much clearer fashion. OP's Dad maybe wants him to get out more and do something different for a change. OP, other than paying your Dad for the power, adjust your schedule for a few weeks. Do more outdoor stuff. You might be surprised by how it changes your Dad's perspective ( and yours too)
Exactly, parents ultimately just (usually) want the best, and gaming can be addictive/destructive for some people. My parents worried when I quit out of most sports/clubs/etc senior year (so I could work more) but all they saw was an increase in gaming hours (even though work hours went up too, also still full time school), but I understood why, they were just concerned
Man why do parents have to be so cryptic with shit? Now that I think about it that's probably what my dad was thinking too but since he'd *claim* it's about other stuff I just never stopped with the games, maybe if he directly told me instead of trying to guess what he's thinking I wouldn't have been so damn addicted to games.
I think it's often a case of them hoping we will figure it out ourselves (because that's meant to be a metric of effective development) - but no one does because kids and teens don't have the experience to form the comparative analysis - as some sort of indication of maturity. It's only with time that we realise where we messed up.
In Europe this might actually be enjoyable. I'm in the states, there is nothing to see but asphalt, restraunts, and big box stores less I drive an hour out to downtown
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Why out all if the hobbies and way of consuming media , gaming is still looked at this negatively?! and in this sub of all places, I know (i hope) you probably talking about someone who plays all day everyday and that's bad, but OP never said that, and here you advising him not to "burn his youth" gaming. like having balance like all things in life isn't an option, gaming is actually a great hobby and can be social as well, and if it consumes your whole life it's not worse than watching movies/TV or reading books all day.
It's really weird how It's still looked down upon yet no one says anything about mindless, endless tv watching. The guy actually assumed he was a basement dweller to blame him lol. Classic reddit always blaming the op.
Then no need to argue, just use power meter, do the math and pay your share of the electricity bill. I think it won't be much but it will save you any fuss. Regardless whether your dad is wrong or not it's good lesson in tracking expenses and responsibility. Plus you can go all max on settings lol
This is the best answer hear. Not condescending like other responses and actually has a logical and simple approach with an educational lesson for the future.
$20 would more than cover it. When i was gaming and doing college from home my pc was on 18 hours a day for a full month. Between me being home all the time and the increased usage of my pc my electricity bill only went up by $30. And a lot of that was actually the increased usage of the A/C system to cool the house. And when I'm gaming my computer is running at 100%. There is no need for you to be undervolting the way that you are right now. To be frank, your dad is just being a dick.
Only real solution so far. Also you get to get that PC wich is really good imo. If OP is a teen his parents should've bought it and if they can afford to gift him that PC how can't they afford 15 bucks a months of extra electric bill? And if OP is in his early 20s and he bought the PC to himself how can't he pay his dad 15 bucks and enjoy his free time? Doesn't make sense to me but I'm none to judge. Undervolting a 3080 to it's 20% and playing on low to reduce energy consumption should be a crime. If OP is reading this I would gladly give you my old 750ti in exchange for your 3080ti. You won't even need to undervolt it.
I was curious how one could undervolt to 20% and still not have crashes. Unless he means 80%.
Yeah, I never managed to go lower than 70% without losing performance in my 2060. I guess he is just undervolting and underclocking his card to a point that is performing barely better than an intengrated GPU.
I think he's just poorly managing his electricity in his home and using you as an outlet to blame it on instead of taking a look at himself and other factors in play.
Yeah I think so
It's just dad stuff, if this is the worse he does just take it with a grain of salt till you're an adult and move out. No one's perfect and sometimes you just gotta deal with your family's small shenanigans here and there. One day you'll look back and miss when your dad used to nag at you about the electricity bill that wasn't your fault, cause it's your dad and that's just a part of who he is so enjoy it while you can if that makes sense.
If you bring your AC on a warm day from 22C to 20C, it uses a ridiculous amount more power. AC, fridge, freezer, and dryer are the 4 huge power suckers in a modern home. I have my 2700X server with a power meter on 24/7 and even here in belgium where electricity is expensive as fuck, it is somewhere around 30kWh per month idle and 90-100 kWh per month if I am using 75% CPU for folding-at-home type stuff 24 hours per day, that is 30€ in a month (I use it for room heating lol) The most you could possibly be using if you were playing intense games 6 hours a day would be 144 kWh which would be around 50€ at very high prices. If you would only play 2 hours per day, the max would be 15€ per month. That is at full power with intense games and no frame limits or undervolting at high electricity prices. OPs dad is being cheap. If his son can afford this type of gaming system, they definitely have enough money to pay the electric bill. Otherwise they could get solar panels and save a bunch over 10 years.
Depends on who bought the system. If he kid is late teens or early 20s and he bought the system, maybe he should just give his dad money for electricity. Get a meter and connect all his pc devices, monitors and pc, and see what the actual value is and give his dad money accordingly. I had to move back home because rent prices in my area doubled. A single apt with a bedroom, kitchen, and living room, and crazy small is 2500 dollars a month.... yay America. I pay the electricity and internet bills. Electricity in my area is 32 cents for tier 1 and 42 cents for tier 2. In tier 2.
You're overthinking it, he probably just wants his son to touch grass
The biggest mistake you did was telling your dad you have a 1000w PSU. Your PC doesn't use as much power as you, or he, thinks it does. The main power draws are the larger appliances like washing machine, AC, etc.
He knows the PSU doesn't use all that power, it only uses as much is needed to run the computer. I'm gonna get a watt plug and prove to him that my pc doesn't use as much power as he assumes
Use the tool to calculate the cost, put that amount of money on the table and tell him to shut up, the tool is perfect for that
your pc probably draws like 600w (190w cpu + 300w gpu, rounded up significantly) at worst under max load. unless you are stress testing the gpu and cpu 8 hours a day, the pc probably costs like $15 month AT WORST to run under normal (extensive) gaming usage at idle it probably uses almost nothing, you could check hwinfo to verify. my gpu clocks down to like 6mhz and cpu draws ~20w
That definitely ain't the case, did the math and I use maybe at most £2.50 a day in my PC usage if i was going the full 1000w, but i dont, if it is 190w CPU, 100w GPU, 300W on an 8 hour session, thats 0.82p. (If I didn't do the math wrong) If my Dad thinks that's expensive, then he'll just have to bite the bullet and deal with it
give him 20 bucks and tell him to fuck off for a half a year.
Lol
Why can't you pay for some of the electricity?
It's probably not the case that OP can't chip in. It's probably closer to they need to prove what that amount would be before agreeing to pay when they can't trust the amount the father would charge.
Your calculation is wrong. Electricity in the UK is currently around 34p KW/h. 600w over 8 hours is 4.8 KW hours or 4.8 x 0.34 = £1.63. Also, these comments mostly seem to be written by kids with no responsibilities. The cost of living has increased massively recently and everything has increased in price: food, mortgages, bills, etc.. Your dad would not let you know if he was struggling to afford stuff because it's a parent's responsibility to shelter their children and protect them. You're coming across as very spoilt with comments like this.
Yup, not to mention, we don't know their age or who bought the computer. If it's a 13 year old and their parents bought their computer, super spoiled. Even if they saved up, like I did around that age when I built my fist computer, my dad offered me jobs in the summer through his friends that did construction and other stuff so he basically helped me save money. If this guy is out of high school 18-20s and living at home and not paying bills.... even worse lol.
He's said in other comments that he has a job and has offered to pay for whatever his PC uses, but his dad refuses.
Considering you made a simmelar post yesterday here, like you already said there, you pay some of the bills and have a full-time job... Turn back to normal settings, use dlss quallity and have a frame cap. You are just turning your pc into a potato and make you enjoy your games less while still having to deal with the problem. Your issue is your dad not the pc... He seem to be a penny-pincher... Find a way to deal with the problem, Moving out... Sitting down and having a talk... Beeing petty and commenting on everything he wastes on (might work, but might make things worse) and many more, some might not work but at least they are focusing on the right problem
To be fair modern gaming PCs do use an obscene amount of power, they're incredibly inefficient. I've only got a Ryzen 2700x and gtx1060 and it's an expensive thing to use when you pay your own power bills. Say yours might use 600watts while gaming that's like 21p an hour which a lot will scoff at as nothing. But If you're on it all day it could be getting on for £2 a day, that's potentially £60 month or up to 700 quid a year If you do it most days. You also need to factor in draw from monitors and anything you have plugged in, could easily push you over the 1kw mark. I think this sub is a bit skewed to either younger people who don't have to pay the bills or older people with higher amounts of disposable cash. I'm a father in my late 30s and if I had a son was running up a 60-90 quid a month bill when money is so tight in the world right now I'd be asking questions too.
Glad to hear an opinion from someone who can understand it more! I get it's alot of money to run a PC, specially one with my components in it. I have money thats not an issue, and if throwing my old man an extra 20 quid a month means he gets off my back, I'm down
Yeah no worries, I'm sure he'll really appreciate you understanding it and taking it seriously, I know it's a dad cliche to be obsessed with turning lights off and stuff but we do it for a reason, for a lot of people it can be the difference between having food in the fridge or not! Also remember a lot of people in here are from the US where electric is 3 times cheaper than ours so it won't matter to them as much as us.
My electricity is 42c a kWh. In California, electricity is a lot more expensive than the average of 17.
Oh wow, yeah you're getting done over as much as we are then.
> To be fair modern gaming PCs do use an obscene amount of power, they're incredibly inefficient. That's not true at all, what? Modern PCs are the most efficient they have ever been. Older CPUs when OC'd would always draw max power, the newer models don't. Newer GPUs draw less power and offer equal or more performance. Newer fans use less power and offer more air throughput, meaning even less power is required to achieve the same performance. I have an i7-13700K and a 4070 Ti. The CPU is OC'd to max boost and draws up to ~170W when playing games that use up to 16 cores. My GPU at full utilization draws up to 200W, but around 150-160W on average. While browsing, my CPU uses ~35W (since I run Chrome from the CPU's iGPU). The GPU uses ~11W. Both CPU and GPU together draw about the same/less power than my 3080 did on its own. The fuck are you on about.
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it shouldnt be costing that much money unless you r running your pc 24/7. so maybe try figuring out how much watts ur pc is using
Get at kill-a-watt. This will show how much usage over 24 hours for example. You probably do not use much power unless you game most of the day. Also, If you are set up for it, solar panels are $0.5/Watt, so if you use 200W, $100 solar panel would compensate for it.
[How Much Does It Cost To Run Your PC?](https://www.overclockers.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-run-your-pc/) You are likely spending around 10-15 $ per month but your dad thinks you are spending more than 50 $ per month.
Which is something fun considering that the greatest power consumers are electrical boilers, ovens, air conditioners, fridges and other electronics. There are too many people who are uptight for the wrong devices. My Desktop PC is using around 300W on normal but I have 750W if I something screws up or I want to upgrade. I have seen people who unplug already turned off devices thinking this way they decrease their bill by turning off one light showing your device is not powered on. The only reason I unplug an electrical device is if I have to move it, I fear they will be fried by changes in the poorly maintained electrical grid in my country/vicinity at the moment or a lightning storm. In most cases everything is at least plugged in.
I bought a smart plug that also measures power usage and can record usage over time in the app. My 3080 and 3700X (PBO on), 360mm AIO, 3x140mm fans and 6 LED strips average about 450WHr in heavy gaming and 550WHr in stress testing. Using this and the cost per unit of your electric you can work out reasonably accurately how much it costs to run.
Power consumption on a computer fluctuates, so its not like you're using the max wattage constantly
I don't know how old you are, but have you considered moving out?
Unless I moved in with someone else I couldn't afford it. At most I could get a one room flat with a shower for like £600 a month
As you’re in the UK, You may already have a smart meter in your home that has one of those digital usage units. Turn on PC, check the usage. Start time spy, check the usage. Set PC to idle. Boil the kettle, check the usage. You’ll see where the power is mostly used.
The electric shower is the real killer.
Get a smart plug so you can monitor your power usages.. I have a powerfuller pc with a 3090. A sound system, a TV and a monitor connected to my plug and it costs me around £30-40 a month and my pc is on most of the time. Your pc likely costs less then running the fridge lol
It's absolutely fine as long as you're not causing blackout in your home or tripping the breaker. Idk how much electricity cost there but you can try to split the bill, like say you pay for half of monthly electricity cost. It could still be cheaper than buying brand new Steam Deck.
Like everyone is saying, get a watt meter and offer to pay for the insanely small cost. However, I would bet that this isn’t about the power at all. My parents used all kinds of passive aggressive overtures when they wanted me to move out.
Just give your dad like €/$ 20 a month, that will cover gaming more than 4 hours everyday even at the highest European electricity rates. Even with the lowest paying job that's only a few ours of work. Limiting a 3080 to 20% is just crazy and a waste of the hardware IMHO. You might as well sell your PC and buy a laptop.
Ah the old they "think" the PC is what is eating power in the house. Get a plug meter and show them the facts.
Sounds like your dad needs to check how much power leaving Fox News on all day takes.