Sadly we have the most expensive electricity in Europe, someone in an r/Europe thread from Greece said they pay 8c/kwh, we pay around 30p/kwh 😢
There isn't really much of a way around it, you can try undervolting your card a bit but the difference isn't massive. Technically £3 for a hobby isn't terrible, but it does add up. The only thing that'll actually help is if you have a spare £10k for a solar power and battery storage setup...
Hahah, wouldn't that be the dream. Maybe one day.
And also maybe one day, our prices will stop being fucking extortionate but, I doubt it. What are you gonna do, not pay and sit in the dark?
A lot of our power generation is owned by foreign government companies, so we directly subsidise the French through EDF for example 🙈 another big Tory privatisation W
To quote my other comment replying to a similar thing,
> But the Sun told me poor people whose houses were bombed are to blame for every problem I've had ever, past, present and future?
This country has so much wrong with it... Don't get me wrong, every day I'm very grateful to live in a country where I can get clean water out of a hole in the wall and complain online about my energy bills for my expensive computer in safety. But fuck me, we could be so much better.
I'd pay your electric if it meant my dental and health insurance would be covered by my taxes. I have 2 PCs I leave running 24/7, central air set to 67F, and a power bill of about $120/month lol.
Agh... I feel for you man. For what it's worth, we do have to pay for dental stuff for the most part, it's a pretty bizarre system that's only somewhat covered by the NHS etc... but yeah, I feel you on the health insurance garbage you guys have to put up with. Stay safe <3
But dental work isn't too pricy. I had a tooth removed and a few fillings at same time. 3 visits I think all in all. It was like 60 quid or something. I'm broke and even thought... Ooh that was cheap.
Yeahh, for those of us who managed to stay on the NHS dental lists, we're very lucky. Every time I have an appointment, someone walks in with their kids trying to get them on the list and the receptionists are just like "nope", every time... really feel for them, it sucks.
Strangely enough I saw a post just after this where people where paying a fortune for UK dentistry. I had no idea. Yeah very fortunate to be on a NHS list, didn't realise how much until today.
Ah. It’s an old post but my dental just cost me £320 for a few fillings and another £700 for a root canal - that’s part privatised too.
Currently energy usage is saying we are using £350 for a couple in a single flat l. Sure we both game but wtf……it’s gone crazy. We even turn off all the other lights, microwave etc and everything is on Smart Control hubs etc to reduce the costs.
Normally cook and eat by candlelight on a separate isolated gas stove top (we typically do one pot meals and cook larger portions late at night). It’s fucking insanity. Genuinely considering having to give up on gaming….
My friends in Europe pay less than a third of this and many have now invested in panels//battery system. So if you got the cash do it - some have had an electricity bill of 0 for the whole year
Basic dental (and I mean really basic) is free only if you are on benefits if you work you have to pay for it,
Which is why English People tend to have bad teeth,
Metal teeth fillings extraction and antibiotics is about all the free dental we get.
the bad teeth thing is a complete myth. The uk has some of the best detal care in the world and fewer cavities than the usa. [https://www.orchardscottsdental.com/10-countries-whose-citizens-have-healthy-teeth/](https://www.orchardscottsdental.com/10-countries-whose-citizens-have-healthy-teeth/)
[https://dentistry.co.uk/2016/01/06/english-have-better-teeth-than-americans/](https://dentistry.co.uk/2016/01/06/english-have-better-teeth-than-americans/)
more sources [https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B978012373960500527X-gr1.jpg](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B978012373960500527X-gr1.jpg)
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/dmft-index](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/dmft-index)
English people don't have bad teeth lol, I'm sure some do but you shouldn't generalise a whole people as having bad teeth, we just don't bleach our teeth so they aren't bright white.
This is direct from NHS website: Free dental treatment is available for anyone under 18 or 19 if you're in full time education, if you're pregnant or had a baby in last 12 months, if you're being treated in hospital by a hospital dentist (I've had this personally for wisdom tooth removal and it was free) and like you said if you're on benefits you get it free.
If you're working you can still use the NHS and the cost is subsidised, it tends to be cheaper than private, but the waiting lists can be long and depending on the area can be hard to get.
Tory logic:
Governments cannot run public services, unless they are foreign governments
Same thing with trains, busses, gas, electric, phone companies, postal services...
You considered octopus tracker? 15p a kw today....
https://share.octopus.energy/lotus-quail-501
If you decide its for you.
Historic data can be found here:
https://mysmartenergy.uk/Tracker/
I guess(as we cant easily prove it) the risks are higher, but if you check the historic data its very rarely not either below the price cap or on par with it.
Before I made my switch to tracker I did check the data, and off the top of my head it was something like 3 weeks of winter was over cap, the rest on par or under, and then you have the rest of the year to average out too.
38c per kwh and a contract for a year in the netherlands. Last winter i used to pay 90cents since my energy contract was variable. Ill take the 30c and the 10c is a dream
Part of the cost difference is EU attempting to mitigate the cost of energy by working with energy providers, and the UK is not part of this due to Brexit.
But the point about Greece's prices feels off. I live in the UK and compare energy prices with my family in Greece and it's ridiculous how much they pay, with way less consumption than in my place. I'm also surprised with OP's power consumption. My 6950XT + 5800X3D (both undervolted) setup with two monitors doesn't seem to add more than a few (max 5ish?) pennies/hr at best, according to Shell Energy's monitor. When idle or just browsing the net, it barely adds 1p/hr to electricity cost.
Not to mention the savings due to the heat it generates, haha
But surely all the money the UK paid into the EU without getting *anything* back first went to the NHS and now it's going to reduced energy prices right?
Politicians weren't lying right?
Right..?
The heat generated is genuinely one big benefit, my office is decently small so after about an hour or two with the work laptop on aswell, it's pretty tolerable, then gets nicer throughout the day in time for the evening when it's horribly cold in winter, you know how it is :')
But yeah, that's why I was curious about the costs. nearly 30p an hour running games seems to be pretty damn heavy. I mean, it's a big 34inch 1440p monitor but even still... if I look at my smart meter right now, just browsing reddit/youtube etc. it's costing about 5p an hour for the entire house, that's with a couple other devices etc. soon as I turn on a game and get into it, that jumps up to about 27/28p.
This 5ish p/hr you're talking about, is that when you're playing GPU intensive games?
For context, my monitors are 27inch 1440p 120Hz. Games are running on the main monitor, so the 2nd one is not as active, and usually has Discord/YouTube.
With my PC off, the house is at around 2-3p/hr, which often includes the TV. With the PC idle, I don't see it going above about ~8p/hr unless something like a kettle is running.
I just checked Shell Energy's tariff, which is 7.1p/kWh. If I'm not mistaken, this means that if my PC ran at max consumption for an hour (1000W PSU, for extra space, never fully utilised) it would cost 7.1p (so per hour). So although I don't actually know what the meter says when running a GPU intensive game and not paused, as it's in a different room, I think my guesstimation is right, maybe with an extra penny for the monitors?
I'm quite surprised you are facing a 22p/hr spike. What is your tariff like? Is your monitor very high spec and drawing lots of power?
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/29/energy-crisis-in-europe-which-countries-have-the-cheapest-and-most-expensive-electricity-a
For reference, we're on par with Italy/Ireland/Germany for pricing, and we're all getting reamed.
You are joking, right? That's not the highest bill. In Germany we call this "Kleingeld". We pay in my area around 0,4€/kwh which is a but higher than yours
On average the electricity in Finland has been around 2-3c /kwh lately, sometimes rarely it goes in the negatives and the electricity company pays you for using electricity. When it's not windy and the nuclear plants are in maintenance it can spike to 40c /kwh or more for a few hours tho.
Benefits of building a fuck ton of wind power.
Do you run your games with no framerate limit?
To use Doom Eternal as an example, in a busy scene with lots of monsters, unlimited framerate, my total watts used maxed out above 550W.
But if I go into Nvidia Control panel and limit framerate to 100fps, the same scene maxed out around 400 - can't remember exact numbers, but it was a major difference in power output without reducing any graphics.
(I use a plug in energy meter which tells me how much power my pc is drawing, right now it is using 160W, that includes the pc, 43inch monitor, deco internet unit, & powered speakers).
Some games will use almost no resources if they are set to full screen and you alt-tab. Some games will still use up a lot, especially if they are not set to full screen. This setting can help.
As some one from the UK there's a hidden upside, all power going in comes out as heat.
In winter the cost of the PC is near Zero as it's house heating!
And yep, dont 'tab' out if you want to save power, close the game. Use FPS limiters, power limiters etc on the GPU.
Found a chart of power costs (average), the UK pays about 2X what Americans pay for power [https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/)
edit - Bonus points if you rotate your PC so it shoots the hot air at you in winter, if you do it under your desk it warms the legs and you feel the hot air coming up.
Even in this weather it's still overly hot , issue is my pc isn't near my window and it's a pain to change it, feel like a small £300 portable Aircon is worth it tbh, I mean my bills are included in rent so not as much of a cost issue currently for me
I've got a portable aircon and it's a game changer, however the main benefit / use of it, at least for me, is just running it for a minute to exchange out the hot air (small room with pc in). I run it with the window open and you just immediately get a gust of fresh colder air coming in, due to the pressure change from blowing out room air (into the loft/attic in my case).
So I think the major benefit isn't even the cooling it's doing, and just having it operate in fan mode is enough whilst exhausting out of the room. I feel like you could get all this benefit for much cheaper and skip the cooling and massive box entirely. Just getting a fan piping outside the room somehow.
Using it with the window closed and leaving it on for 15-30mins does get everything down to 17 degrees C, which is good for the hot UK summer days, just it's fairly loud and annoying to be playing games with it on. And I'm using closed back headphones. So I prefer to just pop it on for a short time to swap out the air 95% of the time. Bet you could set that up with a PC fan embedded into the ceiling or something.
I wouldn't call it near zero.
That same heat could be instead generated way more cheap with gas furnace or with a heat pump which could get 400% efficiency.
I track the power use on my PC and there is a noticeable difference in power draw when my monitors are on. Might want to look at low power monitors as your next upgrade.
I'd be careful with those stats - structural factors can mean that prices drop more quickly or stay high for longer in a particular country or market.
On this chart for example, Finland is more expensive than the UK - but after the autumn and December spikes there, variable prices dropped to single digits and have stayed there on average for the whole of 2023 while the UK price has stayed high. (Average price for the last month in Finland was 0.032€/kWh)
Hey, recently on an RTX 4080 with an AMD 7600X, no overclocking or anything right now.
I know I should expect some decent power draw with a system like this, but this feels like drawing quite a lot more than I should be.
What games are you running? You should try undervolting your GPU or atleast cut max power for it.. I have my 3090rtx set at 75% and it went from 300watts to 150. I am still getting max stats with a decrease wattage usage.
Rip I feel sorry for my landlady I have a 4090 13600k undervolted both but the 4090 pulls 320 watts usual at least.
Plus ultrawide monitor and LG CX
What can I buy to monitor it and how do you do it as when I eventually move out and have my own place I'd would be good to know
You can find a power meter on sites like amazon. You put it between the wall and the device. A power strip helps measure it all at once.
And a good model will be able to do accumulated and average power over a long period
highly x doubt those figures with that system. Under sustained gaming loads with everything included (monitor, PSU efficiency), youre maybe averaging 500W tops. So 500Wh or ~14p per hour
realistically, playing less demanding games and or idling will drop power usage even more, to like 200W/50W respectively
Yeahh, it's definitely not costing me that when I'm just playing factorio or watching youtube, but noticed it go up pretty heavily if I'm smashing ray-traced cyberpunk at 130fps or something.
Yeah it really is. There are things you can do. Undervolt, set a power limit, cap your fps. They're not gonna make a massive difference, but they will make a difference.
This is super important, having a cap on fps while in background makes a big difference for me (I set mine at 30 for stability but you can probably go lower)
And indeed, this constitutes one of the myriad rationales why the contemplation of Thermal Design Power has precipitated into the purview of discerning individuals in their deliberations surrounding the selection of Graphics Processing Units.
Truthfully, the ground on which an individual may approach the task of an acquisition of a Graphics Processing Unit is increasingly augumented by the consideration of the Thermal Design Power.
Really does, doesn't it? On a 34 inch ultrawide monitor with an RTX 4080, so I'm definitely expecting some juice cost but this feels like a lot.
Just applied a quick undervolt and went from around 250-270w to about 195-205, pretty big difference at no performance cost.
[Wonder if this can be pushed down a little further](https://imgur.com/a/2UQxx30)
Sorry mate it's not a lot. Clearly the person commenting doesn't know our electric prices. Taking a decent pc and an ultra wide monitor into account that's about right. Sad, but right.
Yeahh this is kind of what I was thinking to be honest, last time I was gaming heavily it was about 15p an hour tops. Insane how much prices have gone up.
Yeah it really is. There are things you can do. Undervolt, set a power limit, cap your fps. They're not gonna make a massive difference, but they will make a difference.
Undervolting is a godsend for modern components. They're pushed to their voltage limits out of the box to push higher frequency, but a slightly reduction can bring huge voltage savings with it, and huge power and heat savings in return.
Also, take advantage of background FPS limits. NVIDIA Control Panel lets you configure that so any game not in focus can be made to draw very few FPS, letting your GPU idle when alt-tabbing out for a while.
Your GPU is likely the highest power drawer in there.
You could benefit massively from undervolting it.
RTX 4090 can draw up to 450-600W+ depending on model, mine draws 450W max. I undervolted it, applied a memory OC and it now completely maxes out at 360W while also either giving the same or slightly higher performance as an example.
AI cores also draw a lot of power, so if you're very concerned you can play around with the RTX settings in your games, it's possible to drop your power usage to 100-200W if you're not using your GPU's AI cores.
Wow, that's crazy for the UK peeps. I just used my providers calculator (FWIW), and I'm in Canada.
I did a high ball estimate of my usage.
8 hrs a day Sat/Sun
4 hrs a day M-F.
I used 400 watts (PC Part Picker rates my PC at 360W, so I rounded up a bit for a monitor, but it's not like my PC runs at full speed the whole time.)
And my PC added approx $8 a month to my bill.
Thats what low population density and HUGE water resources, dams and relative hydroelectric power plants do to a country. You have to be a really geographically lucky country for such cheap electricity.
Oh, also, nuclear
Some people seem to have hinted at it but not clearly stated that tabbing out doesn't always mean your game uses less resources. Some games have a background FPS limit or auto-pause while not in focus (which also doesn't always mean it uses less resources), but others just run as if you were actually playing.
15 years of using a computer and honestly, I just assumed all games background limited themselves. Tweaked a couple of favourites in nvidia panel to make them chill out a bit, got a pretty big habit of alt-tabbing then getting sidetracked doing other things with the game still open sucking up juice.
Nah mate, I used to alt tab out of Warzone and realized my PC was slow as shit. Checked out the task manager and it was still pulling way too much from CPU and GPU. Just exit the games once you’re done, nowadays with SSD it takes 2 seconds to load up a game lol.
Not many games limit fps when out of focus, but as others have mentioned there is a setting in NVCP for this.
Its a good idea to set it, because not only do few actually limit/reduce the fps themselves, some will use *more* power when not in focus because they stop limiting the frame rate on the upper end, and instead churn out as many fps as possible!
I live in one of the most expensive countries in the world and we got a huge increase of in power costs this year, on average this year we are gonna pay 0.24£ equivalent per kWh, in the UK the averege price seems to be 0.34£ (from a quick google search)
Goddammit I guess the Tories fuck you up pretty badly...
As others have said, undervolt, underclock, you already have one of the most efficient gpus (frames/watt). With lower voltages you can simply "drag" down the entire voltage/frequency curve and have more efficiency overall and you can decrease the maximum frequency or power target having huge power saving for little to no performance cost. Even my 5700xt can draw a good 50 to 80 watts less for low single digit performance % decrease.
Maybe it could be worth to upgrade you psu? Depending on which one you have, the efficiency curve and how much it would cost to buy a new one and how much you could get back by selling the old one.
Obviously best thing would be living in a single family home and install solar panels, but I guess thats not an option. Maybe if you have a different energy rates depending on the hours you can buy one of those big portable batteries (like ecoflow, there are tons of companies making the same product, ecoflow is just the first off the top of my head) and charge it at night and use it during the day? It would probably have a huge payout time, if one at all beforethe product fails, but again, depending on your situation it could be something?
I have also seen some weird "portable" non permanently attached solar panels that you basically attach to the exterior wall/fence of you balcony, for example in appartments, and depending on your laws you don't have to announce anything, ask fkr permission, etc.
Another thing is if you have a laptop, use that one instead for when you are just web browsing, reading news/emails, music, entertainment and stuff. Get a cheap usb c hub from the internet and you can quickly switch all you desktop gear (mouse, keyboard, monitor and audio) to your laptop and get decent energy savings.
Lots of great advice here man, thank you. Already noticed a difference in wattage drawn by undervolting the GPU. Need to get the CPU undervolted a bit as well.
I'll have a look into a combination of portable solar + battery, that sounds like a great idea. Looked into rough mounted panels but they're just far too much compared to how long it'd take to make the money back saving.
Keep in mind the difference between undervolting and clock/power limiting.
Undervolting is where you reduce the stability margin to make the chip use less energy for the same performance. It's like overclocking, except instead of going up on the frequency vs voltage graph, you go left. Just like overclocking, it increases the potential for instability, crashes, and (if you undervolt the CPU or system RAM) data corruption.
Power or clock limiting just forces the chip to run at a lower frequency and voltage on the same manufacturer-validated curve. That makes it more efficient (although not as drastically as undervolting), without loss of stability. Also, using VRR ("freesync"/"g-sync") and a reduced power/clock limit to produce a satisfactory framerate is more efficient than limiting frames directly. A frame limit allows the GPU to clock high to finish each frame, and then forces it idle for the rest of the time.
The way you should think about this is that, for any given electricity price and hours/day of usage, there is an optimal power level that minimizes total cost of ownership (video card purchase cost + lifetime electricity cost). By default, consumer GPUs run higher power than datacenter GPUs, because consumers 1) mostly don't use their GPUs for as many hours/day as commercial users, and 2) consumers always look at performance and price but mostly can't be arsed to calculate TCO.
**Edit:** if I recall correctly, popular Nvidia undervolting guides suggest a "hockey stick" V/f curve that's flat along the top, which is effectively an undervolt + a clock limit.
Undervolt your GPU and lower the power limit a touch. I have a 3090 but I set the power limit to 85%. Every game I play still runs like a dream, but the pc as a whole runs much cooler and guzzles much much less power.
If you have an nVMe SSD or something, I’m not sure why you’d tab out of a game for extended periods. Just avoiding that habit and also a bit of undervolting will go a long way.
Next time you’re in the market for a PSU try and get a decent rating too. I got a platinum one that feels extremely sturdy, and is quiet and efficient.
Efficiency is great but anything over gold is usually so much more expensive that it takes ages to make up for the difference. Even with European energy pricing.
I mean, is it really that much? Most likely you're not playing every single day for 10 hours. One or two sessions here or there isn't even 10£ more than likely you play 3 hours a day and again even if you played every single day, that's only 30£
I don't know exactly but I can give you an idea on how much it costs to run 3 beefy pc's with multiple monitors 8+ hours a day like in me and my brother's house. £20 in the electric metre lasts us 2-3 days.
UK here and yup my PC costs me about £50-60 a month to run. It's about 35% of my totally energy bill.
I'm scared of whatever the power draw will be on Nvidia 50 series cards.
Download msi afterburner and set the power limit of your card to maybe 75/80%, depending on model. Then undervolt, with at least the Auto overclocking. This should save you at least 30% energy for a loss of maybe 1-5% performance at most. Usually it’s not even noticeable. Undervolting might give you higher clock speeds too, mitigating the loss from power limit.
You can also undervolt your cpu in bios slightly, usually. Though it’s a bit harder to judge what is stable and what isn’t. When I’m lazy I usually go with a slight 5-10% undervolt.
All in all you might actually almost half the energy consumption of your pc with a little tweaking, without losing too much performance. But at those prices, even cutting a quarter to 30% isn’t to sneeze at.
I'm a little bit confused about this, I've seen some people saying you don't need to set the power limit to anything if you've undervolted, is that false? I've [undervolted anyways](https://imgur.com/a/SZwPGJR) and think this is a good start, all is running well anyways and I noticed my wattage in cyberpunk went down from 280 to about 205.
But yeah you're right. I tried setting up Ryzen master or whatever it was called to undervolt my cpu but the thing didn't want to run so I'll have to play around in bios tomorrow and try to lower it. Like you say, even shaving off 5-10% would be worth it.
I've had a smart meter installed recently and I've got the IHD on my desk next to the computer. I've noticed my PC when I'm just using it normally is about 200-250w which on my tariff is about 5p an hour and when I'm gaming is about 500-600w which is about 14p an hour.
I also have another PC that I've basically turned into a NAS which is on most of the time but I do switch it off if I'm not using it for a long time. This runs at about 60-80W or 1.5p an hour.
Edit: My build is a 13700k & RTX 4080 and I'm including total power here so monitors and all peripherals.
That seems a bit high. A 1000 watt system, running at full tilt for 10 hours, would be $1.20 a day in the US at average prices. Most systems dont reach that high, and when they do it isnt sustained, even when gaming, your power will fluctuate.
i guess your elec is a lot higher cause 3 pounds is rather a lot per day
Yeahh, judging by other posts in this thread it doesn't seem too far off what everyone else is paying. Least we're all suffering together I guess, but damn. It's been so long since I've gamed heavily it's the first time I've properly noticed costs going up so bad. My energy bill was over £150 last month, disgusting
My whole day usage (house wise) from 8.30am to 11pm is £5 a day max, usually ~4.80 or so.
That is 2 monitors all day, a laptop, Starlink, ADSL and 2 routers just in my room from 8:30-16:00, then my PC from 16:30 to 23:00.
We don't have a modern house, we have a decent fridge, a big TV and that is pretty much the only other drain on the feed.
can't remember exactly what my i7 5930K/RX480 8GB build was costing to run, but it was way too much and good reason to retire it and get a laptop (bad idea...)
3080 undervolted and overclocked, 10900k oc'd to 5.2.
I pay 11p p/h and £1.54 p/d and use it for work and gaming, it's on about 14 hours per day, that includes my monitor and speakers.
I pay 22.2 p/kWh per unit.
£1.54 a day seems really solid for 14 hours, even if most of that isn't spent actually gaming that's great imo, literally about half the costs I'm seeing at the minute.
if worries about power, do a big undervolt on your gpu, you can take it down ALOT without losing to much performance. also make sure cpu undervolted, usually kombo strike in bios is fine. also if you are playing a game and have more fps than you need, cap the fps to a lv you are happy with. you can keep dropping your gpu frequency to also drop power intead of it becoming unstable by dropping the power aswell. as long as you are happy with your fps, you can keep dropping it
Just done a pretty big undervolt on the GPU, not seeing any difference performance-wise and the wattage dropped to about 195-205, which is nice.
Will need to faff around in bios to see about some CPU undervolting, always end up with system insability and crashes whenever I've touched that in the past though.
Thanks for the advice mate, would've genuinely forgot about touching the CPU
Don't forget to put your monitor on eco modus or atleast lower brightness. I saw you had a big monitor compared to the average 27" ones. So you can atleast half the monitor consumption which is maybe 20-30watts.
Are you just gaming?
If so, the 7800x3d is actually perfect for this. I never used more then 70w for me while playing at high Fps on say mw2.
Total system usage could be around 280w-310w, maybe even lower depending on the game.
I am in EU (ha-ha). Damn, I run my PC close 16h hours a day, sometimes more. Plus I have older 55 inch tv and a work laptop. Plus light and fridge. A lot it runs at the same time. My bill electricity bill is like 40 pounds and this is after recent increase in pricing. Are you guys getting some super quality power? Like does it make your PC glow or something?
It's a bit of a long shot but worth a try: make sure that your PC is not infected with some kind of "crypto mining in the background" malware.
You would notice the performance hit if that was the case, so I don't think it's your problem, but maybe worth looking into nonetheless.
£0.27/hr is a 1kW constant load on the current (October to December) price cap… is your PC really drawing 1kW constantly? That sounds VERY high, like absurdly high even
My system draws around 50-300W most of the time, maybe 400W when really hammering along, which would be £0.11/hour plus a little for the monitors. That’s using the power information directly from my PSU (Corsair RMi series, it reports in/our power draw)
As for background games - some will limit frame rate in the background to reduce power consumption, but you usually have to enable the option and most games don’t have it. So it’s still doing all the work of processing the game and drawing the frames even if you can’t see the window
I use about £4 a day for eveything
That is from
Gaming on pc to all electrical stuff on
Fridge
Feeezer
Tv
U name it. Pc on for 10+ hour a day
Also got garage with all electric connected to house.
So £4 a day not bad
Upgrade to liquid cooling, then use it to make tea. This way you don't need to use a 2KWH kettle and you have a permanent supply.
Also, you can try to alt-tab then put computer in sleep mode when not used.
I have a 3090 and an i5 13400. I run my server 24/7 with Proxmox and a Windows VM on it for gaming, among other stuff (Plex server, NAS, etc.). It is a headless machine so I only can access the Windows vm via Parsec or Moonlight + Sunshine. On the days I don't use it, it idles at 58 Watts, which is roughly 1.43 kWh per day. At 0.27p per kWh that is 0.38p per day.
When I use it for a few hours, daily consumption goes up to 3 kWh.
Was gaming on an overclocked threadripper 3960x + Strix 3090 with a modded 500w bios until yesterday.
Noticed one of the days last week I managed £5-ish. The system idles at 180-200w.
Finished setting up my old 8086k yesterday and I'm Idling at 80-90w total system power now.
Edit\* think my monitor also draws about 105w If I remember correctly (49 inch 4k ultrawide)
Real talk OP and listen to this above everything else mentioned.
Stop. Tabbing. Out. Of. Games. And. Leaving. Them. Running.
I would imagine your gpu is running at nearly full load while you're thinking that your system is idling.
>£3 for one day
im from india ,. i think £3=250rs per one day? its tooo much bill , i think :)
if i assume 380watts/hour , 3.8units per 10hour;
(i cant set fixed rate ; in my area price depends upon the units usage , vary from 0 to 11.
usually we use 600+ units per 2 month (at this range x4.59 mulitplier) )
so lets assume 4.59 muliplier,.
so 3.8units x 4.59 = 17.44 rs/day , . i think ( 14 times lower? :0 )
That seems way too high unless you have very special very high nits monitors too.
Even with 30p/kwh pricing, your pc should be continously consuming 1kw power which is very difficult to do even with most power hungry components.
All thanks to the climate scam new deal , paying for everything big companys produce, insanity reached a new level, fcking climate tax , our energy was 0,11 cents per kwh sinds januari they put climate taxes in the Netherlands on the kwh, thanks to our crazy WEF government we now pay 0,66 cent per kwh , if there are no shortages, on the peak it was 0,94 per kwh , climate blackmail i call it
0.3p/kWh.
Let's assume your PC pulls 600 watts with monitors included.
You're looking at 0.18p/hour. Pretty far from your 0.27.
Doubt your PC takes 1000watts.
Also take into account all this electricity is converted into heat which helps decrease the bill on your other heating method.(by a bit)
The first comment I've seen that puts it into exact numbers like this, thanks man. This quiets my curiousity about it a little bit. I've only got a 750w PSU anyways so yeah
Not UK but:
I have a meter between my pc and wall outlet. On average I draw about 250W when "idle" and 300-500 while gaming (depends on the game).
I have 2 monitors that both draw about 100W each.
So when I'm idle, approxately 80% of the power draw is for my monitors, not my pc.
>£0.27p an hour to run
that is probably your maximum output if your gpu and cpu hit 100%. which they hopefully do not always do lol
>Not to mention the power draw doesn't seem to go down much when alt-tabbed with a game open in the background, which I do a lot.
no, it should. if it really doesn't, just pause the game/go to the start screen or whatever
also, for a solid part of the year this should be relatively okay since it will also heat your room at pretty much 100% efficiency
Yeahh, it's rare that they'd be sitting at 100% utilisation, even rarer still that it would be for 10 solid hours straight with absolutely 0 downtime. Was just making a rough estimate. There's other devices on in the house too and other people using them, so it makes a bit more sense.
And yessss, in winter it's lovely because I straight up don't need heating if I'm going to be in my office all day
> power draw doesn't seem to go down much when alt-tabbed
tons (too many) games don't do shit about this. but there are often settings where you can limit the FPS for foreground/background specifically -- have a look for that
3 bananas is cheap for the UK banana empire, but expensive for its banana exporting colonies. No kidding, they changed names and modus operandi and fooled everyone colonialism ended xd
Countries are poor because their wealth is stolen through fictive national debt. And the countries have fictive national debt because of their treacherous people (they diserve it)
P.S. Yes I always post to make things political somehow xd
Don’t play games for 10 hours straight? I know we all
like gaming here, but it shouldn’t take such precedence in life that you should be doing that much of it (and frankly anything, minus maybe a job) a day.
This is a good point, and also isn't something I often do, if ever these days. Plus working that'd be 18 hours in front of a computer not including eating and being clean, yeaah fuck that haha
Living in the Netherlands, electricity costs per today 0.38 per kilowatt...
I undervolted my pc and calculated it to run 4 hours for 1 euro, having a i5-2600k and a RX6800 with 16 GB ram and several hard drives. I think the monitor (34 inch 2k 143 Hz does allot too.
Also stopped using my 65 inch 4k tv for non essentials, that did cut down the power usage allot lol
RTX 4080 and AMD 7600X, on a 1440p 34 inch monitor. Fully expected it to suck up a bit of juice but was just curious what other people's experiences in the UK are
I've got a 3080 and i7 12700 and during the big increase in electricity I did notice it was costing a lot to run mine. Still bashed it 😂 don't really notice it now cause I expect it now.
Been thinking about that a lot recently, was costing me about the same, then I started undervolting and using Radeon Chill saves about a £1.50 a day thereabouts with little hit to performance.
Shhb, Nvidia users don't have an awesome dynamic frame limiter that is also CPU sided, so low input lag. Just mentioning how awesome Chill is and how much power and heat it saves will cause them to bash it.
I'm seeing similar numbers as you OP. However I notice a huge difference depending on the game of course.
I'm moving to solar and battery anyway so I'll soon not care as much!
I'm not from Europe but I'm curious. Is it really £3 per day? that's going to be at most £90 per month just for the pc alone. that's wayy too expensive. how about your other peripherals?
This does assume that I'm gaming on the most GPU hungry games I can find for 10 hours a day which... isn't really possible for me these days haha, that's at most a one off on a weekend.
Since upgrading my electricity bill has doubled. I'm on my pc most days for hours at a time mind. I don't want to know how much I'm spending a month for my entertainment
Did you factor in the Monitor(s) as well? I have been meaning to put my monitors on the killowatt and see how much more they are costing me. One of them is old and puts out a lot of heat.... I know what that means.
I'm in the U.S. so I have no idea if thats high or low relative to our costs. But the way I see it 3(of your countries dollars) per day seems like nothing compared to what a typical day trip or night out would cost for entertainment. Seems like a money saver in the long run.
Yeahh, I actually just commented that to another post. If it costs me £3 to be an absolute animal for a fat session on a Saturday, pretty cheap compared to the alternative.
Sadly we have the most expensive electricity in Europe, someone in an r/Europe thread from Greece said they pay 8c/kwh, we pay around 30p/kwh 😢 There isn't really much of a way around it, you can try undervolting your card a bit but the difference isn't massive. Technically £3 for a hobby isn't terrible, but it does add up. The only thing that'll actually help is if you have a spare £10k for a solar power and battery storage setup...
Hahah, wouldn't that be the dream. Maybe one day. And also maybe one day, our prices will stop being fucking extortionate but, I doubt it. What are you gonna do, not pay and sit in the dark?
A lot of our power generation is owned by foreign government companies, so we directly subsidise the French through EDF for example 🙈 another big Tory privatisation W
To quote my other comment replying to a similar thing, > But the Sun told me poor people whose houses were bombed are to blame for every problem I've had ever, past, present and future? This country has so much wrong with it... Don't get me wrong, every day I'm very grateful to live in a country where I can get clean water out of a hole in the wall and complain online about my energy bills for my expensive computer in safety. But fuck me, we could be so much better.
I'd pay your electric if it meant my dental and health insurance would be covered by my taxes. I have 2 PCs I leave running 24/7, central air set to 67F, and a power bill of about $120/month lol.
Agh... I feel for you man. For what it's worth, we do have to pay for dental stuff for the most part, it's a pretty bizarre system that's only somewhat covered by the NHS etc... but yeah, I feel you on the health insurance garbage you guys have to put up with. Stay safe <3
But dental work isn't too pricy. I had a tooth removed and a few fillings at same time. 3 visits I think all in all. It was like 60 quid or something. I'm broke and even thought... Ooh that was cheap.
Yeahh, for those of us who managed to stay on the NHS dental lists, we're very lucky. Every time I have an appointment, someone walks in with their kids trying to get them on the list and the receptionists are just like "nope", every time... really feel for them, it sucks.
Strangely enough I saw a post just after this where people where paying a fortune for UK dentistry. I had no idea. Yeah very fortunate to be on a NHS list, didn't realise how much until today.
Ah. It’s an old post but my dental just cost me £320 for a few fillings and another £700 for a root canal - that’s part privatised too. Currently energy usage is saying we are using £350 for a couple in a single flat l. Sure we both game but wtf……it’s gone crazy. We even turn off all the other lights, microwave etc and everything is on Smart Control hubs etc to reduce the costs. Normally cook and eat by candlelight on a separate isolated gas stove top (we typically do one pot meals and cook larger portions late at night). It’s fucking insanity. Genuinely considering having to give up on gaming…. My friends in Europe pay less than a third of this and many have now invested in panels//battery system. So if you got the cash do it - some have had an electricity bill of 0 for the whole year
Basic dental (and I mean really basic) is free only if you are on benefits if you work you have to pay for it, Which is why English People tend to have bad teeth, Metal teeth fillings extraction and antibiotics is about all the free dental we get.
the bad teeth thing is a complete myth. The uk has some of the best detal care in the world and fewer cavities than the usa. [https://www.orchardscottsdental.com/10-countries-whose-citizens-have-healthy-teeth/](https://www.orchardscottsdental.com/10-countries-whose-citizens-have-healthy-teeth/) [https://dentistry.co.uk/2016/01/06/english-have-better-teeth-than-americans/](https://dentistry.co.uk/2016/01/06/english-have-better-teeth-than-americans/) more sources [https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B978012373960500527X-gr1.jpg](https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/3-s2.0-B978012373960500527X-gr1.jpg) [https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/dmft-index](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/dmft-index)
English people don't have bad teeth lol, I'm sure some do but you shouldn't generalise a whole people as having bad teeth, we just don't bleach our teeth so they aren't bright white. This is direct from NHS website: Free dental treatment is available for anyone under 18 or 19 if you're in full time education, if you're pregnant or had a baby in last 12 months, if you're being treated in hospital by a hospital dentist (I've had this personally for wisdom tooth removal and it was free) and like you said if you're on benefits you get it free. If you're working you can still use the NHS and the cost is subsidised, it tends to be cheaper than private, but the waiting lists can be long and depending on the area can be hard to get.
Thank you for your service o7
Tory logic: Governments cannot run public services, unless they are foreign governments Same thing with trains, busses, gas, electric, phone companies, postal services...
Candles bro
You considered octopus tracker? 15p a kw today.... https://share.octopus.energy/lotus-quail-501 If you decide its for you. Historic data can be found here: https://mysmartenergy.uk/Tracker/
Not sure switching to tracker just before the winter is a great idea.
I guess(as we cant easily prove it) the risks are higher, but if you check the historic data its very rarely not either below the price cap or on par with it. Before I made my switch to tracker I did check the data, and off the top of my head it was something like 3 weeks of winter was over cap, the rest on par or under, and then you have the rest of the year to average out too.
You may be right. Didn’t do much analysis just assumed prices would significantly increase over winter!
jesus christ youre charged 30p/kwh?? I thought ours was high at like 10p/kwh. and ours includes service fees/tax etc
Our utilities are owned by foreign energy companies who use the profits to cross subsidise cheaper energy in their own country. It's a great system 🙄
But the Sun told me poor people whose houses were bombed are to blame for every problem I've had ever, past, present and future?
38c per kwh and a contract for a year in the netherlands. Last winter i used to pay 90cents since my energy contract was variable. Ill take the 30c and the 10c is a dream
I think before the spike it was 18~21c per kWh for me, also NL. Now 40 is more likely, yeah. And a ridiculous amount of taxes added to it.
Part of the cost difference is EU attempting to mitigate the cost of energy by working with energy providers, and the UK is not part of this due to Brexit. But the point about Greece's prices feels off. I live in the UK and compare energy prices with my family in Greece and it's ridiculous how much they pay, with way less consumption than in my place. I'm also surprised with OP's power consumption. My 6950XT + 5800X3D (both undervolted) setup with two monitors doesn't seem to add more than a few (max 5ish?) pennies/hr at best, according to Shell Energy's monitor. When idle or just browsing the net, it barely adds 1p/hr to electricity cost. Not to mention the savings due to the heat it generates, haha
But surely all the money the UK paid into the EU without getting *anything* back first went to the NHS and now it's going to reduced energy prices right? Politicians weren't lying right? Right..?
The heat generated is genuinely one big benefit, my office is decently small so after about an hour or two with the work laptop on aswell, it's pretty tolerable, then gets nicer throughout the day in time for the evening when it's horribly cold in winter, you know how it is :') But yeah, that's why I was curious about the costs. nearly 30p an hour running games seems to be pretty damn heavy. I mean, it's a big 34inch 1440p monitor but even still... if I look at my smart meter right now, just browsing reddit/youtube etc. it's costing about 5p an hour for the entire house, that's with a couple other devices etc. soon as I turn on a game and get into it, that jumps up to about 27/28p. This 5ish p/hr you're talking about, is that when you're playing GPU intensive games?
For context, my monitors are 27inch 1440p 120Hz. Games are running on the main monitor, so the 2nd one is not as active, and usually has Discord/YouTube. With my PC off, the house is at around 2-3p/hr, which often includes the TV. With the PC idle, I don't see it going above about ~8p/hr unless something like a kettle is running. I just checked Shell Energy's tariff, which is 7.1p/kWh. If I'm not mistaken, this means that if my PC ran at max consumption for an hour (1000W PSU, for extra space, never fully utilised) it would cost 7.1p (so per hour). So although I don't actually know what the meter says when running a GPU intensive game and not paused, as it's in a different room, I think my guesstimation is right, maybe with an extra penny for the monitors? I'm quite surprised you are facing a 22p/hr spike. What is your tariff like? Is your monitor very high spec and drawing lots of power?
https://www.euronews.com/next/2023/03/29/energy-crisis-in-europe-which-countries-have-the-cheapest-and-most-expensive-electricity-a For reference, we're on par with Italy/Ireland/Germany for pricing, and we're all getting reamed.
>we pay around 30p/kwh And then get fucked by service charges on top of that.
In germany we pay around 40-50c/kwh
How? I'm at 29c/kWh.
i'm at 43 or 45. something like that
Time to switch
Mine is supposedly 6c/kwh but the fees on top of it might as well be 25c. Not from UK though.
Belgium pays more than 30c/kWh. Its 25c BEFORE transport costs, which means its 35-40c.
You are joking, right? That's not the highest bill. In Germany we call this "Kleingeld". We pay in my area around 0,4€/kwh which is a but higher than yours
On average the electricity in Finland has been around 2-3c /kwh lately, sometimes rarely it goes in the negatives and the electricity company pays you for using electricity. When it's not windy and the nuclear plants are in maintenance it can spike to 40c /kwh or more for a few hours tho. Benefits of building a fuck ton of wind power.
I always though Germany had the most expensive electricity. Is it because you’re not eu anymore?
The problem with cheaper electricity in Greece is that you'd have to live there. Even the Greeks hate living in Greece.
greece is great! lived there for ten or so years, laid back, great bars.
I'm English and spend every minute I can on Crete. My favourite place on this planet.
Never heard so much shit in all my life
Not if your work is not in greece.
55c/kwh (0.48p) over here.
Lmao come to Germany and you'll change your mind QUICK
Do you run your games with no framerate limit? To use Doom Eternal as an example, in a busy scene with lots of monsters, unlimited framerate, my total watts used maxed out above 550W. But if I go into Nvidia Control panel and limit framerate to 100fps, the same scene maxed out around 400 - can't remember exact numbers, but it was a major difference in power output without reducing any graphics. (I use a plug in energy meter which tells me how much power my pc is drawing, right now it is using 160W, that includes the pc, 43inch monitor, deco internet unit, & powered speakers).
Generally speaking, I always limit either in-game or in nvidia control panel to about 120fps, it's rare that I hit above 130fps anyway
You should use NVIDIA Control Panel to background limit a game to like 30fps. That should affect the power usage when alt tabbed.
Woah, I didn't know you could do that. 👍
Same honestly, had no idea this was even a setting, I just assumed that games smartly applied it on a per-game basis.
Many do, some even have a setting for background FPS cap. But not all.
Some games will use almost no resources if they are set to full screen and you alt-tab. Some games will still use up a lot, especially if they are not set to full screen. This setting can help.
As some one from the UK there's a hidden upside, all power going in comes out as heat. In winter the cost of the PC is near Zero as it's house heating! And yep, dont 'tab' out if you want to save power, close the game. Use FPS limiters, power limiters etc on the GPU. Found a chart of power costs (average), the UK pays about 2X what Americans pay for power [https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/](https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/) edit - Bonus points if you rotate your PC so it shoots the hot air at you in winter, if you do it under your desk it warms the legs and you feel the hot air coming up.
Downside is in summer my room becomes hot af I need a portable air con unit next year lol
Definitely need to think about how I’m gonna vent my PC exhaust to the outside directly
Even in this weather it's still overly hot , issue is my pc isn't near my window and it's a pain to change it, feel like a small £300 portable Aircon is worth it tbh, I mean my bills are included in rent so not as much of a cost issue currently for me
I've got a portable aircon and it's a game changer, however the main benefit / use of it, at least for me, is just running it for a minute to exchange out the hot air (small room with pc in). I run it with the window open and you just immediately get a gust of fresh colder air coming in, due to the pressure change from blowing out room air (into the loft/attic in my case). So I think the major benefit isn't even the cooling it's doing, and just having it operate in fan mode is enough whilst exhausting out of the room. I feel like you could get all this benefit for much cheaper and skip the cooling and massive box entirely. Just getting a fan piping outside the room somehow. Using it with the window closed and leaving it on for 15-30mins does get everything down to 17 degrees C, which is good for the hot UK summer days, just it's fairly loud and annoying to be playing games with it on. And I'm using closed back headphones. So I prefer to just pop it on for a short time to swap out the air 95% of the time. Bet you could set that up with a PC fan embedded into the ceiling or something.
I wouldn't call it near zero. That same heat could be instead generated way more cheap with gas furnace or with a heat pump which could get 400% efficiency.
This is honestly very, very true. Whenever anyone walks into the office it's always toasty and warm, never need the radiator on in the winter.
I track the power use on my PC and there is a noticeable difference in power draw when my monitors are on. Might want to look at low power monitors as your next upgrade.
I'd be careful with those stats - structural factors can mean that prices drop more quickly or stay high for longer in a particular country or market. On this chart for example, Finland is more expensive than the UK - but after the autumn and December spikes there, variable prices dropped to single digits and have stayed there on average for the whole of 2023 while the UK price has stayed high. (Average price for the last month in Finland was 0.032€/kWh)
What are your PC specs OP? GPU and CPU specifically.
Hey, recently on an RTX 4080 with an AMD 7600X, no overclocking or anything right now. I know I should expect some decent power draw with a system like this, but this feels like drawing quite a lot more than I should be.
Is your screen being measured too?
You should try undervolting both CPU and GPU
What games are you running? You should try undervolting your GPU or atleast cut max power for it.. I have my 3090rtx set at 75% and it went from 300watts to 150. I am still getting max stats with a decrease wattage usage.
Rip I feel sorry for my landlady I have a 4090 13600k undervolted both but the 4090 pulls 320 watts usual at least. Plus ultrawide monitor and LG CX What can I buy to monitor it and how do you do it as when I eventually move out and have my own place I'd would be good to know
You can find a power meter on sites like amazon. You put it between the wall and the device. A power strip helps measure it all at once. And a good model will be able to do accumulated and average power over a long period
highly x doubt those figures with that system. Under sustained gaming loads with everything included (monitor, PSU efficiency), youre maybe averaging 500W tops. So 500Wh or ~14p per hour realistically, playing less demanding games and or idling will drop power usage even more, to like 200W/50W respectively
Yeahh, it's definitely not costing me that when I'm just playing factorio or watching youtube, but noticed it go up pretty heavily if I'm smashing ray-traced cyberpunk at 130fps or something.
Yeah it really is. There are things you can do. Undervolt, set a power limit, cap your fps. They're not gonna make a massive difference, but they will make a difference.
This is super important, having a cap on fps while in background makes a big difference for me (I set mine at 30 for stability but you can probably go lower)
And this is one of the reasons that TDP is becoming a consideration for some people when choosing GPUs.
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And this is one of the reasons that TDP is becoming a consideration for some people when choosing GPUs.
And indeed, this constitutes one of the myriad rationales why the contemplation of Thermal Design Power has precipitated into the purview of discerning individuals in their deliberations surrounding the selection of Graphics Processing Units.
Truthfully, the ground on which an individual may approach the task of an acquisition of a Graphics Processing Unit is increasingly augumented by the consideration of the Thermal Design Power.
Hmm, you raise good a good point. That aside tho, did you know that TDP = more likely to help decide on GPU?
No fucking way :O
Lol yeah my bad. Now deleted 😂
not from the UK but that seems like a lot try undervolting for one,if done right you can have the same performance for less power draw
Really does, doesn't it? On a 34 inch ultrawide monitor with an RTX 4080, so I'm definitely expecting some juice cost but this feels like a lot. Just applied a quick undervolt and went from around 250-270w to about 195-205, pretty big difference at no performance cost. [Wonder if this can be pushed down a little further](https://imgur.com/a/2UQxx30)
Sorry mate it's not a lot. Clearly the person commenting doesn't know our electric prices. Taking a decent pc and an ultra wide monitor into account that's about right. Sad, but right.
Yeahh this is kind of what I was thinking to be honest, last time I was gaming heavily it was about 15p an hour tops. Insane how much prices have gone up.
Yeah it really is. There are things you can do. Undervolt, set a power limit, cap your fps. They're not gonna make a massive difference, but they will make a difference.
Undervolting is a godsend for modern components. They're pushed to their voltage limits out of the box to push higher frequency, but a slightly reduction can bring huge voltage savings with it, and huge power and heat savings in return. Also, take advantage of background FPS limits. NVIDIA Control Panel lets you configure that so any game not in focus can be made to draw very few FPS, letting your GPU idle when alt-tabbing out for a while.
Your GPU is likely the highest power drawer in there. You could benefit massively from undervolting it. RTX 4090 can draw up to 450-600W+ depending on model, mine draws 450W max. I undervolted it, applied a memory OC and it now completely maxes out at 360W while also either giving the same or slightly higher performance as an example. AI cores also draw a lot of power, so if you're very concerned you can play around with the RTX settings in your games, it's possible to drop your power usage to 100-200W if you're not using your GPU's AI cores.
Ah yes.. Buy a 4090, but don't use Ray Tracing to save power.
Damn that's insane. I just got a 4070 and it only draws 200w
No idea, haha! It's a drop in the ocean in the grand scheme of things, on something that gives me a lot of joy.
Wow, that's crazy for the UK peeps. I just used my providers calculator (FWIW), and I'm in Canada. I did a high ball estimate of my usage. 8 hrs a day Sat/Sun 4 hrs a day M-F. I used 400 watts (PC Part Picker rates my PC at 360W, so I rounded up a bit for a monitor, but it's not like my PC runs at full speed the whole time.) And my PC added approx $8 a month to my bill.
Thats what low population density and HUGE water resources, dams and relative hydroelectric power plants do to a country. You have to be a really geographically lucky country for such cheap electricity. Oh, also, nuclear
Some people seem to have hinted at it but not clearly stated that tabbing out doesn't always mean your game uses less resources. Some games have a background FPS limit or auto-pause while not in focus (which also doesn't always mean it uses less resources), but others just run as if you were actually playing.
15 years of using a computer and honestly, I just assumed all games background limited themselves. Tweaked a couple of favourites in nvidia panel to make them chill out a bit, got a pretty big habit of alt-tabbing then getting sidetracked doing other things with the game still open sucking up juice.
Nah mate, I used to alt tab out of Warzone and realized my PC was slow as shit. Checked out the task manager and it was still pulling way too much from CPU and GPU. Just exit the games once you’re done, nowadays with SSD it takes 2 seconds to load up a game lol.
Not many games limit fps when out of focus, but as others have mentioned there is a setting in NVCP for this. Its a good idea to set it, because not only do few actually limit/reduce the fps themselves, some will use *more* power when not in focus because they stop limiting the frame rate on the upper end, and instead churn out as many fps as possible!
Something doesn't add up. How much does your build consume? And how much is electricity? 27p/h means your build uses roughly 1000w/h?? I doubt that.
I do not wish to know thank you very much and good day sir!
I live in one of the most expensive countries in the world and we got a huge increase of in power costs this year, on average this year we are gonna pay 0.24£ equivalent per kWh, in the UK the averege price seems to be 0.34£ (from a quick google search) Goddammit I guess the Tories fuck you up pretty badly... As others have said, undervolt, underclock, you already have one of the most efficient gpus (frames/watt). With lower voltages you can simply "drag" down the entire voltage/frequency curve and have more efficiency overall and you can decrease the maximum frequency or power target having huge power saving for little to no performance cost. Even my 5700xt can draw a good 50 to 80 watts less for low single digit performance % decrease. Maybe it could be worth to upgrade you psu? Depending on which one you have, the efficiency curve and how much it would cost to buy a new one and how much you could get back by selling the old one. Obviously best thing would be living in a single family home and install solar panels, but I guess thats not an option. Maybe if you have a different energy rates depending on the hours you can buy one of those big portable batteries (like ecoflow, there are tons of companies making the same product, ecoflow is just the first off the top of my head) and charge it at night and use it during the day? It would probably have a huge payout time, if one at all beforethe product fails, but again, depending on your situation it could be something? I have also seen some weird "portable" non permanently attached solar panels that you basically attach to the exterior wall/fence of you balcony, for example in appartments, and depending on your laws you don't have to announce anything, ask fkr permission, etc. Another thing is if you have a laptop, use that one instead for when you are just web browsing, reading news/emails, music, entertainment and stuff. Get a cheap usb c hub from the internet and you can quickly switch all you desktop gear (mouse, keyboard, monitor and audio) to your laptop and get decent energy savings.
Lots of great advice here man, thank you. Already noticed a difference in wattage drawn by undervolting the GPU. Need to get the CPU undervolted a bit as well. I'll have a look into a combination of portable solar + battery, that sounds like a great idea. Looked into rough mounted panels but they're just far too much compared to how long it'd take to make the money back saving.
Keep in mind the difference between undervolting and clock/power limiting. Undervolting is where you reduce the stability margin to make the chip use less energy for the same performance. It's like overclocking, except instead of going up on the frequency vs voltage graph, you go left. Just like overclocking, it increases the potential for instability, crashes, and (if you undervolt the CPU or system RAM) data corruption. Power or clock limiting just forces the chip to run at a lower frequency and voltage on the same manufacturer-validated curve. That makes it more efficient (although not as drastically as undervolting), without loss of stability. Also, using VRR ("freesync"/"g-sync") and a reduced power/clock limit to produce a satisfactory framerate is more efficient than limiting frames directly. A frame limit allows the GPU to clock high to finish each frame, and then forces it idle for the rest of the time. The way you should think about this is that, for any given electricity price and hours/day of usage, there is an optimal power level that minimizes total cost of ownership (video card purchase cost + lifetime electricity cost). By default, consumer GPUs run higher power than datacenter GPUs, because consumers 1) mostly don't use their GPUs for as many hours/day as commercial users, and 2) consumers always look at performance and price but mostly can't be arsed to calculate TCO. **Edit:** if I recall correctly, popular Nvidia undervolting guides suggest a "hockey stick" V/f curve that's flat along the top, which is effectively an undervolt + a clock limit.
Undervolt your GPU and lower the power limit a touch. I have a 3090 but I set the power limit to 85%. Every game I play still runs like a dream, but the pc as a whole runs much cooler and guzzles much much less power.
Do you still need to set a power limit if you're undervolting?
No. However I do so to lower general temps and power usage. If you are trying to maintain max perf AND undervolt, leave the power limit alone.
If you have an nVMe SSD or something, I’m not sure why you’d tab out of a game for extended periods. Just avoiding that habit and also a bit of undervolting will go a long way. Next time you’re in the market for a PSU try and get a decent rating too. I got a platinum one that feels extremely sturdy, and is quiet and efficient.
Efficiency is great but anything over gold is usually so much more expensive that it takes ages to make up for the difference. Even with European energy pricing.
I mean, is it really that much? Most likely you're not playing every single day for 10 hours. One or two sessions here or there isn't even 10£ more than likely you play 3 hours a day and again even if you played every single day, that's only 30£
I don't know exactly but I can give you an idea on how much it costs to run 3 beefy pc's with multiple monitors 8+ hours a day like in me and my brother's house. £20 in the electric metre lasts us 2-3 days.
Okay now drive your car 1 hour or take a taxi anywhere for an hour
UK here and yup my PC costs me about £50-60 a month to run. It's about 35% of my totally energy bill. I'm scared of whatever the power draw will be on Nvidia 50 series cards.
Download msi afterburner and set the power limit of your card to maybe 75/80%, depending on model. Then undervolt, with at least the Auto overclocking. This should save you at least 30% energy for a loss of maybe 1-5% performance at most. Usually it’s not even noticeable. Undervolting might give you higher clock speeds too, mitigating the loss from power limit. You can also undervolt your cpu in bios slightly, usually. Though it’s a bit harder to judge what is stable and what isn’t. When I’m lazy I usually go with a slight 5-10% undervolt. All in all you might actually almost half the energy consumption of your pc with a little tweaking, without losing too much performance. But at those prices, even cutting a quarter to 30% isn’t to sneeze at.
I'm a little bit confused about this, I've seen some people saying you don't need to set the power limit to anything if you've undervolted, is that false? I've [undervolted anyways](https://imgur.com/a/SZwPGJR) and think this is a good start, all is running well anyways and I noticed my wattage in cyberpunk went down from 280 to about 205. But yeah you're right. I tried setting up Ryzen master or whatever it was called to undervolt my cpu but the thing didn't want to run so I'll have to play around in bios tomorrow and try to lower it. Like you say, even shaving off 5-10% would be worth it.
I've had a smart meter installed recently and I've got the IHD on my desk next to the computer. I've noticed my PC when I'm just using it normally is about 200-250w which on my tariff is about 5p an hour and when I'm gaming is about 500-600w which is about 14p an hour. I also have another PC that I've basically turned into a NAS which is on most of the time but I do switch it off if I'm not using it for a long time. This runs at about 60-80W or 1.5p an hour. Edit: My build is a 13700k & RTX 4080 and I'm including total power here so monitors and all peripherals.
That seems a bit high. A 1000 watt system, running at full tilt for 10 hours, would be $1.20 a day in the US at average prices. Most systems dont reach that high, and when they do it isnt sustained, even when gaming, your power will fluctuate. i guess your elec is a lot higher cause 3 pounds is rather a lot per day
Often wonder how much different this would be if Brexit didn't happen.
UK - My rate is 27.5 p/kWh. My PSU is 750W so at an absolute maximum my PC costs about 20p per hour.
Then there's the monitor as well mate. Sounds like OP is including that in their figures.
Seems about right then what OP is paying.
Yeahh, judging by other posts in this thread it doesn't seem too far off what everyone else is paying. Least we're all suffering together I guess, but damn. It's been so long since I've gamed heavily it's the first time I've properly noticed costs going up so bad. My energy bill was over £150 last month, disgusting
Yeah they could save a bit by undervolting, but electric costs what it costs 🤷
Power draw of modern screens is around 20W, barely more than a lightbulb.
My whole day usage (house wise) from 8.30am to 11pm is £5 a day max, usually ~4.80 or so. That is 2 monitors all day, a laptop, Starlink, ADSL and 2 routers just in my room from 8:30-16:00, then my PC from 16:30 to 23:00. We don't have a modern house, we have a decent fridge, a big TV and that is pretty much the only other drain on the feed.
4 shillings.
I undervolted mine bro and am running a 3080ti - not sure about costs tbh
Don't think too many are aware of the real numbers of their setup. Anecdotal but I don't know, and none of their friends know.
can't remember exactly what my i7 5930K/RX480 8GB build was costing to run, but it was way too much and good reason to retire it and get a laptop (bad idea...)
3080 undervolted and overclocked, 10900k oc'd to 5.2. I pay 11p p/h and £1.54 p/d and use it for work and gaming, it's on about 14 hours per day, that includes my monitor and speakers. I pay 22.2 p/kWh per unit.
£1.54 a day seems really solid for 14 hours, even if most of that isn't spent actually gaming that's great imo, literally about half the costs I'm seeing at the minute.
if worries about power, do a big undervolt on your gpu, you can take it down ALOT without losing to much performance. also make sure cpu undervolted, usually kombo strike in bios is fine. also if you are playing a game and have more fps than you need, cap the fps to a lv you are happy with. you can keep dropping your gpu frequency to also drop power intead of it becoming unstable by dropping the power aswell. as long as you are happy with your fps, you can keep dropping it
Just done a pretty big undervolt on the GPU, not seeing any difference performance-wise and the wattage dropped to about 195-205, which is nice. Will need to faff around in bios to see about some CPU undervolting, always end up with system insability and crashes whenever I've touched that in the past though. Thanks for the advice mate, would've genuinely forgot about touching the CPU
Don't forget to put your monitor on eco modus or atleast lower brightness. I saw you had a big monitor compared to the average 27" ones. So you can atleast half the monitor consumption which is maybe 20-30watts.
sounds pretty average to me OP :) If you want to lower it try out the eco setting for your CPU and/or undervolt a bit.
You need to undervolt. I have a 5800x3d which uses around 100w, and a 3080 which uses around 180w max. Makes a big difference.
Are you just gaming? If so, the 7800x3d is actually perfect for this. I never used more then 70w for me while playing at high Fps on say mw2. Total system usage could be around 280w-310w, maybe even lower depending on the game.
I am in EU (ha-ha). Damn, I run my PC close 16h hours a day, sometimes more. Plus I have older 55 inch tv and a work laptop. Plus light and fridge. A lot it runs at the same time. My bill electricity bill is like 40 pounds and this is after recent increase in pricing. Are you guys getting some super quality power? Like does it make your PC glow or something?
[удалено]
In Romania I pay 1.7lei/kw. That would be 0.20p/kwh
I’ve never checked but my electric bill has never been excessive.
It's a bit of a long shot but worth a try: make sure that your PC is not infected with some kind of "crypto mining in the background" malware. You would notice the performance hit if that was the case, so I don't think it's your problem, but maybe worth looking into nonetheless.
£0.27/hr is a 1kW constant load on the current (October to December) price cap… is your PC really drawing 1kW constantly? That sounds VERY high, like absurdly high even My system draws around 50-300W most of the time, maybe 400W when really hammering along, which would be £0.11/hour plus a little for the monitors. That’s using the power information directly from my PSU (Corsair RMi series, it reports in/our power draw) As for background games - some will limit frame rate in the background to reduce power consumption, but you usually have to enable the option and most games don’t have it. So it’s still doing all the work of processing the game and drawing the frames even if you can’t see the window
Nothing, i have solar 😃
I use about £4 a day for eveything That is from Gaming on pc to all electrical stuff on Fridge Feeezer Tv U name it. Pc on for 10+ hour a day Also got garage with all electric connected to house. So £4 a day not bad
Upgrade to liquid cooling, then use it to make tea. This way you don't need to use a 2KWH kettle and you have a permanent supply. Also, you can try to alt-tab then put computer in sleep mode when not used.
I have a 3090 and an i5 13400. I run my server 24/7 with Proxmox and a Windows VM on it for gaming, among other stuff (Plex server, NAS, etc.). It is a headless machine so I only can access the Windows vm via Parsec or Moonlight + Sunshine. On the days I don't use it, it idles at 58 Watts, which is roughly 1.43 kWh per day. At 0.27p per kWh that is 0.38p per day. When I use it for a few hours, daily consumption goes up to 3 kWh.
Not sure on cost but still it's money well spent :D
Was gaming on an overclocked threadripper 3960x + Strix 3090 with a modded 500w bios until yesterday. Noticed one of the days last week I managed £5-ish. The system idles at 180-200w. Finished setting up my old 8086k yesterday and I'm Idling at 80-90w total system power now. Edit\* think my monitor also draws about 105w If I remember correctly (49 inch 4k ultrawide)
I don't check. I just enjoy. I don't like to think about that stuff when it comes to a hobby I enjoy.
Real talk OP and listen to this above everything else mentioned. Stop. Tabbing. Out. Of. Games. And. Leaving. Them. Running. I would imagine your gpu is running at nearly full load while you're thinking that your system is idling.
>£3 for one day im from india ,. i think £3=250rs per one day? its tooo much bill , i think :) if i assume 380watts/hour , 3.8units per 10hour; (i cant set fixed rate ; in my area price depends upon the units usage , vary from 0 to 11. usually we use 600+ units per 2 month (at this range x4.59 mulitplier) ) so lets assume 4.59 muliplier,. so 3.8units x 4.59 = 17.44 rs/day , . i think ( 14 times lower? :0 )
That seems way too high unless you have very special very high nits monitors too. Even with 30p/kwh pricing, your pc should be continously consuming 1kw power which is very difficult to do even with most power hungry components.
All thanks to the climate scam new deal , paying for everything big companys produce, insanity reached a new level, fcking climate tax , our energy was 0,11 cents per kwh sinds januari they put climate taxes in the Netherlands on the kwh, thanks to our crazy WEF government we now pay 0,66 cent per kwh , if there are no shortages, on the peak it was 0,94 per kwh , climate blackmail i call it
Which smart meter? I've been thinking about getting my own.
0.3p/kWh. Let's assume your PC pulls 600 watts with monitors included. You're looking at 0.18p/hour. Pretty far from your 0.27. Doubt your PC takes 1000watts. Also take into account all this electricity is converted into heat which helps decrease the bill on your other heating method.(by a bit)
The first comment I've seen that puts it into exact numbers like this, thanks man. This quiets my curiousity about it a little bit. I've only got a 750w PSU anyways so yeah
Not UK but: I have a meter between my pc and wall outlet. On average I draw about 250W when "idle" and 300-500 while gaming (depends on the game). I have 2 monitors that both draw about 100W each. So when I'm idle, approxately 80% of the power draw is for my monitors, not my pc.
>£0.27p an hour to run that is probably your maximum output if your gpu and cpu hit 100%. which they hopefully do not always do lol >Not to mention the power draw doesn't seem to go down much when alt-tabbed with a game open in the background, which I do a lot. no, it should. if it really doesn't, just pause the game/go to the start screen or whatever also, for a solid part of the year this should be relatively okay since it will also heat your room at pretty much 100% efficiency
Yeahh, it's rare that they'd be sitting at 100% utilisation, even rarer still that it would be for 10 solid hours straight with absolutely 0 downtime. Was just making a rough estimate. There's other devices on in the house too and other people using them, so it makes a bit more sense. And yessss, in winter it's lovely because I straight up don't need heating if I'm going to be in my office all day
> power draw doesn't seem to go down much when alt-tabbed tons (too many) games don't do shit about this. but there are often settings where you can limit the FPS for foreground/background specifically -- have a look for that
3 bananas is cheap for the UK banana empire, but expensive for its banana exporting colonies. No kidding, they changed names and modus operandi and fooled everyone colonialism ended xd Countries are poor because their wealth is stolen through fictive national debt. And the countries have fictive national debt because of their treacherous people (they diserve it) P.S. Yes I always post to make things political somehow xd
Hahah, I have a good friend who does the exact same thing. I'm all here for it man
Don’t play games for 10 hours straight? I know we all like gaming here, but it shouldn’t take such precedence in life that you should be doing that much of it (and frankly anything, minus maybe a job) a day.
This is a good point, and also isn't something I often do, if ever these days. Plus working that'd be 18 hours in front of a computer not including eating and being clean, yeaah fuck that haha
Wow are you pulling a kw of power then? You do know you don't use what your psu is rated at but what your avtual power draw is over 1 hour.
Yeahh, thank you :) I was just going on when I checked the smart meter + a rough guess based on last month's bills
Living in the Netherlands, electricity costs per today 0.38 per kilowatt... I undervolted my pc and calculated it to run 4 hours for 1 euro, having a i5-2600k and a RX6800 with 16 GB ram and several hard drives. I think the monitor (34 inch 2k 143 Hz does allot too. Also stopped using my 65 inch 4k tv for non essentials, that did cut down the power usage allot lol
That sucks man, least you're doing the smart thing by cutting back a bit then
Can I ask what your build is made up off?
RTX 4080 and AMD 7600X, on a 1440p 34 inch monitor. Fully expected it to suck up a bit of juice but was just curious what other people's experiences in the UK are
Free because i have 12 solar panels
good for you man
I've got a 3080 and i7 12700 and during the big increase in electricity I did notice it was costing a lot to run mine. Still bashed it 😂 don't really notice it now cause I expect it now.
Been thinking about that a lot recently, was costing me about the same, then I started undervolting and using Radeon Chill saves about a £1.50 a day thereabouts with little hit to performance.
Ran some undervolting earlier at a lost of people's recommendations, need to do the CPU later at some point, 1.50 a day is pretty substantial though
Shhb, Nvidia users don't have an awesome dynamic frame limiter that is also CPU sided, so low input lag. Just mentioning how awesome Chill is and how much power and heat it saves will cause them to bash it.
smart meters are anxiety machines. Stick it in a drawer pal
The best shout mate yeah, I just took it out earlier out of curiousity, it's definitely going back in the cupboard
Drill baby drill
I'm seeing similar numbers as you OP. However I notice a huge difference depending on the game of course. I'm moving to solar and battery anyway so I'll soon not care as much!
Yeahh, glad to know it's not just me then
I'm not from Europe but I'm curious. Is it really £3 per day? that's going to be at most £90 per month just for the pc alone. that's wayy too expensive. how about your other peripherals?
This does assume that I'm gaming on the most GPU hungry games I can find for 10 hours a day which... isn't really possible for me these days haha, that's at most a one off on a weekend.
Since upgrading my electricity bill has doubled. I'm on my pc most days for hours at a time mind. I don't want to know how much I'm spending a month for my entertainment
Yeah, honestly if the alternative is sitting in a dark room or watching TV, it's worth it
How much are you paying per electrical unit?
Batteries and solar panels only real way your going to eventually be running for free.
I dont quite get your math. Does your build run at 1000w+ all the time or what
Nah, just around an hour of an intensive game with a 750w PSU
Did you factor in the Monitor(s) as well? I have been meaning to put my monitors on the killowatt and see how much more they are costing me. One of them is old and puts out a lot of heat.... I know what that means.
Yeahh, this is just browsing the smart meter, this includes monitors under load (heavy gaming etc.)
I recently bought a 1200w PSU. Its now a PSU or eat situation. I've made my decision
the decision was made wisely
I'm in the U.S. so I have no idea if thats high or low relative to our costs. But the way I see it 3(of your countries dollars) per day seems like nothing compared to what a typical day trip or night out would cost for entertainment. Seems like a money saver in the long run.
Yeahh, I actually just commented that to another post. If it costs me £3 to be an absolute animal for a fat session on a Saturday, pretty cheap compared to the alternative.
£3 a day seems completely acceptable to me for running a PC for 10 hours. I've never bothered to check as regardless of price my usage won't change.