Guru3D PC Buyers Guide Autumn 2018

Posted on: 10/17/2018 01:22 AM

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Well, I used to be concerned a bit too.
But then there is this other thing. You build PC for $2000. Pay $60 for game which has anywhere between 12 and 120hours of content => average 72hours => $0.833/hour of gameplay . Then 5 years later, you build new one again => that's $400 for HW per year.
So yearly cost of gaming assets for average gaming 2hours a day = $400 + $0.833 * 365 * 2 = $400 + $608 = $1008
In that year you play 730hours. Power efficient GPU will eat like 80W less than one which is not power efficient which at wall results in around 95W. 730h * 0.095kW = 69.35kWh a year
Here that difference in 69.35kWh saved means around $16 saved per year.

I think you save more by buying one game which you'll spend playing 200~300 hours a year. For me, total winners in terms of playtime per purchase price were:
Killing Floor 1&2; Terraria; CS 1.6; Audiosurf; WH 40k: DoW II (complete); Payday 1/2
Then I have like 20 games with gameplay under 40 hours and had AAA price. And like 200 games where gameplay ranged from few minutes to 4 hours and price wildly varied from few $ to few dozens.

If I had a lot of time, like 6 hours a day to play in average, and bought just few cheap games a year, it could look like:
Cost per year of gaming assets = $400 + $75 (games) = $475
Extra cost of low efficiency system = $48

Let's say you are that game wise cost efficient gamer. $475 a year for PC and games. 6h * 365 = 2190 hours played a year
Power efficient PC eating 400W from wall under gaming load. And non-efficient variant 495W.
Power efficient eats 2190h * 0.4kW = 876kWh => $202 cost of electricity
Energy inefficient PC 2190h * 0.495kW = 1084kWh => $250 (notice already mentioned $48 difference)
So total cost difference in percent is (475 + 250) / (475 + 202) = 725 / 677 = 1.071 => 7.1%
You pay 7.1% more which is mentioned $48. Or paying around $0.022 more per each hour played. I do not think you should care that much.
= = = =

Now I'll tell you something in contrast. I have PSU which misbehaves and eats over 50W when PC is off. So, let's say it is off 12hours a day. That's 4380h * 0.05kW = 219kWh a year => $50.5 wasted for nothing.
So, I am flipping that PSU OFF every day till I confirm that it is not MB as it for some reason does not have EuP in BIOS menu anymore. (And Hilbert actually tested that board and measured sub 1W in OFF state. And same goes for his sample of PSU.)
Wanna save on electricity? Maybe measure yearly power cost of your internet router, wifi, switches, NAS, ... My networking eats over 40W which again means additional costs while nobody uses it at night. There I could save like $30 a year if I turned it OFF every night.

So many opportunities to save on something you are not using. But saving on something I am using is not for me.
Dam you Fox^ ....took me 3 beers to read all that knowledge stuff...:p

Posted on: 10/17/2018 01:52 PM

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I never measured how much electricity my cable modem was eating while sitting idle, but I began to turn it off every night because I noticed it was really warm also in the morning, despite of no active use. Now I have everything behind hardware switches, PC and home theater systems. I'm not paying for standby/idle power consumption anymore.