In addition to the usual upfront expenditures of purchasing a full gaming PC, gaming PCs also consume a significant amount of energy, which you must pay.
When you try to build a new gaming setup, evaluating the estimated power consumption might help you make more informed selections when selecting specific components. It also allows you to save more energy and money.
Do you know how much energy your gaming PC consumes when you use it or play games?
In this article, I will walk you through some important facts that will help you evaluate the amount of power usage of your gaming PC and how to reduce the power that helps you to save money.
So, let’s get started without further ado.
How Much Energy Does a Gaming PC Use?
In 2022, a gaming PC consumes between 350 and 650 watts of power to run, estimated at 1400 kWh annually, which is ten times higher than a gaming console’s power usage. However, the amount of energy consumed by a gaming PC depends on its usage and specifications.
Generally, the power consumption of a gaming PC depends on various factors, such as the gaming PC hardware specifications, software usage, and how often you use it.
The higher the system specifications of a gaming PC, the more energy will consume. To control the higher components needs higher power. On the other hand, if your PC specifications are low, then the PC will consume less energy.
The amount of energy consumed by a gaming PC depends on its specifications. For example, a certified power efficiency Power Supply Unit (PSU) uses three times less power than a standard PSU. An SSD consumes up to four times less energy than a similar-sized HDD.
If you play games regularly on your gaming PC, the PC needs to consume continuous power to give you the best gaming experience. During the gaming sessions, the system uses a higher amount of power.
When you perform heavy tasks using different softwares, such as video editing and rendering, mining cryptocurrency, using a game engine, etc., on your PC, your system needs to perform flawlessly with full power. For instance, the system consumes higher power.
On the other hand, your PC uses lower power rather than higher power if your PC is used for some daily tasks, such as web browsing, creating/managing documents, email checking, or other basic tasks.
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Why your PC Consumes More Power than Expected
Sometimes, your PC can consume more power than before. If you find out your gaming PC consumes more energy than expected, then there are some reasons for this issue to occur on your PC.
Do you want to know why your PC consumes more power than expected?
Follow the possible reasons below to know why your PC consumes more power than expected. The following reasons are the main culprit of this issue.
Here are the reasons why your PC consumes more power than expected:
1. Outdated Tech
Outdated tech is one of the major reasons for consuming more power than expected on your PC.
Using old technology-based PC hardware such as an old PC case, an outdated Monitor like CRT, or a typical power supply consumes higher power than modern tech-based hardware.
Outdated tech-based hardware doesn’t have the power efficiency technology to save unnecessary power usage. That’s why the old hardware used higher energy to operate the system.
2. Poor Quality Components
Poor quality hardware components of your PC are other reasons to consume more power than usual. When using low-quality components, the components consume higher power to run the system.
Usually, the lower grade parts use more unusual power than needed. The low-grade hardware components can’t maintain the unusual usage of energy because these components don’t have power-saving technology.
For example, using low-grade RAM on your PC consumes more power than a higher-grade RAM. Lower-grade RAM is getting hot sooner and doesn’t control the heat, consuming more power.
On the other hand, higher grade RAM has modern heat sink technology that controls the component’s heat issue and ensures unnecessary power usage.
3. Higher Uses of Software
Running a high-power consuming software on your low-level-based PC creates massive pressure on your PC hardware.
When software requires more power to run the program and the system flawlessly but can’t deliver the power efficiently, it uses unusual power. So, don’t use high-power consuming software if your PC isn’t able to handle it easily.
4. Dust Issue
Dust is one of the main reasons to consume more power than expected on your PC.
Your computer is at risk from dust. It causes your computer to overheat when it accumulates on the heat sink. As a result of the overheating, your PC must function slower to avoid damage, and the cooling fan must run harder and longer, consuming even more energy.
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How to Reduce your Gaming PC’s Power Usage
The PC uses energy to run the system properly. Without power, there is no way to run the system. The higher components on your PC need more energy. The gaming PC uses more power than usual during the gaming session.
If you are having trouble with your gaming PC due to unusual power usage, you are in the right place then. This section will describe effective and proven methods to reduce your gaming PC power usage.
So, let’s get started.
Here are the steps to reduce your gaming PC power usage:
1. Unplug Unused External Devices
First and foremost, unplug all unused external devices to reduce the power usage of your gaming PC. Unused external computer peripherals always consume power, which increases power usage.
If you have external devices that are not used frequently, then unplug them to reduce the unusual power consumption and save energy.
2. Use an Energy-Efficient Monitor
If you are using an outdated technology-based monitor, such as a CRT monitor, then try to upgrade your old monitor to a new modern technology-based monitor.
Generally, outdated technology-based monitors consume more power than modern ones because they don’t have power efficiency technology to use lower energy, which helps to save energy.
So, use the modern tech-based monitor to use lower power and get a more diligent user experience.
3. Maximize the Use of Sleep and Hibernate Functions
Maximizing the uses of sleep and hibernate functions is another effective method to reduce your gaming PC power usage.
If you are using your PC most of the time a day but turning off and on the PC frequently, it uses more power every time. To reduce your gaming PC’s unusual power usage, you may try to use your system’s sleep or hibernate functions.
The sleep or hibernate functions help you to prevent your PC from restarting frequently. Also, these functions help you to get the work where you left off without losing any tasks.
4. Close Unnecessary Background Programs
Unnecessary active background programs are one of the leading causes of consuming more power. While unnecessary background programs run in your background, it uses more CPU, RAM, and HDD/SSD power that consumes the power of usage.
So, close the unnecessary background programs from the Task Manager as much as you can while running your system to reduce usage power.
Here are the steps to close the unnecessary background programs:
- Open the Task Manager by pressing the Ctrl+Shift+Esc on your keyboard.
- Under the Processes tab, the running background programs are listed.
- Select a program that you want to close.
- Right-click on it and choose End Task to close the program.
- Apply the same procedure to close the unnecessary background programs one by one that you want.
5. Upgrade to More Energy-efficient Components
The last but not least method to reduce your gaming PC power usage is to upgrade to more energy-efficient components.
If your gaming PC components are not updated, it may cause unnecessary power-consuming issues because the old components do not use higher energy-efficient technology.
For example, an SSD consumes up to four times less energy than a similar-sized HDD. So, upgrade your storage from HDD to SSD to save more energy.
For this context, upgrade your old components to more energy-efficient parts to save more energy.
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Final Thoughts
Despite accounting for only around 2.5 percent of the world’s installed PC equipment, gaming machines consume up to 75 billion kWh of electricity each year. It equates to 20% of the total energy required to run a game console, laptop, or desktop computer for a year.
Furthermore, this level of consumption necessitates an energy expenditure of up to $10 billion, which is the equivalent of running 25 electric power plants on average.
Saving power is essential to using the gaming PC regularly without wasting money. If you are concerned about the power of using your gaming PC, this post will help you to get rid of this issue.
That’s all. I hope you find this post helpful and insightful as well.
