Gaming and power consumption: power requirements, costs and more

In view of the inflation and above all because of the extremely high gas prices caused by the Ukraine war, energy is becoming more and more expensive. Electricity consumption can also play a role in the mix of energy types, and electricity could also become more expensive in the foreseeable future. But even with stable electricity prices, some people want to save electricity – be it to reduce the burden on the environment or be it because other costs have risen or will rise.

But what role does a gaming PC play in this? We will show you how you can estimate the electricity costs that your hobby causes per year. You can find out how much power certain CPUs and graphics cards need when you play games or just do less complex things like surfing the Internet or working with office software. We also give some tips for saving electricity. However, an important part of our special revolves around power supplies and their efficiency. We therefore also offer an overview with some recommended power supplies at the end. But first, it’s about the power consumption of your PC.

The most accurate way to calculate your PC’s electricity costs is to measure the electricity consumed with a decent power meter. These can be bought – but they are also offered for hire by some municipal electricity suppliers. There are two options when measuring with a power meter – the simpler way is as follows: You start a game and reset the power meter so that no old readings are available. Then you just start playing.

Immediately after the end of the game, you then look at the average watt value that the measuring device found. This value divided by 1000 is the KWh consumption of your PC per hour when gaming. It is best to play several times, i.e. spread over a few days, and vary the game titles. Because depending on the game, the PC can be more or less required. To determine the power requirement for other activities apart from gaming, you proceed in principle in the same way.

But don’t forget to reset the measuring device after you’ve finished a game and surfed the Internet, for example – otherwise the value from gaming is still included in the average watt requirement. A reset is also required after booting the PC.

Logilink EM0003 power meter

Source: Logilink via 2direct shop




The somewhat more complicated, second option, which is necessary anyway if the meter doesn’t offer an average value at all: You write down exactly how long you play (measured in hours) and don’t read the average watt value from the meter, but the value in the KWh category, i.e. the electricity consumption.

You also note the value. It is best to do this over several days and with different games. At the very end you add up all noted KWh for gaming and all values ​​for the duration of the gaming sessions. You then divide the KWh sum by the total gaming time – this way you can find out how many KWh per hour the PC consumes under gaming load.

You then do the same for the value pairs for “Other” to find out how many KWh the PC needs outside of gaming. A tip for converting minutes into hours: 30 minutes are 0.5 hours, 15 minutes are 0.25 hours, you can calculate 0.17 hours for every 10 minutes. If you play 2 hours and 30 minutes in one session, you write down 2.5 hours. If it is 2 hours and 40 minutes, the value is 2.67 hours.