Switch to a gaming laptop to drastically cut on bills

[Agent]

I game 9 hours per day on average if we include weekend game time vs work hours.

Electricity per kWh in my area is 0.32p.

My deskop pulls 440 watts from the wall.

The laptop pulls 200 watts from the wall.

This comes out at:

£462.58 per year for the desktop.

£210.26 for the laptop.

This is a huge saving! So guys I'd think twice before buying a desktop for gaming. Never again.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Messaggio originale di Dutchgamer1982:

MY pc has a 1500W psu.
It has parts that together

TDP HD 2x9 = 18W
TDP SSD = 2W
TDP ram 8x6 = 48W
TDP GPU = 250W
TDP CPU = 140W
TDP fans 140mm 6x10 = 60W
TDP water pump = 45W
TDP motherboard = 5W
= 566W

in practice.. : under full load my system draws 720-780W

in idle mode it draws about halve that.. (just logged in in windows not pressed a button it is about 340W, with a text editor open.. but not moving the mouse or typing it's closer to 420W)

when in full sleep mode.. it still draws well over 60W

my power is 38 eurocent per KWH
my total powerbill is just above 2000 euro per year for my entire household
(thats for an apartment, all lights LED, no AC, a fridge A+++ a washing machine A+++ and a dryer A+++)

I have monitored and my pc consumes about 1400 euro worth of power PER YEAR.. all my other utensils use just a little over 600W

at that point the price of the parts is a non issue... the poweruse is!

thats a sizable chunk... so thats why I not get why NVIDEA has basicly kept performance per watt so flat for the last 6 years..

Have you considered switching to laptop if your desktop is using so much? It'll be less than half of that on a high-end laptop with 10 to 25% less performance depending on resolution etc.

You have to be willing to compromise though. Is it pay twice the amount on bills or lose some FPS to save lots of cash per year?

No I have not.
and 17 inch crappy screens.. no ty. laptops I have not taken serious, since they no longer have optical drives, and removable batteries.. and are all basicly foldable tablets.

there used to be 21 inch screen laptops weighing 8 kilo.. with 2 hot swappable batteries.. but sadly nothing like it is made anymore..


I would be in the market for better hardware.. that may be pricey.. but has lower TDP

like some GPU with 4090 performance but only a 120W powerdraw
and a cpu with 48 lanes, and twice the performance as my current one, but only 80W powerdraw

sadly such parts do not excist...
and I hate they don't... as stated in performance per TDP hardly ANY progress has been made since 2016

[Chaosolous]

Gaming Laptops are a bad joke but okay.

[steven1mac]

Nothing wrong with a laptop, and if it is cheaper to use in the long run, even better. If you can use it 5+ years your not really losing anything by the higher cost, since GPU's have become so expensive and people usually replace those ever four or 5 years.

Right now, I am currently using a gaming laptop which is 4 or 5 years old, and besides using a cooling pad for the more intense gaming it seems to run pretty decently. I figure whenever I get a new one, the performance will be doubled.

[Agent]

Messaggio originale di steven1mac:

Nothing wrong with a laptop, and if it is cheaper to use in the long run, even better. If you can use it 5+ years your not really losing anything by the higher cost, since GPU's have become so expensive and people usually replace those ever four or 5 years.

Right now, I am currently using a gaming laptop which is 4 or 5 years old, and besides using a cooling pad for the more intense gaming it seems to run pretty decently. I figure whenever I get a new one, the performance will be doubled.

Yeah that's the thing that's great about it. You save more in the longrun. I like to think of it like xbox game pass subscriptions. Instead of paying of paying for 4 of em per year I'm now only paying for 2. Overtime the higher upfront cost gets balanced out and you start saving money. After the 5 or 6 years are up you're ready for a new laptop the same way you would for a build.

You can then easily transfer your NVMe and RAM over to the next laptop if you desire.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Messaggio originale di steven1mac:

Nothing wrong with a laptop, and if it is cheaper to use in the long run, even better. If you can use it 5+ years your not really losing anything by the higher cost, since GPU's have become so expensive and people usually replace those ever four or 5 years.

Right now, I am currently using a gaming laptop which is 4 or 5 years old, and besides using a cooling pad for the more intense gaming it seems to run pretty decently. I figure whenever I get a new one, the performance will be doubled.

again GPU price is irrelevant.

I did spend 1600 euro for my 2080ti

of all the poweuse in my system.,. it takes up easely 40%
that means that since I bought it I did spend 2800 euro on powering the thing alone...

I am in the market for proper 4k 120fps+ 40 inch plasma
(the logical upgrade from 27 inch ips 120FPS 1440p)

but the only card capable of that is a 4090..
and that crappy thing draws 450W

a 4090 costs about 1800 euro.
but with that tdp it likely will consume over 1000 euro a year in power..

what is nvidea thinking?
why not make a card that has the performance of a 4090.. costst 3000-4000 euro.. and has an tps of 160W

that would be something that with todays powerprices would be a proper market for.
I rather pay twice for my GDP with it having halve the TDP.. than as it is now..

like I say even if I look for cpu's with similair TDP as my system uses now.. the performance gain is zero or negative...

[Hesti]

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Messaggio originale di Weimu:

i don't think most people game for 9 hours a day so the money saved is going to be negligible

You'd be surprised. And have you not seen those steam profile with 10k CS hours?

They are likely the exception and not the rule...and besides, people with that many hours have usually idled, which means they aren't really playing the game...there's software to do that for you.

I have to agree, no need for this personally. I'm not spending that many hours on my PC a day and when I'm not using it I shut it off, so power usage is negligible.

[Devsman]

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Messaggio originale di eram:

why does your desktop idle at 440 watts?

Did you not read the part where I game 9 hours per day on average? That's full load.

That wasn't the question.

Your power consumption ("Wattage" to use the cringe term) is analogous to a car's speed. Going for a long time doesn't make the speed go up. Only pushing the gas harder does that. The question is why your desktop pushes the gas so hard.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Messaggio originale di Devsman:

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Did you not read the part where I game 9 hours per day on average? That's full load.

That wasn't the question.

Your power consumption ("Wattage" to use the cringe term) is analogous to a car's speed. Going for a long time doesn't make the speed go up. Only pushing the gas harder does that. The question is why your desktop pushes the gas so hard.

no power consumption is equal to fuel use per amount of time.
where effiency would be fuel use per distance driven.
and fuel use is dependand on a lot of factors, but going faster sure is one.

my pc has a idle draw of 340W but thats logical.
-the psu is only 94% effiencient so any power drawn is increased by 6%
-the psu is made for 1500W, under 300W draw it's effieincy drops off..
**while the cpu and gpu wll drop their poweruse. thats only halve the system
-the pump and fans will draw the same power no matter what
(those are not in saving mode)
-the harddrives and ssd draw power no matter what
-the memory draw power no matter what

basicly everything draws a flat amount of power exept the cpu and gpu.. so thats why my sistem still draws halve it's power when idle;)

in sleep mode all that crap is off.. but with 8 sticks of ram still powered.. and an psu not that efficient at low wattages.. 60W is not unheared off.

[Agent]

Messaggio originale di Devsman:

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Did you not read the part where I game 9 hours per day on average? That's full load.

That wasn't the question.

Your power consumption ("Wattage" to use the cringe term) is analogous to a car's speed. Going for a long time doesn't make the speed go up. Only pushing the gas harder does that. The question is why your desktop pushes the gas so hard.

Because that's what my games require? 80% of CPU is used at max clocks and GPU is 99% max clocks.

[Dutchgamer1982]

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Messaggio originale di Devsman:

That wasn't the question.

Your power consumption ("Wattage" to use the cringe term) is analogous to a car's speed. Going for a long time doesn't make the speed go up. Only pushing the gas harder does that. The question is why your desktop pushes the gas so hard.

Because that's what my games require? 80% of CPU is used at max clocks and GPU is 99% max clocks.

err time for a new pc?

** I never had more than 30% load on my cpu.. and thats with like a gazillion things open.
128GB ram also not easely ulitised never over 20% used.. if it is. than there is a memory leak.

only plausilble there is gpu.. but it hardly runs full all the time... many games are quite light so it uses more reasonable 70% in heavier games.. with spikes to full load.. when I like move around or drop things that need a lot of rendering..

[Agent]

Messaggio originale di Dutchgamer1982:

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Because that's what my games require? 80% of CPU is used at max clocks and GPU is 99% max clocks.

err time for a new pc?

** I never had more than 30% load on my cpu.. and thats with like a gazillion things open.
128GB ram also not easely ulitised never over 20% used.. if it is. than there is a memory leak.

only plausilble there is gpu.. but it hardly runs full all the time... many games are quite light so it uses more reasonable 70% in heavier games.. with spikes to full load.. when I like move around or drop things that need a lot of rendering..

It's a 8 core i7 10700k. I mostly do CPU bound titles like bannerlord. With 1000 NPC's it easily reaches 80% usage.

[Devsman]

Messaggio originale di Dutchgamer1982:

Messaggio originale di Devsman:

That wasn't the question.

Your power consumption ("Wattage" to use the cringe term) is analogous to a car's speed. Going for a long time doesn't make the speed go up. Only pushing the gas harder does that. The question is why your desktop pushes the gas so hard.

no power consumption is equal to fuel use per amount of time.
where effiency would be fuel use per distance driven.
and fuel use is dependand on a lot of factors, but going faster sure is one.

my pc has a idle draw of 340W but thats logical.
-the psu is only 94% effiencient so any power drawn is increased by 6%
-the psu is made for 1500W, under 300W draw it's effieincy drops off..
**while the cpu and gpu wll drop their poweruse. thats only halve the system
-the pump and fans will draw the same power no matter what
(those are not in saving mode)
-the harddrives and ssd draw power no matter what
-the memory draw power no matter what

basicly everything draws a flat amount of power exept the cpu and gpu.. so thats why my sistem still draws halve it's power when idle;)

in sleep mode all that crap is off.. but with 8 sticks of ram still powered.. and an psu not that efficient at low wattages.. 60W is not unheared off.

Yeah, that's a better comparison.

[B✪✪tsy]

Messaggio originale di Han Solo:

Messaggio originale di B✪✪tsy:

Or get a better energy contract, because you are being screwed. I pay like 90€ a month for all energy and my gaming PC is on 24/7 with 2 big monitors.

At 90 euros a month, he would be paying £934.80 per year for his energy so not only are you the one being screwed, you are screwing everyone else as well by leaving your PC turned on 24 hours a day because you're too lazy or entitled to turn it off.

90€ p/m for a whole house is cheap, thats basically the same price as 10 years ago. And you don't know why my PC is running 24/7...

[Dutchgamer1982]

Messaggio originale di Stacked:

Messaggio originale di Dutchgamer1982:

err time for a new pc?

** I never had more than 30% load on my cpu.. and thats with like a gazillion things open.
128GB ram also not easely ulitised never over 20% used.. if it is. than there is a memory leak.

only plausilble there is gpu.. but it hardly runs full all the time... many games are quite light so it uses more reasonable 70% in heavier games.. with spikes to full load.. when I like move around or drop things that need a lot of rendering..

It's a 8 core i7 10700k. I mostly do CPU bound titles like bannerlord. With 1000 NPC's it easily reaches 80% usage.

10 core i7 6950x, overclocked.. here
-I wonder does bannerlord even support 8 processes..?
in many games it's just the 1, 2 or 4 cores that get load for me.

and most goes to the 2080ti anyway.. not many games cpu heavy..

KSP.. thats a bad one.. that manages at around 1500 parts to start lagging and 1800 parts in screen to freeze..

bad programmed game.. it does not renders parts that are connected as 1 part.. but individual.. and it only uses 1 core.

[MinionJoe]

How much more are you paying for a gaming laptop over a desktop PC?

If you're paying more than £250, you're losing money that year.

A probable average would mean you'd have to use the laptop for four years in order to recoup the additional cost of it. By that time, it's obsolete and not upgradeable.