My current gaming rig is ready to retire, it's pretty ancient. It's also my seed box so it runs 24x7, I want to build a rig that uses the least power while sitting idle during the night, but can ramp up and drive the GPU etc when gaming. Any tips on hardware, specifically PSU types, motherboards or general technology I should look into to build my own green gaming rig?
Are There Green Gaming PC Options?
brettule on 09/05/2021 - 13:07
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Seems like a reasonable question to ask. Sure you can just go without but it doesn't have to be all or nothing.
Good on you for thinking ahead about the energy impact.
Righto. So sounds like I can't run a V12 gaming rig but kill off 11 of the cylinders when it's idling at the lights?
Does your current gaming rig run at at its maximum at idle? Why do you think a new one would?
used to have i think those hybrid graphics using integrated graphics + graphics card combo , but they killed it ? (nvidia hybrid graphics / amd dual graphics)
intel might come back with the feature
amd apu is pretty strong nowadays with 4750g , or their 5000 apu coming soon & avail to retail
or you can use external graphics box like razer core X or gigabyte 3090 gaming box , only plugin when gaming and use cpu integrated graphics other times
having said that, i think wiser to just put solar panels and battery if you have the money to go green
That is a different, harder to answer question.
Idle consumption should be similar across a product range, with slight increases for products on larger dies (the silicon). Why? The hardware that needs to run in an idle state should be independent of the processor. You would minimise idle power by buying a mother board with all the essential devices you want (wifi, if you want wifi) built in as onboard parts will usually not be heat sinked, requiring the manufacturer to choose lower powered parts. A 5W saving is 120Wh a day or about a dollar a month.
Features like wider traces (X ounce copper) would slightly reduce power due to slightly lower resistance. Like maybe one watt hour over a month or a quarter of a thousandths of a cent. Not something to go out of your way for.
You would want fairly aggressive fan curves, so they barely spin at idle then ramp up as needed. Then you would want beefy heat sinks that take time to heat soak on the GPU and the the CPU to reduce fan runtime. You might be able to save tens of watt hours a month with hours of tuning, but I doubt the energy saved would ever make up for the extra energy consumed to make the larger heat sinks, let alone the power the machine consumed while configuring it. But hey, idle consumption. Amirite?
Honestly, you would be better of just buying what you want then turning it off when not in use. Or living in a cold region where your computer works as part of your heating solution instead of against it.
If you’ve got a MSI motherboard/asus graphics card or similar quality, a lot of them can be controlled and underclocked and ramped up to full speed or overclocked as you require in windows via their software. Otherwise just use a NAS or equivalent for torrenting and seeding and game seperately? That seems like the best option
PSU's have an efficiency rating, using the 80+ Efficiency certifications
CPU power consumption is pretty difficult to calculate. Most of the userful data only comes out in real world tests — maybe check Gamers Nexus videos for those kind of testing. Generally speaking the AMD 7nm processors will be much more efficient than Intel's 14nm Rocket Lake parts.
If you want even greater power efficiency you'd have to go with ARM. e.g Broadcom ARM on Raspberry Pi 4 or M1 on a Mac mini, with the tradeoff being you lose x86 instruction.
For gaming — maybe subscribe to Geforce Now, Google Stadia (RIP) or Microsoft Xcloud gaming and offload the high intense workload to their datacenters :P
You want to be green - turn it off at night when your not using it ???
How much is a lot to you? even with the gpu being the most power hungry component at idle most modern pc's with multiple fans and hard drives will use minimum of 150-250w an hour.
Have a gaming rig and have a separate rig for everyday stuff which is more green,
nothing wrong with owning 2 rigs
Keep existing PC as seedbox, removing any components that chew up power at night (can you use onboard graphics?).
Buy whatever new PC you want, and turn it off when not in use.
If you can't do that, power it with renewable energy if possible.
If you can't do that, catch public transport instead of driving, go vegan at least some of the time, and reduce, reuse and recycle.
Why do you want to keep it on when idling? If you want remote access then set up wake on LAN. This is what I do for my home server.
All computers consume just a fraction of their maximum rated power when idling. For example, my 5 year old i7-6700 / 16GB RAM/ 250GB SSD / 1TB HDD /RTX 2600 / 500W 80+ white PSU idles under 40W power draw at wall (I’ve measured it using a smart power meter), but at load it can technically hit 350W.
Newer components are supposed to be much more power efficient, so I’d think you should be able to be under 20W with a new setup. Some tips : get a good 80+ gold or higher rated PSU, a well ventilated case (so you don’t waste too much power on cooling), and don’t use RGB lighting.
Use a mobile phone. Phones are usually thermally limited to under ten watts, so even assuming an insane 200% losses from charging and battery use, you are still under 30W.
If you must have a desktop, use the lowest brightness on your low resolution monitor (look for the worst reviews on Rtings), buy the lowest core count CPU, the smallest sized current gen GPU then declock. Or forgo a GPU and use intel graphics. Get an electrician to install a super efficient switch board next to your PC for your power supply.
You could go an ultra book with onboard graphics., they would generally use less power than a similar spec'ed PC as they are often optimised for battery life.
Or you could go an A1 iPad. They should use more power than a phone, but less than an ultrabook.
/s
If you want to game on a computer you are not being green.