Wednesday, June 1st 2022
PC Components with High Power Draw an Issue for an Overwhelming Majority of Users: Survey
In April, we polled our readers with the question "Are components with high power draw an issue for you?," and got back 22,040 responses. An overwhelming 85.5 percent of our readers (PC gamers and enthusiasts) take issue with high power draw for PC components. This comes in the wake of key components such as processors and discrete graphics cards rising in power-draw generation-over-generation, despite transitioning to smaller and smaller silicon fabrication nodes, signaling that Moore's Law isn't able to keep up with advances in performance and capabilities. The 85.5 percent of respondents who voted "yes," did so for very diverse reasons.
Our poll question wasn't a binary yes-or-no; and people could vote yes for different reasons—power bill, heat, noise, and the environment. 33.5 percent of respondents felt that power bill (energy costs) is the biggest reason why they chose yes. Heat is the second big factor, with 28.5 percent feeling that they don't want high power-draw component because power has a direct impact on heat, and all that heat is put out into the room despite how good the cooling solution is. The third place goes to noise at 12.2 percent, with bigger cooling requirements having an impact on system noise. Even big fat liquid cooling solutions ultimately rely on fans. Interestingly, only 11.3 percent voted that they care about the environment and hence take issue with high power-draw components. This figure, by the way, is much less than the 14.5 percent who voted that they don't care at all about components with high power draw.
Our question took shape as we followed the generation-over-generation power-draw trend of two key components—processors and graphics cards. The GeForce GTX 980 Ti, NVIDIA's fastest consumer graphics card in 2015, drew just 211 W of power under gaming workloads of the time, while the GTX 1080 Ti pulled a similar 231 W to workloads tested in 2017. The RTX 2080 Ti pulled 273 W for gaming of its time in 2018; while the current RTX 3090 Ti draws a whopping 445 W for today's games. These cards were each tested in different system setups, with different driver software and games which is why we can't put the data on a graph, but they still serve to illustrate a generationally rising power-draw. If Moore's Law held true, there should be a generational increase in performance from a new architecture at negligible increase in power, as the silicon will have transitioned to a new node with increased transistor density and improved power characteristics. This, however, isn't happening.
Our poll question wasn't a binary yes-or-no; and people could vote yes for different reasons—power bill, heat, noise, and the environment. 33.5 percent of respondents felt that power bill (energy costs) is the biggest reason why they chose yes. Heat is the second big factor, with 28.5 percent feeling that they don't want high power-draw component because power has a direct impact on heat, and all that heat is put out into the room despite how good the cooling solution is. The third place goes to noise at 12.2 percent, with bigger cooling requirements having an impact on system noise. Even big fat liquid cooling solutions ultimately rely on fans. Interestingly, only 11.3 percent voted that they care about the environment and hence take issue with high power-draw components. This figure, by the way, is much less than the 14.5 percent who voted that they don't care at all about components with high power draw.
150 Comments on PC Components with High Power Draw an Issue for an Overwhelming Majority of Users: Survey
Anyway i do thake offense on path we took, i remember in the past when nvidia/amd released a nuclear fusion gpu they would just get a backlash, now we just strap more aluminium, more copper, more fans, more plastic, more capacitors, etc and of course mo'money.
I could do with more spaced released and a better optimized gpu, especially now with FSR and DLSS.
Even the cable box draws too much power and I'm considering dropping the expense since I rarely watch it any longer as I can access the Local Stations Websites and watch what I'm interested in instead of all the crap about the next "High speed pursuit" 150 miles away.
I'm keeping the 2070 as a backup, in case I do need more power in the future when prices (potentially) shoot up again.
I have a 3060 Ti, it uses about 200 watts and it runs many of the games I play at 4K60 at settings I'm happy with (I play mostly games from a few years ago). I will always stick with GPUs in the 200w range (maybe 250w with an undervolt) as I will not put up with the heat in a small room, if my room was much bigger I probably wouldn't care.
There will always be GPUs in the 200-250w power band and every two years performance increases by a good 30% or so, and in the mid-range GPUs are much cheaper making more frequent upgrades more easily justifiable.
Power isn't an issue in CPUs for me. Gaming, web browsing and office tasks (my main use case) don't push CPUs much. I render a video every now and then and even that is not an issue because rendering a video takes a few minutes and then it's back to web-browsing, gaming, office tasks or idling...
There is certain irony now because many large businesses are trying to minimize energy consumption and pollution. Well, for the reasons of profit, but herein lies the irony, although the impact is significant.
There is just no excuse for not doing what you can.
If you set the scale large enough on a whim, you can say there were no such boycotts.
Meanwhile even sth as silly as Diablo Immortal is coming to PC after all due to customer backlash and Blizzard realizing what a loss in revenue it would be.
Again, money talks. And most here seem to be oblivious to how big corps work.
My current 6800XT is just within that range and when I do upgrade in the future I would like to keep that as a hard limit so no 450+ watt monsters for me.
I also don't feel the need to upgrade my 850W Titanium PSU.
Wait till you have a couple kids and an electric dryer lol. I use about a MW/hr a month (1000kw.hrs). My pc is negligible in that total amount. But I turn it on when I use it and shut it down when done with it. So it typically runs 0-4hours a day. Weekends 0-12hrs depending on weather and chores and kids and commitments.
Companies adapted with the right hardware/software/infrastructure and got used to work from home ... now nearly all of them are forcing employees right back in the office ... with all those unnecessary cars and vehicles back on the road. This is the opportunity of the century to finally implement something good for both employees AND the environment ... but they failed. Again. Like almost everything else they get their hands in.
Nope ... let's get people back on those roads to do the daily commute pollute ...
The worst part of (office) work for me is the 2-4 hours wasted daily on travel, for some people it's even longer!
I could also run stress tests for CPU and GPU at different voltages to tune my PC for the best performance / heat / power consumption combination while working lol.
use MUCH more power, have more plastic in them and don't last as long as they used to. With 4K in your face, yes, RT looks better.
I prefer 1080P where RT means nothing to me and use a lot of ($45) 13 year old video cards. I can enjoy this because I don't do these always online
modern console games. I'm PC only! Remember...I'm OLD so don't kill me because of the attitude. :D:kookoo:
You say a 400 watt GPU is out of touch with a sustainable environment, but your 3090 is no conservationist as it pushes over 400 watts under heavy loads Do you want to rethink your wattage cap we need to put on GPUs?
My 4000sq ft home uses less energy to heat, cool, and make hot water than a trailer house thanks to geothermal heat pumps and a superheat loop. I’m installing a new water heater/storage tank to both have enough hot water and to increase the systems efficiency.
It all just takes money.
:p
I really do care about the enviroment as i have made my PC use less power :laugh:
I am not gonna lie, i don't really care, i am one person that does not really have a mega power using rig anyway so in the big scheme of things does it really matter. Some people on here run 3 or 4 rigs, so does it matter what components they have. And what about miners? not just greedy fuckers, but don't give a shit about power use either.
Until we get the money and people following only party lines out of the federal government, it will continue to be a broken mess.