Pc power usage and a smart meter

Griff7520 · 15 Feb 2022 at 15:58

Hi all

Recently had smart meters installed for our electricity supply. The meter turns to an amber light when boiling a kettle or when the central heating is on.

I have just noticed that the meter turns amber when I am gaming, I have not noticed this before but I am now wondering if this is normal, I did not think I was using so much electricity for gaming.

Any one notice the same thing in there house and if so is there something I can do to reduce the power usage. I am not overclocking anything and the spec is in my sig

tia

bremen1874 · 15 Feb 2022 at 16:12

If it wasn't going to pull a significant amount of power from the wall, it wouldn't require a 750W PSU.

What usage does Amber signify in Watts?

Tetras · 15 Feb 2022 at 16:17

According to the TPU review: 1080 Ti uses about 200 - 250 Watts when gaming. Anything that reduces load on the graphics card will help, vsync in particular. You could also try undervolting.

CPU, you can undervolt, or for a bigger reduction just turn off turbo (though actually I do it because I hate fans ramping up

), but obviously that will have a big impact on FPS (less so with vsync enabled).

Downclocking the memory can have a significant impact on Ryzen power consumption (load and idle), but I'm not sure what it would do on Alder Lake.

Griff7520 · 15 Feb 2022 at 16:24

ok.....the amber light means medium power usage, i found a button on the meter saying usage now, I pressed it and at idle it is saying i an using 424watts for the whole house, when i went into a game it went up to 625watts and it says I am using 13p an hour electricity at current usage. does that help

the draw on the gtx 1080ti is 250/260watts according to afterburner. would i save money with a new gpu do you think

tia

Tetras · 15 Feb 2022 at 16:41

Griff7520 said:
ok.....the amber light means medium power usage, i found a button on the meter saying usage now, I pressed it and at idle it is saying i an using 424watts for the whole house, when i went into a game it went up to 625watts and it says I am using 13p an hour electricity at current usage. does that help

the draw on the gtx 1080ti is 250/260watts according to afterburner. would i save money with a new gpu do you think

tia

3 hours a day at 300 watts and a price 0.23 per kWh would be £75 a year.

Something like a RX 6600 or 6600 XT is more efficient, but even if it saved you 100 watts that'd only be £25 a year. RDNA 2 is good, but Pascal is still a power-competitive architecture, relatively speaking.

SpellowHouse · 18 Feb 2022 at 07:34

Yes!
I think my house is often using close to 400W at idle so to speak. Fridges, TV, lights and so on, and the PC running at idle. If i play a game then that jumps by another 150W, and 500W is the magic consumption that makes the power meter glow orange!
This is going to be a major consideration with future graphics cards. Basically things are about as small as they can make them right now. This is because quantum effects mean that chips are getting hotter and hotter as they get smaller. There is a definite limit to how small chips can get and offer any improvement. There is already some worry about the Nvidia 40 series - the power consumption figures the press are throwing about right now are just insane.

Griff7520 · 18 Feb 2022 at 11:51

SpellowHouse said:
Yes!
I think my house is often using close to 400W at idle so to speak. Fridges, TV, lights and so on, and the PC running at idle. If i play a game then that jumps by another 150W, and 500W is the magic consumption that makes the power meter glow orange!
This is going to be a major consideration with future graphics cards. Basically things are about as small as they can make them right now. This is because quantum effects mean that chips are getting hotter and hotter as they get smaller. There is a definite limit to how small chips can get and offer any improvement. There is already some worry about the Nvidia 40 series - the power consumption figures the press are throwing about right now are just insane.

thats about the same for me.....just did not realise how much power my pc uses for gaming till i got this meter....something to keep an eye on now....will have to tell the wife only 3 cuppers a day from now on to save some money ......we all have to make sacrifices lol

Moeks · 18 Feb 2022 at 19:09

I wouldn't worry about it, this may be an example of too much information not being all that helpful really ...or at least oversimplying the display of that information and you probably not really having a previous context for it because whoever programmed the meter and decided on a particular threshold for what colour light comes on at what power usage is using criteria that is unknown to us. If you had a 12kw eletric showever on there I guess it would basically sound the 'end of days, death of the planet' alarm

...and imagine if you had a shower and someone else boiled a kettle at the same time and perhaps you have an electric oven aswell ...it'd bacially just tell you that you probably club baby seals for fun while releasing CFC's into the atmosphere because you like the way the whole in the ozone brings your eyes out in the unfiltered solar radiation. Just carry on and live your life.