Saving powah....

[reflux]

Just settled into my new place, and electricity bills are starting to drop on the door mat. Living in a smaller house means it's more difficult to blame unusually high bills on other people and my PC's power consumption has been bothering me for a while, so would I save much leccy by downgrading to an E8500 @ overclocked to 4ghz-ish and a Radeon 4870?

At the moment I usually run the X3350 @ 3.5ghz, and the 9800GX2 isn't overclocked.

 

[mitch212k]

GX2 is one of the most power hungry cards there mate so I'd recommend switching it if you wanna reduce power. Also take off all oc's if you really wanna save money. Go for efficiency in PSU etc. so less energy is lost through noise/heat.

 

[tigerstyle]

just game in the dark...

 

[sibeer]

Just don't leave your gaming PC on all the time. If necessary set up a cheap file server either using a Synology NAS (can run your torrents when the PC is off too) or an old system.

The electricity cost savings for the change you are talking about will only start to make all the work and cost of a rebuild worthwhile if the PC is on 24/7. Even then it takes ages to pay itself off.