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
Although I too support sustainable and renewable energy sources, even though they usually cost more. Well, in the long run the TCO is less but few people care to do the math, and many can't afford the initial investment anyway. Not many countries support financially such private investments.
Also, heat pumps deplete the soil's 'thermal capacity' for 10 to 15 years.By the people, for the people! [Eagle!]
the trick is to get them to pay the early adopters' tax, rich people can have their uses. :D
what?
the biggest barrier to its efficiency is how much moisture there is in the soil, so watering our trees more, the rain etc… and frost have more to do with it than anything.
Keep pressure on the loop to keep it expanded against soil compaction and expansion, keep the loop full and the only issue is pump replacement every 10 years or so. But they make additives for that so they last longer and the pressure helps prevent cavitation damage (it’s what killed the last 2). Pumps are relatively cheap, and even at -15F loop temp it still pulls almost 40K BTUs of heat from it for less than it costs to run a normal AC unit.
Solar for it is stupid expensive since I need at least 2 phase and 60 amps if the boost heat is needed.
I'm the true energy efficient user here.
Although it is a problem if you only use it for a one-way heat transfer i.e., only heating or only cooling. I haven't read decent papers on how severe the depletion is with mixed cycles.
In my part of the world, all the states electricity is generated via hydro, so none of this man made climate change alarmism is relevant here.
Besides that, it's winter down here in Australia & a PC gaming system with "significant" electricity consumption is a bonus as one does not need to turn on heating in the room! :D
Again the outcome may have been the same, but yes or no with a little supporting text would have sufficed.
1. They need more elaborate cooling, which increases cost and may not fit in some small case
2. You need to get a high airflow case, which most older casing won't cut it, unless you don't mind it becoming an oven
3. You need a good quality high power PSU, again, additional cost and heat
4. Air conditioning becomes a must when gaming or loading the system, unless you live in a cold country. As it stands, my current rig with a RTX 3080 is capable of heating up my room quite a fair bit even after a short gaming session. I've recorded 1 degree Celsius increase in room temp in a span of around 30 mins. 1 degree may not sound a lot, but you can surely feel it when the ambient temp is high. Even with the A/C on, I've observed room temp creeping up slowly.
I feel chip companies have gone over their head releasing products just for the sake of performance crown, that they forgotten about end user experience. It is nice to have a bump in performance, but it should not have a drastic draw back. To me, its clear that the cost is great than the benefit itself for most people, other than hardware enthusiasts.
even given the context of some of the "studies" which are tantamount to "models", this seems to some it up
"Thus, the heat pump impact on its environment becomes negligible as soon as we move
away from more than a few meters of the collector probe"
and since every state in the US offers rebates for the installation of geo heat pumps because of effeciency , and the US regulates the HVAC industry as much as any other nation , I don't think this possible phenomenon is something to be concerned about.
I am unaware of current generation systems that don't have dual purpose, heating and cooling. If they are made its a stupid investment unless you drill deep enough to pickup actual geothermal heat, and those systems are usually oversized fields of loops to accommodate their continued heat output. In 10 years if the ground is too cold to provide enough heat the system was undersized for the application and adding a second loop would solve the problem.
I have had to learn about these systems as trying to get anyone to work on mine has been like pulling teeth with the housing boom, and lazy installers that just want to sell you a propane furnace, or want to mark up the prices by 200 percent.
Personally I think it's an effort by all players involved to push their hardware as hard as they can, trying to eke out those last few percent at the cost of absurd power draw and cooling requirements. That said, anyone can run Intel or AMD processors at "stock" without any boosting and have a much more efficient, but less impressive chip. Even the 12900k, an 8+8 core chip, is only a 125w part... at the base frequency of 3.2GHz. Push it to the max and suddenly the power envelope doubles. But everyone wants faster hardware, so...
The decline in Buying Power is the result of our corrupted financial system. :cool: It's a potpourri of thuggery, the abolition of the Gold Standard, Wallstreet gambling, debt money system, which leads to a huge concentration of wealth in just a few hands. Wealth that is used to corrupt the system even more & buy assets and (solid) capital just to make even more profit from the non wealthy. Their system only works because most don't understand How Money Works (and it's designed that way for exactly that reason).F1 regulations are in place to get an even playing field & to drive inventions for more efficency, from which the average consumer more or less will also benefit in their products.
Which is exactly what our regulators should do. Set a Efficenty Baseline for GPU's/CPU's. That way you will force these companies to build efficent products.
It worked wonderful for lights, cars, vacuum cleaners, (heat pump) dryer, stand by power reduction, etc. They totally could if they have to. ;)
220W is low compared to what high end CPUs draw nowadays :fear:
Power consumption increases as users demand unlimited performance. If users seek balance, PCs continue to get smaller, lighter, quieter, and more powerful with time.
Also, if companies and governments really cared for the environment, they would look at experiments of 4-day work weeks around the world, and tried to implement it, instead of undermining it as much as possible. Fewer working days a week (even with the same working hours per week) doesn't only mean better work-life balance, but also less commuting and less fuel consumption and pollution.Exactly! It's all hypocritical propaganda BS. Do what you feel is right, not what you are told to do.
Most rich people are very dumb.