PC Components with High Power Draw an Issue for an Overwhelming Majority of Users: Survey

[KainXS]

I care about heat more than power tbh. When I used to repair computers though I saw most common people don't care about heat or power they care about noise because that's all they can recognize.

 

[Valantar]

I agree. No gaming GPU should consume close to 1000w. It's not serving any scientific interests, it's a game-only product.

I would even support the creation of a regulatory law.

I can imagine some silly law along these lines will come soon in the EU, also in light of the latest energy issues, and eventually desktop PC power may be hard-capped close to laptop-level.

What would you propose?

Regulating per-component (or full system) power draws under load would be essentially impossible due to the millions of possible configurations and use cases of PCs. But it would be relatively simple to implement something like a mandatory efficiency and power draw rating that was coupled to some sort of environmental tax/fee to counteract the future public costs of the increased emissions caused. This is done in various ways across a multitude of industries already, after all.

 

[ThrashZone]

Let's face it, many people SAY they care about environment, but how many actually continuously back it up in their daily lives besides maybe a random gesture here and there, usually when they are prompted to remember the environmental factor?

Hi,
Yep closely effected monthly reality overrules Captain Ahab projects.

I voted I do not care.

 

[P4-630]

I voted (multiple times.. ) for "Heat" ... My new i7 12700K does fine, just under 50c while gaming, I'm happy with it.
My 980 pro haven't seen over 50C yet, guess the heatsinks or doing their job well , also for the 970 evo.

 

[Denver]

I can imagine some silly law along these lines will come soon in the EU, also in light of the latest energy issues, and eventually desktop PC power may be hard-capped close to laptop-level.

What would you propose?

Set some limit for manufacturers. "No GPU intended for gaming can consume above 500w" or something like that.

 

[zlobby]

I know right? Something just must be done about these billionaire CEOs and their private jets/yachts/mansions/BFGPU's.

I find it trully hypocritical to skip doing our parts because someone else is. Plus, Planetina's final solution was rather efficient. Just sayin'.

 

[Valantar]

Let's face it, many people SAY they care about environment, but how many actually continuously back it up in their daily lives besides maybe a random gesture here and there, usually when they are prompted to remember the environmental factor?

Given that our society is fundamentally structured in ways that afford and promote massive overconsumption and waste it's extremely unreasonable to blame individuals for not resisting this in their daily lives. Most people have enough to deal with already, and making each little possible action in your day-to-day life into the most environmentally friendly one possible is just not a reasonable standard in any way. Systemic problems need systemic solutions, and individualizing blame for not resisting this is at best a cop-out, and at worst just a hand-wavy way of saying that the problem can't be solved, so we shouldn't care.

Set some limit for manufacturers. "No GPU intended for gaming can consume above 500w" or something like that.

Sadly there's a lot of wiggle room in formulations like that. What's a GPU? What does "intended for gaming" mean? What does "consume above 500W" mean? Average, peak, power spikes? There are few things corporate lawyers are better at than finding creative ways of circumventing regulation, which is why wide-reach, staggered economic penalties are more effective. There's no need to ban GPUs consuming over 500W if that high power consumption triggers a tax making them so expensive nobody buys them.

I find it trully hypocritical to skip doing our parts because someone else is.

To some extent, sure. Depends entirely on circumstances though. It's entirely logical to place the most responsibility where the most harm is done - and the truly wealthy generally vastly outconsume even the moderately wealthy in the same country/area/region/whatever, hence they have a greater responsibility to rectify things. Also, most people do not have significant agency in their day-to-day choices - the only food you can buy is what is available to you at prices you can afford; if the job you need to survive requires you to drive a car (whether through distance, lack of alternative modes of transport in your community, or other reasons) and doesn't pay enough for you to get an electric car, there's little you can do to improve that - etc. Individualizing responsibility for systemic problems is often directly counterproductive, as it leads to disillusionment and exhaustion when people aren't able to fit these concerns into already stressful lives.

 

[_Flare]

I personally am limited by:
(not sorted by priority)
- initial buying cost, wich involves all systemcomponents, from case and fans, coolers, mainboard etc. (i will buy a good but not so capable 80+Gold PSU over a cheapo pseudo-strong PSU)
- compatibility to present system (strength of PSU)
- noise, so i will look for good, quiet components involving airflow etc.
all this takes me to efficient and cost-effective components

BUT i do not point my finger on a person:
- spending more money
- being more tolerant to higher noise
buying more capable and/or more inefficient components, that is upto each individual
... obviously until any law restricts minimum efficiency or maximum PSU power output for hobbyist or privatly used components, if ever

 

[Solid State Brain]

Regulating per-component (or full system) power draws under load would be essentially impossible due to the millions of possible configurations and use cases of PCs. But it would be relatively simple to implement something like a mandatory efficiency and power draw rating that was coupled to some sort of environmental tax/fee to counteract the future public costs of the increased emissions caused. This is done in various ways across a multitude of industries already, after all.

Lawmakers could come up with power limits for end-user desktop PSUs and mandate both new PSUs and motherboards to have tamperproof firmware which continuously monitors power consumption to stay within legal limits.

 

[HD64G]

Many people bought GPUs that drew much power and used them for mining to get back some money from the lot they paid due to the GPU market situation that doubled prices. Me thinks that with the gpu mining going badly this time, the GPUs that draw much will lose sales compared to the previous gen. Most people (>90%) don't want neither need GPUs that consume more than 250W.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

Given that our society is fundamentally structured in ways that afford and promote massive overconsumption and waste it's extremely unreasonable to blame individuals for not resisting this in their daily lives. Most people have enough to deal with already, and making each little possible action in your day-to-day life into the most environmentally friendly one possible is just not a reasonable standard in any way. Systemic problems need systemic solutions, and individualizing blame for not resisting this is at best a cop-out, and at worst just a hand-wavy way of saying that the problem can't be solved, so we shouldn't care.

You missed the point.

It's one thing to not be environmentally conscious, it's another to not be environmentally conscious, while pretending to be so.

Not interested in casting stones for former, but definitely will call out hypocrites doing the latter (I'd almost surely look like a hypocrite myself if I did complain about just the former).

 

[Valantar]

Lawmakers could come up with power limits for end-user desktop PSUs and mandate both new PSUs and motherboards to have tamperproof firmware which continuously monitors power consumption to stay within legal limits.

Theoretically, sure. But that places a pretty significant burden of work onto product makers which will inevitably drive up costs - and if there's one thing we know about "tamperproof firmware" it is that it never, ever is. It also forces the creation of arbitrary lines between overlapping classes of hardware - you can build a mutli-GPU workstation with mostly "consumer" hardware, etc. This would have a lot of knock-on effects that would be very difficult to predict. Would it be devastating? Mostly not at all. But it would be a lot more burdensome than the simple and effective route of graduated financial disincentives.

You missed the point.

It's one thing to not be environmentally conscious, it's another to not be environmentally conscious, while pretending to be so.

Not interested in casting stones for former, but definitely will call out hypocrites doing the latter (I'd almost surely look like a hypocrite myself if I did complain about just the former).

And it's a third thing to judge people's actions without knowing their lives and situations. Are there a lot of self-righteous, somewhat hypocritical asshats in the world? Yep. Does that mean that such a judgement can reasonably be made towards any single person based on only seeing their behaviour in a single situation? Only in a very, very low number of cases. If someone claims to care about the environment and flies a private jet or blasts their AC or heating with the windows open 24/7, then yes, that is hypocritical. But very few cases are as clear-cut as that, and in general, judgements like that are counterproductive at best. Increasing consciousness around the harmful effects of our general, society-wide overconsumption is extremely useful and necessary, but that is not achieved in any meaningful way by calling people out for being hypocritical. Nuance is quite useful.

 

[defaultluser]

Cooling solutions also grew as to accommodate increased power and heat.

You still have to dump it somewhere - not all of us can live in New Zealand

When you're bumping heat by 50%, al just for a tiny 20% performance bump over stock, you realize how pointless this race has become!

And Id rather start with sub-200w stock video card than have to buy all the extra components to cool a 400w beast (single-loop water for video, (OR ELSE tons of added fans,) plus a lovely 1000w PSU to back it up! Some of us actually care about NOISE BEFORE EVERYTHING ELSE ( an its harder work to start with twice the load)!

 

[Hossein Almet]

Reviewers don't really dictate the market; consumers, producers, and regulators do. As a matter of fact, one could argue that what reviewers fixate on itself is dictated by the consumers, what is tested and what is written is what the buyers want to know.


That's the best thing that came out with GPU boost et al, imo, the ability to pick the card's operational power envelope. It's a pity that defaults still favour waste and excess, but at least the ability to configure something is there, and is as simple as moving a slider.

I've been running my 1080 at 50% power for a while now, trying to maximize every bit life while keeping temps reasonable in this 40c-ambient-on-a-good-day hellscape.

One could not refute the fact that reviewers are in effect the cheerleaders of the products they review, most people buy products based on the reviews read, otherwise why they bother read the reviews.

 

[ExcuseMeWtf]

but that is not achieved in any meaningful way by calling people out for being hypocritical

This is in fact demonstrably incorrect.

In this time and age of social media shaming people and "cancelling" them has shown itself to be an effective method of making people reconsider their actions. As the matter of fact, it can absolutely scale up to shaming corporations via boycotting their products/services, if cancelling mob is large enough and profits tank sufficiently. Money talks, you know?

 

[InVasMani]

I present you 4 reasons to not press the red button and 1 reason to push it. So what you gonna do TPU!!?

 

[Steevo]

I really don't care about the power consumption, if people cared at all they would have killed crypto as soon as it was created.

This is in fact demonstrably incorrect.

In this time and age of social media shaming people and "cancelling" them has shown itself to be an effective method of making people reconsider their actions. As the matter of fact, it can absolutely scale up to shaming corporations via boycotting their products/services, if cancelling mob is large enough and profits tank sufficiently. Money talks, you know?

Cancel culture needs canceled, its effective when the people have the correct information, otherwise its merely been abused as a tool to control what people are willing to say out loud. I would rather know what people think and be able to reason with them VS them keeping their secret ideas about the flat earth, or nazi moon bases, or 5G giving them cancer, or whatever dumb ideas they have.

Get woke go broke.

 

[Valantar]

This is in fact demonstrably incorrect.

In this time and age of social media shaming people and "cancelling" them has shown itself to be an effective method of making people reconsider their actions. As the matter of fact, it can absolutely scale up to shaming corporations via boycotting their products/services, if cancelling mob is large enough and profits tank sufficiently. Money talks, you know?

Is cancelling "effective"? Really? Doesn't it mostly lead to people dropping off the map for a little while, then coming back with nothing having changed? There are tons of examples of exactly that happening, at least. Sure, some people have disappeared from public attention quite completely after being cancelled, but that number is extremely low.

As for boycotts: there has been one effective large-scale boycott in the history of the world. One. That was the one organized against the South African apartheid regime. Most of the time these things either have no effect whatsoever, or lead to an increase in lip service/greenwashing among the companies targeted. Actual, real, effective changes from boycotts and similar efforts is quite rare overall. Policy and legislation on the other hand, is effective, which is why corporations spend so much time and money lobbying and astroturfing to counteract or remove policies and laws they don't like.

Calling any individual out for being hypocritical is far more likely to lead to entrenched positions and outright hostility than anything else. Progress needs to be made by being smart first and foremost, and that means both directing attention and effort where it makes an impact, and not starting unnecessary fights. That just leads to polarization and stagnation.

I really don't care about the power consumption, if people cared at all they would have killed crypto as soon as it was created.

Depends who you mean by "people" I guess. People tend to care about both each other and the survival of humanity broadly (though there are obviously tons of exceptions). People in power, which typically also means people with vast personal wealth, very often either do not, or care more about entrenching and increasing their own wealth. And those are the ones who could have killed crypto, if anyone, after all. Your run-of-the-mill environmentally conscious person does not have any effective means of stopping an investment capital "bank" from financing a tech startup that promises to take their money, use it to burn energy, and create more "money" from that.

 

[Solid State Brain]

Theoretically, sure. But that places a pretty significant burden of work onto product makers which will inevitably drive up costs - and if there's one thing we know about "tamperproof firmware" it is that it never, ever is. It also forces the creation of arbitrary lines between overlapping classes of hardware - you can build a mutli-GPU workstation with mostly "consumer" hardware, etc. This would have a lot of knock-on effects that would be very difficult to predict. Would it be devastating? Mostly not at all. But it would be a lot more burdensome than the simple and effective route of graduated financial disincentives.

True, no firmware is truly completely tamperproof, but it would be an added "security" measure on top of other physical limitations. If for example future PSUs are to not be legally allowed to draw more than sustained 150W in total, they could also be designed so that they cannot physically deliver more than 200W without blowing up. Physical limitations for new GPUs may for example include forbidding external PCIe power connectors for consumer-level models, so that they won't be able to draw much more than 75W without damaging the motherboard slot, and so on.

If there is truly an interest in limiting power consumption due to energy or environmental concerns there should not be financial disincentives, but an outright ban on high power draw computer components, unless the end-user can legally justify a need for them, which would be the case for datacenters, servers, and so on. This means that good servers or workstations with consumer-level hardware wouldn't be possible anymore, which hardware manufacturers may even welcome.

I'm not saying I'm looking forward to seeing this scenario, only that I expect lawmakers to be thinking about it, if the right persons will complain enough about the power draw of modern desktop systems.

 

[Jhart1228]

I really don't care about the power consumption, if people cared at all they would have killed crypto as soon as it was created.



Cancel culture needs canceled, its effective when the people have the correct information, otherwise its merely been abused as a tool to control what people are willing to say out loud. I would rather know what people think and be able to reason with them VS them keeping their secret ideas about the flat earth, or nazi moon bases, or 5G giving them cancer, or whatever dumb ideas they have.

Get woke go broke.

Then allow me tell you about "smart meters".

 

[FeelinFroggy]

Heat and noise are very understandable. But the electric bill? For most users, they systems are not running full speed 24/7. Even if the system is running full speed for 8 hours a day is going to be limited to a few power users.

Using the computer idle work uses very little electricity. There are many other appliances at you home that will have a much bigger impact on your electric bill than your gaming rig.

 

[The_Sarge]

Why shouldn't the tech industry be held to the same account as other industries regarding efficiency and their impact on the environment.
Just look at formula 1, same/better performance from smaller engines and more efficient use of technology. I mean you can get a 400bhp 2l 4 cylinder for focus now, where previously that power was reserved for v6/v8 territory.

Why can't there be a power limit imposed on GPUs so they focus on IPC (or whatever the PGU equivalent is) rather than shoving more power hungry cores into an ever increasing die size just because the node has shrunk.
I have a 5950x and a 3090, I didn't buy it blindly, I knew they were power hungry; but that doesn't mean I have no right to desire more power efficient cards in an increasingly expensive world, where the cost of energy and the impact on the environment is out of control.

A 400w+ GPU is simply out of touch with the direction of travel towards a more environmentally sustainable world; doesn't matter how many FPS it gives you.

 

[Assimilator]

"if Moore's law held true" it hasn't for a while despite what managers in the industry keep claiming to prevent their shareholders from getting cold feet, I don't understand why this story is trying to make it seem as if this is a question.

 

[Octavean]

So 11% care about the environment. Hummmm, that was higher then expected.

Mr. Scott, we need more power!

​

 

[AusWolf]

Is the result of the poll going to make it to Intel, AMD and Nvidia in some form? We knew all along that increased power consumption is a problem, but there's nothing to stop these companies right now.