The Real Cost of a Gaming PC

This isn’t the kind of thing I’d normally report about. This is a gaming website, and while we should all be personally invested and informed about our energy crisis and the environment, it’s not what I’m paid to write so I don’t do it. That said, this is one of those rare instances where the two intersect, so I feel obligated as a gentleman to draw your attention to it.

As you know, being a hardcore, dedicated PC Gamer is an expensive hobby. Even if you build it yourself, a strong gaming PC can cost thousands of dollars in parts, monitors, and accessories, and that doesn’t even include the price of the games. It has to be carefully maintained and dusted regularly, and one careless slip-up when putting it together can destroy the whole system. But did you know there’s a secondary, hidden cost to PC gaming?

Apparently, high-end gaming PCs take up so much electricity that their yearly intake is approximate to three refrigerators. That’s from a recent report from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which states that high-end PC users are consuming 1890 kilowatts of power per year (assuming they game for at least seven hours a day) which can add up to anywhere from $200 to $500 year in electric bills (and 1700 pounds of CO2), depending where you live. Between the 2.5% of PC users who operate a high-end gaming PC, that much energy still takes up one-fifth of all energy used by gaming devices combined, and totals up to around 10 billion in electric bills.

The report predicts that in a mere five years, high-end PCs could constitute 10% of the PC user base, and make that number rise to $18 billion.

The good news, however, is that number can be trimmed by nearly 75%. The report suggests much of that is merely excess energy that can be cut without impacting performance with some optimization and know-how. The article suggests gamers can use retrofits, component changes and strategic operational settings to improve their electric bill.

So, if you have a high-end PC, consider working to improve your carbon footprint to make the world better for next generations gamers. Or not. I’m not your mother; I can’t make you do jack.