So, first of all; this isn’t about politics, nor do I wish to spiral into it. It doesn’t affect everyone, but the people whom it does, high prices are just reality.
I’m curious though, have you taken any actions/precautions? With electricity following gas prices I’m seeing roughly a 10-20x x base price increase at the moment.
My PC eats around 100w idle, 200-250w easy while working in an active viewport; scaling to inf when running a game . It was actually one of the reasons I bought a Mac Mini m1 about a year ago. That was before the hellish prices we endure at present time.
The mini usually hovers around 8-10w most of the time. 17ish or so pushed. Also did a test today, checking watt usage on my IPad Pro,11 inch… 2-3w doing light work (YouTube, typing etc) - less than the led light on my nightstand (3,4w). It’s kinda bonkers that, given finite energy, I could used my PC for 1 hour, or my IPad for 100h. Especially considering the Ipad also house the screen.
I realise you can’t develop games on an Ipad or your phone, but do you find yourself reaching for a lighter device when brute force isn’t needed? Or yolo #howcares?
I have done no changes. There’s no real point: I was already as efficient as I could be without it descending into stupidity. So any further actions I do are simply saving money elsewhere. I am already poor, so I already did what I could.
If I run out of cash, so be it. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Also I can’t afford any of the new (or even 30xx) GPUs or anything like that, so I’m probably saving a lot of money right there! Same for consoles, can’t afford anything since PS4 classic.
My car’s insurance costs more than the actual car (and it has moss on it, hehe).
Now consider the time you spend on your mac mini vs desktop working with Unity, to do the same thing.
You need consider proficiency. Smaller screen, means less workspace, means you need flip more often between aps. Means spending tons of time on adjusting work space etc. Unity is not just Unity, but involves often many external tools. C# coding is one of many to bring.
Loading and reloading time. Lower power usage often means, your pc spends more time doing the same thing, in comparison to what would do more capable hardware.
Considerations on limitation on what you can do, when working on lower power hardware.
In the end you maybe save few Watts, for the cost of the time.
Plus, you spending money on low power hardware, which possibly would compansate your few years of work on desktop. That is, cost of power you need to spend anyway + cost of the hardware.
I obviously do not take into consideration aspects like mobility, nor space limitations, since that wasn’t the part of OP discussion.
Obvious savings can be, by working in a day, when lights are not needed. Unless having variable power rate cost.
Absolutely, its just that a large portion of time (mine at least) is often spend doing low performance tasks on high powered machines - e.g. like writing forum posts .
I wouldn’t spin up Unreal on the mini when I have hardware much more in line with its requirements, just to save power; that would be silly. That said, sometimes there’s a silver lining. I actually prefer doing my current URP project on the Mini, and dread the slow recompile times and constant “hold on” messages on the PC. Photoshop also runs way better etc., So sometimes its a win win.
In general, I just tend to scale down whenever I can. Like Xjjon, turning off the extra screen when not needed. Don’t need a high powered GPU? Mini. Reading, writing doing whatever, IPad.
I know there’s a hardware cost to these items, and their energy consumption was never the main reason for purchase. But I would definitely take it into consideration these days.
My air-conditioner uses more electricity than the 3 computers, 4 monitors and 2 T.V’s I have running all the time.
I’m lucky though, I live in a province in Canada where power is quite cheap and the bonus is that we emit zero co2. The hydro company is only allowed to raise the price when it is justified and gas has no effect on that.
I did switch over to have all LED lighting and that’s about it. Next summer I will upgrade my AC to a much more efficient system because window units are extremely inefficient.
Your PC likely eats as much as a bunch of Incandescent lightbulbs.
The BIG power consumers would be:
Microwave
Dishwasher
Washing mashine
Electric Heaters
Air conditioner
and maybe your freezer.
Those are devices that can eat up to 2…4 kW when operating.
So if you’re looking to cut power costs, you’d need to start with heavy consumers. Alternatively, you could go with “profile before optimizing” approach and look for smart outlets that let you measure power consumption, and see which one needs to be cut.
On the topic of freezers, this is why I plan to get a chest freezer once I have the floor space. Aside from the storage issue it would solve, they’re also monumentally more efficient than standing or fridge-built units. Apparently some can also be modified to work as refrigerators for similar efficiency gains, but I haven’t looked into that much.
Lately, all of my living expenses have increased. Electricity costs may have gone up more percentage-wise, but it’s such a small chunk of my overall picture. If I had to worry about money, I’d probably look to other places to cut back first.
Inflation’s 21%+, food’s about 30% more expensive across the board with up to +50% for certain items, electricity is about to be double the cost I had last year.
One thing I could do was to go to a competing internet provider which offered the same speed for 10 EUR/month less. Maybe I should start gaming exclusively on Steam Deck which is more energy efficient than my i9/3070ti desktop. And I’ll probably raise my rates to adjust for inflation at the very least.
It’s gotten cold enough that I don’t need to run the AC anymore, I don’t have electric heaters, don’t have a microwave, don’t have a dishwasher. Can’t really not run the washing machine. I’ll look into getting more energy efficient light bulbs at least. I do have a toaster oven I like to cook with often, that’s gonna have to stop I guess. Even though gass is also getting more expensive, it’s not yet as expensive as using electricity for cooking.
EDIT: Didn’t know smart plugs existed, gonna get on that.
In my case it’d only cut a few cents off, but anywhere I move to I’d have to get a new freezer and fridge anyway and chest based options are cheaper on that front as well.
Putting a fan in your oven to move the air around will make it more efficient by reducing cooking time. This is how air fryers work, though I would never buy one of those fire hazards.
Cleaning out your dryer duct regularly decreases drying time.
Cleaning your air ducts if you have a forced air furnace will increase efficiency as well as replacing the filter regularly. Added bonus of having better air quality as well.
Installing proper ventilation in your roof will help as well.
All of this will save you more electricity than turning off your computer.
Noted, the one I’m looking at now is rated for 2.3k which would be good for my PC and some lighter load outlets. I’ll need to look up what my washing machine consumes.
Assuming you are not using some sort of industrial monstrosity to wash your clothes, it should be in ballpark of 2kW, but you definitely need to raincheck that.
I mow my lawn with a push mower. Probably huff out more CO2 that way than with a gas mower but the noise is atrocious. Dry my clothes at night when it is cool so that heats the back end of the house as it has no external air outlet. Will be putting a rocket mass heater in the fireplace so heat is used properly from firewood as it uses 1/6th the wood a wood burning stove would and probably 1/10th of the wood a fireplace does. Lights are mostly LEDs except where incandescents are needed due to better spectrum light for art or reading.
But… I can do all this and glance towards downtown and see these huge monstrosities nicknamed skyscrapers that sit there 24/7 even unoccupied or occupied by very few chugging away with their heating and AC, the hall and exterior lights cranked. They produce no wealth in their offices for the most part. One day of their systems energy consumption is probably well beyond what I could consume in a year with my guitars and speakers, lights, oven and heat exchanger cranked 24/7. They are the dens of the transactional insertionalists who shuffle paper to make “money” which is mistaken as wealth. These rent seekers who produce nothing of true value to life are the clownage that insist I must curtail what few activities I do that actually consume or transform energy. Since they are not doing the necessary in their domains I can only assume their strident calls to action are a form of their will to power and further transactional insertionalism that folks are seeing in their energy bills…and homey don’t play that game.
Yikes, that’s much bigger than the increases we’re seeing here, which I already thought were big!
We’re switching to solar power here, which will theoretically make all of those things, and our PCs, almost “free” to run during the day, which is when they’re mostly used.
When I picked my last set of upgrade components the power draw figures were a significant part of my choice. From memory, performance per watt had gone up across the board, but bigger GPUs in particular were still able to single-handedly draw more than my entire previous PC. I think it’d be cool (no pun intended) if Apple’s M1 sets a trend towards lower power stuff. As @Ng0ns says, most of the time even a powerful machine is doing low-power stuff, so I’m really into the idea of hardware that can scale up and down as needed, and for most computing tasks you only need a fraction of what even a modest modern machine has on offer.
I didn’t really do this stuff as “precautions” against power price increases, as most of it was in place before that became a concern. I just don’t like wasting stuff.
Some of those are bigger consumers when they’re on, but my PC is on 8+ hours a day, where those are on for a few minutes at a time or once or twice a week. Of course heating and AC are required more in some parts of the world than they are here.
Yeah, we have that here too. At my old job I pointed out that the AC and banks of lights were going on for weeks of the year when nobody was present in certain buildings, and the only reason they did anything about it was to shut me up. They didn’t seem to care about the resource waste or the money it cost them. A handful of businesses could probably shelter and feed the city’s homeless population with what they’d save by tidying that up.
. It was actually one of the reasons I bought a Mac Mini m1 about a year ago. That was before the hellish prices we endure at present time.