Features - QOTW: Do you care for energy efficient PC components?

[Animus404]

When I was younger I didn't give a damn about TDP, these days I just don't like the noise and the heat these things kick out. If i build a new rig, or replace any of my current components then how much energy they use will be a consideration.

[krsboss]

Power saving is great and I am always looking to lower my power bill...however everything has it's price and I am more than willing to cough up a few extra bucks if it means I can play games at 60+ FPS on max settings!

I would hardly say that the 680 is "crippled by hippies" however the 480 was too much. Having a decent cooling solution can mitigate any heat and noise caused by hot components...I have watercooled CPU / GPU running at decent overclocks and my temps never get above 70C for cpu and barely brush 50C with my GPU and with high performance fans the whole system is next to silent...

[Sacred]

I'm not bothered how much power it uses as long as it does the job its designed to do.

[MrBozack]

Power saving is a great idea but it depends on the application.

My gaming rig? MOAR POWAH = better!
...but in the home theatre, why not save power if possible?

[heXuser]

The whole tech industry is going towards power efficiency, even the governments are pushing for it. Some countries are banning chips/products outright using excessive power or power limits have been set. The tech world is growing fast and in a couple of years, we are going to have major problems if this power usage isn’t addressed now…

electric bills in the UK are extortion and everything i buy, power usage is the 1st thing i look at

[iamlorro]

I don't play/use anything on my pc that requires huge energy consumption, and with energy prices set to rise, green is the way for me.

That said, the price premium for extra efficient PSU's (platinum) meant that I was priced out of the market!

[=assassin=]

I'd much rather have something efficient than something that requires a small nuclear reactor to power it. As others have stated, more power consumed means more heat and thus more noise too. If things get really ridiculous, you;re looking at huge electricty bills too. To throw caution to the wind and go mad is what I thought the dual-gpu cards were for, so if that isn't good enough for Mr Big-Bucks-Spender, then I really don't know what would please them, short of having a mini black hole to power their pc.

[aidanjt]

I care more about performance per watt. I hate needlessly wasting energy. Certainly my wallet does, as does the atmosphere.

[ET3D]

I prefer energy efficient, but other things will trump it. For example I upgraded my Phenom II X3 to a high power X6 because it was an easy upgrade and a good deal. Had to buy my first aftermarket cooler because the stock one made tons of noise. A more energy efficient choice would have been Sandy Bridge, but that would have cost more and been more of a hassle. But I don't overclock and I undervolt my CPU and GPU.

[Devastater6194]

What the person needs to realise then is that considering the GTX 680 is actually the top mid range card replacing the 560Ti which had a 25W lower TDP. So they haven't reduced the efficiency as much as everyone thinks.
Personally an increase in TDP as long as the increase in performance justifies it.

[SteadfastJohn]

I'm sick of my current PC overheating the room not to mention the noise it makes even when not doing much. I really must nail down the spec. for my planned new build and get it bought and built! If this means more energy efficient PC components it will just be as a by-product of satisfying my top requirements for a cool and quiet environment

[crossy]

I dont drive the most eco-friendly car possible, but i think if you took a snapshot of the cars in our street every 5 years over the past 30 years to today I have no doubt you'd see a dramatic improvement overall.

There hasn't really been the driver for eco friendliness globally. It's telling that I was watching a US-based car programme recently and they were commenting that the vehicle they were looking at "gets the almost unheard of gas mileage of 40/gallon - great now that gas prices keep increasing". That said, my Lancia of 15 years ago got 24mpg, the Skoda I'm just about to hop into gets 60mpg+ (and yes, it's also petrol v's diesel). VW's talking about 150-200mpg being achievable in a showroom car in 5-10 years - which I'm going to argue is light years away from where we were even five years ago.

Similarly, there hasn't really been a driver for power-efficient computer components until relatively recently, but now I'm seeing a LOT of "column inches" being dedicated to the way that server manufacturers are reducing power and cooling requirements. In which case that MUST surely have a knock-on effect into desktops.

Still think the IBM Power processors get my admiration - for the way that the chips themselves can power down unused parts of themselves, and the way that the servers can power down unused processor cores to cut power consumption. I'd love a full implementation of that tech in a cpu and gpu - maybe even an Intel respin of the Tegra3 design with an extra ULV-style core that's used in place of the main cores when the processor is idling.

[chates]

I tend to look for a good balance, energy efficiency is great as long as it does the job!

[will101]

Definitely bank per buck, bang per watt and only as much bang as is required!

Speaking of which, when did the format change for GPU reviews? The old way allowed for much better comparisons between competing cards.

Being global corporations, microchip design companies will have overall energy/carbon consumption reduction targets imposed by governing or international regulatory bodies. This will surely apply to their products as well. Unless producing energy becomes cheaper in environmental cost, then NOT trying to reduce the energy efficiency of components used in some of the world's billion and a half (ish) desktop PCs can be nothing but irresponsible.

Tree-hugger? No, just taking a wider view.

[scaryjim]

... I was watching a US-based car programme recently and they were commenting that the vehicle they were looking at "gets the almost unheard of gas mileage of 40/gallon ... " ...

Don't forget that US gallons are smaller than UK gallons 40mpg in the US equates to 50mpg in the UK. I think in the first world there's definitely a consumer move towards more efficient products, but the problem is consumer power usage in the first world isn't the big problem. Industrial power usage and inefficiency in developing economies are bigger problems, so whether we save a couple of hundred watts running our computers is a little irrelevant...

[Ciber]

The thing for me is the noise. I CBA with having leaky water pipes in my PC to make it all quiet either. I've had noisy high end cards in the past such as the X1900XTX and it was quite distracting the noise when I started up a game such as oblivion. It's not great when you can't hear some game sounds because of your graphics card! So I was very glad to put in a quiet GTX260 instead. Slightly disappointed that my GTX570 is a little noisier than that even if it does let me turn up a few graphics settings. Power use and environment is a concern but one I don't think about that much really. Turning games/my PC off when not in use is the major way of saving power.

The main way I save on the juice my PC uses is to use a tablet which is so tree hugging it hardly needs plugging in!