Hey everyone, today I’m going to detail a few ways in which you can keep your PC power consumption down over winter whilst the bills are about to get crazy. Hopefully this mini-guide will be able to help you save a few pounds so you can game a little longer guilt free!
First off you should head over and download MSI afterburner if you don’t already have it. In the afterburner screen you have 3 sections, the left hand section which is voltage, middle which is card choice and right hand side with fans and power. First off, if you have a big fan setup and it’s winter, you might not need all those fans so we need to adjust your fan curve. If you fans are running at 15w each (I have 9) then you can limit the speed and power required until your PC temps raise. You can be outputting as much as 80% less wattage for most of the time, almost like a stop start engine.
Next, you can power limit your GPU and undervolt it slightly, if you have a big GPU this can really keep the wattage down without sacrificing a lot of FPS. With my 3080 12GB, I power limit to 70% keeping my wattage over 120w lower, and I undervolt dropping a further 20w, if you have a 12 hour gaming session just imagine the savings and you lose 10fps max, nothing your eyes would notice.
You can also undervolt your CPU, but I wouldn’t recommend this, BSOD is easily achieved with this.
There are other methods that include going into your BIOS but I’m going to leave those out as they can potentially cause throttling issues with your PC for a very minor gain in power.
If you do have a little bit of spare cash and you want to save money long term, you can create a DIY solar panel system on your roof covering around 400W for about £1,000, you can run your monitors, laptops and what not off this all day long for free or your PC for a few hours if you’re on a full charge and the sun isn’t out, over the course of the year you can probably save around £500 in electric.
Conclusion
In conclusion these are just a few small ways that you can reduce that energy bill with your PC, taking the majority of fan usage away and GPU power could save you up to 200w permanently, which if you game daily could be up to £300 per year saved on electric, very handy with the upcoming power increments!