Hexus.net relayed a report from Berkeley Lab, in which it is estimated that the world's gaming PCs will be responsible for draining the power from 50 standard 500-megawatt power plants by 2020. However, even now in 2015, it would be possible for the average power consumption of gaming PCs to fall by 75 per cent "by changing some settings and swapping out some components, while also improving reliability and performance," according to the research. Some of the figures are quite staggering.
Gaming PCs account for 2.5 per cent of global PCs but use 20 per cent of the energy used by all PCs. A typical gaming computer uses 6x the amount energy of a typical PC in a year or 10x the amount used by a games console. With PC gaming in the ascendancy the 75 TWh of electricity used by gaming PCs globally in 2012 is expected to hit 150 TWh by 2020 unless such PCs can be designed to use less power. To see what could be done to reduce the power used by gaming PCs, without impacting on the all-important performance the researchers built five gaming PCs with varying component selections. It was found that it was possible to "achieve a 50 percent reduction in energy use while performance remained essentially unchanged."
Overclockers are known for their desire to push components to their maximum performance while keeping within a certain temperature envelope determined by the cooling used. This knowledge can be used to help Gaming PC builders and owners to optimize the energy usage for personal use.