Running your gaming rig for three hours a day at 500W (1500 Wh) would therefore be the equivalent of driving 8km (5 miles) in a modern electric car. Still ok comparatively.
Very few people have computers capable of cooling a constant 500W.
While this is true, I don't agree with your statement about cooling.
It's very possible to have sustained 500W+ draw while playing a modern game on a 3080/3090. Sometimes you might play games for a few hours with a fairly consistent 500/600W power draw - honestly I think it's cheap and easy to cool this kind of load. A few 140mm fans and a mid-level CPU cooler should be enough.
Yeah... Nearly nobody has a few 140mm fans on their computers. Most people won't have any fan lager than 120mm. Powerful computers usually have a pair of them. Maybe 3 if you count the PSU.
Plenty of people going on ski trips in Europe will run their car at 130kph for hours.
My commute to and from the office alone would be about 90 minutes at that speed.
Have you been to the US? I regularly drive 4+ hours at 125kmh+ anytime I'm trying to get to the Sierra, or Utah or Arizona, which is often.
In fact, almost every weekend I drive at least 3 hours round trip, half freeway half mountain roads, if I go to the closest good climbing. 5+ if I go to my preferred locale. The distances people regularly cover are enormous.
Energy is a proxy for accomplishment and development. Humanity's #1 goal should be to maximize energy use per capita while minimizing energy use per activity, such that every human is doing as many desirable activities as possible.
Gaming at 1kW for an hour costs 30 cents or less in electricity. As others have mentioned indirectly, going for a Sunday drive to see the changing leaves uses more energy. A space heater uses more power.
Maybe this is what feels off?
A kilowatt feels like too much for a videogame. This isn't a bitcoin mining thing, is it?
On the other hand, taking heat into account just makes matters worse in the summer, and I haven't known a gamer who takes half the year off.
The heat pump can be effectively more than 100% efficient, but that's because it's moving heat.
Surely all the energy you put into any machine is eventually going to turn into heat? Hmm - perhaps there are heaters that generate heat mechanically, and the resulting losses are sonic.
Unless energy prices rise, it's literally pennies.
Why should I walk to our friends' house down the road? After all, I drive to work, so why not drive there too?
Why should I use less plastic? After all, I already use some plastic, so why not use more?
Why should I eat less meat? After all, I already eat some meat, why eat less?
It doesn't matter it's genshin impact or animal crossing but it definitely starts to matter when your gaming costs almost two orders of magnitude up in power from the typical case.
I suppose:
1. You often have to pre-heat the oven, so during that time, you are not cooking food
2. The oven is rarely full, so instead of heating food, you are heating the oven
3. The oven remains hot after the food is removed, but you could argue that's low-grade heat, unsuitable for cooking
If my electric oven is just 12% efficient, I'd like to know why (and how I can get one that is more efficient). I understand that microwave ovens are much more efficient (I guess because the heat is generated inside the food). But they're no good for browning food, or baking bread.
I'm still lost on this notion that an electric oven is just 12% efficient. If that's true, then I could patent a device that harvests energy from electric ovens, and make a mint.
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/06/f23/conventi...
TLDR: they measure with a metal block.
Please don't patronise!
My oven, on full power, draws 2KW (at least, that's what the labels on my fuze-box suggest). If only 12% of that energy is used to heat the food, then the oven amounts to a 200W food cooker, combined with an 1800W electric heater (I rounded down to 10% to make the reckoning easier).
I live in a studio flat; my oven is in my living room. How come I can survive without A/C? But I seem to be able to roast and bake without my home warming up.
My microwave is an old cheap one, with a max. power of 700W. Assuming that's 100% efficient, then it should cook food about 3.5 times faster than the inefficient oven, I guess; and it does. So it does seem that the oven is inefficient. But why? Where is the lost energy going?
To roast a chicken to 165f you'll probably set your oven to 400f. And then when it's done, the air and interior of your oven are still very hot. When you microwave food, you can touch the side-walls of your microwave right away and they won't be hot. The only excess heat in a microwave comes from the food steaming and contact with the platter.
How much energy does a golf cart use? Cause those golfers are using a golf-cart for miles when their legs are perfectly acceptable (and golf-carts are illegal in professional play)
If google didn't failed me, a good car mileage is equivalent to around 20kWh per 100 miles. Therefore, a 100 mile drive is loosely equivalent to a day or two gaming with one of these rigs.
This is getting out of control!
Nvidia/AMD: build more efficient GPUs!
This isnt even including fossil fuels, nuclear/fusion, biomass/trash, and hydro.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:Fullneed....
It’s one of the major reasons EV ranges keep increasing the batteries are less expensive.
But burning nearly a kilowatt on a gaming rig feels like a step too far. Sure, the power could be sourced from wind or solar plants, but there’s still a level of excessive conspicuous consumption going on here that doesn’t sit right with me.