[joncrane]

>If my PSU's 12V rail can deliver 250W, and my cooler can easily displace 250W, why not let my processor consume that much?

1) Because electricity costs money 2) In the summer, your AC also has to get rid of that heat from your conditioned space, using even MORE electricity.

[leetcrew]

> 1) Because electricity costs money

not to an extent that really matters to a home user. let's say you actually let your cpu draw 250W 24/7. average US consumer electricity rate is ~$0.13/kWh. that would add ~$23 to your monthly electricity bill. certainly a lot for a single component, but not likely to matter to the sort of person who would buy a high end cpu in the first place. if you could get the same performance using 100W, you would only save about $14 each month. and of course most people don't max out their cpu 24/7, so the actual savings would be even less.

[SV_BubbleTime]

> add ~$23 to your monthly electricity bill.

Household of three, my electric bill is $50-75mo. So… that seems like a huge jump as percentage.

Plus I don’t HAVE to be a hypocrite. If I say I care about climate, pollution, energy, I can chose to run a more efficient processor like a Ryzen or an M1.

[heydabop]

> So… that seems like a huge jump as percentage.

Their estimate would require stress testing it every second of every day. Even if you game 4 hours every day (which would be a lot imo if you have a 9-5 job), you're looking at peak usage of 150-200W (most games won't utilize 20 threads), which using OPs costs numbers comes out to $3/month.

Fwiw I pay extra to get my electricity from wind and ride my bike ~25 miles round trip anytime I commute to work or the gym, which alone saves me over $3 and prevents ~20 lbs of CO2 per trip.

But it's not like what we do on an individual level really matters anyway. :/ The idea of a "carbon footprint" was BPs clever way of shifting climate responsibility from corporations to the consumers. I at least hope every little bit we do does help.