We live in a time when there is nothing to lose; the electricity price it continues to increase, and now that hourly billing has been introduced in Europe where electricity costs more than double what it cost at peak times, it is worth knowing which PC components are consuming the most to be able to act accordingly.
The graphics card and the processor, the hardware that consumes the most
At this point, we all know that the CPU and GPU are the two components that consume the greatest power of all PC hardware, and that is because the manufacturers are already giving us TDP values which, although they do not not indicate the electricity consumption as such, Yes, they are used as a guide because the consumption generally gives quite similar values.
In this way, a modern midrange processor typically has a consumption of up to 95 watts at full load, although at idle its consumption may be around 20 watts, while a high-end processor may have consumption peaks of 150 watts or more. depending on whether it was overclocked.
As for the graphics card, a low-end GPU that doesn’t even need extra power from the power supply can draw up to 75 watts, although high-end models can squeeze that number up to over 400. watts. with Overclock. The consumption of the graphics card depends a lot on the model, because while it is true that at rest its consumption is generally around 40 watts more or less whatever GPU you use, GPUs for gaming can have a consumption under maximum load which goes from 90 to almost 400 watts that we have already mentioned before.
Of which there is no doubt that the graphics card and the processor are the hardware components that consume the most, and generally in that order.
Which hardware components have the highest consumption?
Dejando de lado the CPU y GPU que como ya hemos mencionado son los elementos de hardware que mayor consumo tienen, y el cual varía mucho entre modelos, el resto de componentes del PC también consumen energía y, en este caso, suele tener una variación bastante smaller.
Next to the CPU and GPU, the next most power-hungry component is the base plate, the consumption of which can go from 25 to 100 watts in high-end models; Keep in mind that the motherboard already supplies the PCI-Express sockets (up to 75 watts) even if it does so bypass (this means that it is only an intermediary, since what really consumes, it’s the GPU connected to the socket), but it is also responsible for powering the USB ports, the chip (which is still a kind of processor), the integrated sound card, the integrated network card, etc. In addition, the VRMs that filter and power the CPU and RAM memory also have some consumption which is lost in the form of heat.
If your PC still uses optical drives, be aware that these are the next components of the consumer classification as a DVD player can consume up to 15 watts in reading, and even reach 30 watts consumption when burning a DVD. Did you know this information?
The next hardware component with the highest consumption is the mechanical hard drives, because although at rest they consume barely 0.7 watts, when at maximum load their consumption can reach 9 watts, 12 watts if the hard drive is high performance (10,000 rpm or more). The hard drive is followed by RAM memory, which in the case of DDR4 can consume between 2 and 5.5 watts depending on speed and voltage, and keep in mind that we are talking about consumption per module, so if you have 4 modules installed, you need to multiply their consumption by 4. Oddly, 4 high performance and overclocked RAM modules can get consume more than 20 watts.
After these elements, we have the Fans, which depending on size, speed and others, can consume between 1 and up to 6 watts on average; As with RAM, this figure should be multiplied by the number of fans you have on your PC.
Finally, the hardware component that consumes the least is the SSD, the consumption of which varies from 0.6W idle up to 3.5W full loadAs long as it is not an SSD with a PCI-Express connection, their consumption can be increased.
Obviously, there are other less common components in the PC which also have a certain power consumption, such as a card reader (from 0.5 to 2 watts), a RAID controller (from 5 to 15W), a dedicated sound card (from 5 to 45 watts). ) or a PCIe WiFi card (up to 10 watts), but as we said, these are less common and not everyone has one on their PC.
PC peripherals also have some consumption
Obviously, so far we have only dealt with the internal hardware of the PC, but it is impossible to use a PC without its peripherals such as the mouse, the keyboard and of course the monitor, so in short the consumption of all the equipment is much higher.
Usually, USB devices have a fairly low power consumption; for example, a full-size mechanical keyboard with LED lighting on all keys works at 0.9 amps and a voltage of 5 V, which gives us a consumption of 4.5 watts; with the lighting off, this same keyboard operates at 0.7A and 4.9V, so its consumption drops to 3.43W. For its part, a gaming mouse with RGB lighting generally has a fairly similar consumption, of the order of 3-4 watts.
What consumes PC peripherals the most is undoubtedly the monitor, and here again we enter a field in which consumption differs greatly depending on the model, size and type of matrix used. For example, a Dell UltraSharp U3415W monitor with a 34 inch LED-IPS array (it is ultra wide) has a typical consumption of 40 watts, but a 24 inch Full HD monitor might only consume 30 watts while a 32-inch 240Hz monitor can consume up to 100 watts.
