Computational power is something that we take for granted these days, however with the colossal performance figures modern technology can deliver comes a greater demand for power and of course a greater price, which can become hard to justify when facing the soaring prices of electricity during a global energy crisis.
Drawing 1000W of power or even more has become a reality for those using very powerful computers, with Nvidia’s newly unveiled RTX 4090 graphics card drawing up to 450W on its own, as reported by Tech Power Up.
If you were to run a high-end system using components like this, the price to simply operate it has the potential to be astronomical. To run a PC for a week at 1000W at Electric Ireland’s increased rate to compensate for the energy crisis being introduced in October, roughly 43c per kWh including VAT for two hours every weekday and five hours at the weekend would come out to about 865c. Compared to the previous rate of approximately 31c per kWh before the 27% increase being introduced in October that would cost 626c for the same hours of use. Repeating this every week for a year at the increased rate, will set you back a total of €450, compared to roughly €328.50 at the rate prior to the increase.
Although it may be unrealistic to have a high-performance computer using this much power for the duration of its run time, demanding software like the latest video games aren’t going to become any easier to run and neither will the hardware essential to play them. We now face a situation where a resource much of the developed world exploits without second thought has come under threat and although the war between Russia and Ukraine that instigated the energy crisis may eventually come to an end, the fallout of the war could see the issue prevailing and other causes such as the unsustainable exploitation of non-renewable resources will only worsen over time. The increase to our electricity bill is a stark reminder that the things we take for granted such as the example of a computer to play games come at a price and can be heavily influenced by politics and conflicts in a way easy to forget from our privileged view.