Low-power gaming solution: low power desktop or gaming laptop?

[zolly]

Just undervolt with Afterburner and have a "low power mode" you can toggle when you want?

Don't know much about undervolting but will look I to it.

 

[netstrider]

I got a gaming laptop and can test the power draw on that but it will be on CS2 since I don't own Cyberpunk or Hogwarts.

 

[nazmo]

i think changing the voltages etc wont do much worth the effort. I have 4 panels for now that my house can idle on during overcast. when its sunny its over 2000w. my pc draws 300w on idle and 550 watts while rendering up to 600w while gaming. 5950x with 3080 RTX, 2 screens, nas drive, router. Its not worth the effort other than going gaming laptop or respeccing to a newer lower tier card that gives reasonable performance at less power consumption. the cost of doing all this will take extremely long to get back instead of just drawing that little bit of extra juice from the grid

 

[leon.davibe]

I'm currently gaming on a Ryzen 3600, RX 5700, 16 gigs of ram, 2 SSDs, and a Gigabyte Aorus B550-m Pro-p motherboard. Generally I play esports titles, but I do enjoy having the option to play some games like Cyberpunk and Hogwarts Legacy from time-to-time. With esports titles my PC uses 150-200 watts, but with more demanding games, that usually doubles.

We've recently gotten solar and I was wondering if there's a way to enjoy the same level of gaming experience (or better) while consuming less power, as if I go for a few hours with Cyberpunk or another high end game, that can drain our battery quite a bit at night.

So I was thinking of either specc'ing an energy efficient desktop machine, or looking at a gaming laptop, but I wasn't sure what would be the better choice?

Msi afterburner dial down the max power slider

The dip in performance isn't as big as the dip in power usage

Find the sweet spot between power performancethat works for you

Can even have a down clocked profile on the cpu too

A gaming laptop is in some cases the same gpu chip down clocked , not all some generations it is a different chip

But yea not up to date on which are and which isn't

Lowering the resolution will also reduce the load

And naturally if enabling vsync
The gpu will then only use resources to maintain the game at the refresh rate of your monitor and thus use less power if it was rendering higher fps before

 

[PsyWulf]

At the cost of a top-end gaming laptop you'd be better served buying an extra battery - and I do have a high-end gaming laptop

 

[CataclysmZA]

I'm currently gaming on a Ryzen 3600, RX 5700, 16 gigs of ram, 2 SSDs, and a Gigabyte Aorus B550-m Pro-p motherboard. Generally I play esports titles, but I do enjoy having the option to play some games like Cyberpunk and Hogwarts Legacy from time-to-time. With esports titles my PC uses 150-200 watts, but with more demanding games, that usually doubles.

We've recently gotten solar and I was wondering if there's a way to enjoy the same level of gaming experience (or better) while consuming less power, as if I go for a few hours with Cyberpunk or another high end game, that can drain our battery quite a bit at night.

So I was thinking of either specc'ing an energy efficient desktop machine, or looking at a gaming laptop, but I wasn't sure what would be the better choice?

Firstly, make sure you have installed and updated your chipset drivers for your motherboard. Those install custom power plans that you can switch to in Windows. Ryzen Balanced is recommended. You also need Radeon Software Adrenaline installed and updated.

You can use Radeon Chill to do most of the tuning for the GPU, which fiddles with frame pacing as a replacement for dynamic V-Sync across DX11 and DX12 games (DX9 and Vulkan titles sometimes respect this, but YMMV). You can enable Radeon Chill on a per-game basis, as well as Anti-Lag: https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh3-033. Radeon Boost is something you can play around with, but you get better results using FSR quality mode in games that support it.

You can also use Radeon Software to also reduce GPU clocks and power levels to drop things further by adjusting sliders in the Performance > Tuning menu. The easiest option there is to enable Power Tuning by clicking the slider, and then dropping the power level to the point where you're comfortable with the FPS delivered (90-95% power net you the most gains). This setting can be changed while something like Unigine Heaven is running, or a game in windowed mode, to see changes in real-time. You can save that low power mode as a profile that you switch to on the fly with a hotkey.

GPU undervolting is optional, and for the RX 5700 there are decent gains to be had, but you'll need to spend more time dialing it in for stability. There is an auto-undervolt algorithm that tries to do it for you, but it will give you conservative reductions that may not be stable in all games.

On a per-game basis you can also opt to lock your framerate with third-party tools, but Radeon Chill is a better tool for that, especially for games that are more dynamic where you'd like to go beyond 60fps.

As for the CPU, your motherboard BIOS should have an option to drop the CPU power plan to 45W. You have to reboot for this to take effect, but that's another option to play with to see how it affects performance in the games you play.

 

[Lupus]

I travel extensively for work and usually wield a high spec gaming laptop (ROG/Alienware). I use a lot of VMware in my work which justifies a high end machine (SSD and plenty of RAM). The happy outcome is it becomes a justifiable business expense However, I have run into a snag... power consumption. Airplane power supplies trip at 50w. This means that on those long journeys, I get 2-4 hrs of usage (Word. Excel, Outlook, possibly some offline Netflix) and then nothing. No charging on the plane and inadequate time between connections to catch up. In the modern era, extra batteries are not popular and I almost had one confiscated in S America (expensive). So, I am looking for guidance on my next lightweight laptop - SSD, 16+ GB RAM, good graphics (for games like wow), 5G WIFI, USB 3.1, low power supply (less than 50w). Does such a beast exist? Thanks for your help

For playing on the go and won't trip

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Better then most gaming laptops at this price range.
This power bank if you need to run on battery for another hour or 2

WINX GO Ultra 20000mAh 100W Power Bank

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Cause at full tilt on the Ally you'll only get about an hour, at 10w you can push it to 4, at 15w just passed 3.

UGreen USBC-50209 5-in-1 USB-C Docking Station with USBC/USB3/HDMI + 100W PD (Grey)

UGreen USBC 5in1 docking station lets you easily connect your laptop to an external display, monitor, projector with max support resolution of 4K@30Hz, fully compatible with 2K and 1080P resolution. <br><br><br>-Compact size <br>-Aluminium case <br>-HDMI resolution up to 4K@30Hz <br>-Support...

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This for a dock