Sky high utility usage

Forum|Forum|11 days ago
April 7, 2026
4 replies
88 views

I have a higher-end PC that guzzles power under load, and am now finding that the owners of the property are panicking about it. And since it’s turning out to expand over a long session, I am now starting to panic by trying to cut myself off of modern computing. I wasted all this money trying to keep up with Premiere’s demands, and now it’s come back to bite me. What to do in this situation?

John T Smith

Community Expert

I have NO idea how much power my PC uses (see hardware list below)

I do know that resting Celsius is MB=25C CPU=27C and exporting MB=27C CPU=47-to-58C
I don't know why the CPU varies from 47-to-58C I just watched the measurements

Intel i9   https://www.newegg.com/intel-core-i9-10900k-core-i9-10th-gen/p/N82E16819118122
Motherboard   https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Prime-Z490-P/dp/B07ZT3F95V/
64Gig Ram   https://www.amazon.com/TEAMGROUP-3200MHz-PC4-25600-Unbuffered-Computer/dp/B086X2FYW9/
GTX 1650   https://www.amazon.com/MSI-GeForce-128-Bit-Graphics-G165D6AIC1/dp/B08GL81369/
       Studio driver version 511.09 Download/Install 01-18-2022
       motherboard automatically turned integrated Intel video off when installed GTX
TEAMGROUP 512Gig SSD for Windows and programs and usual MS Office Documents files
500Gig SSD   Temporary work files and output when creating new video files
1T SSD   Video and sound files from camera and other sources
Tower Case   https://www.amazon.com/Rosewill-Gaming-Computer-THOR-V2-W/dp/B005XUAAP2
CPU Cooler   https://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-ACFRE00052A-Freezer-Pressure-Optimised-Technology/dp/B07LGSDQC2
DVD Writer   https://www.amazon.com/Lite-Internal-Drive-Optical-IHAS124-14/dp/B00ERJXTE4/
850watt   https://www.newegg.com/cooler-master-mwe-gold-850-v2-mpe-8501-afaag-us-850w/p/N82E16817171180

R

RjL190365Author

Legend

I monitored the home’s total power usage on a smart meter, which jumped from 0.4 kW to 0.9 kW just to render and export a video. What’s more, it takes six hours to AI upscale a video in Topaz Video. Plus, it takes another hour to deinterlace 29.97i to 59.94p. And I avoided all dumb NLE upscaling and deinterlacing as those degrade imsge quality.

That’s already 3.5 kWh just for an hour-long video. And much of it went into the grid-only hours.

What helped a bit was lowering the PL1 on my i9-14900K from 253W to 125W. But that still leaves the GPU: an RTX 5070 Ti.

At that point I decided to stop upscaling 1080p footage to 4k because the energy and time consumption outweighed the benefits. However, I do still upscale standard-definition content to a somewhat higher res using AI.

John T Smith

Community Expert

>six hours to AI upscale a video in Topaz Video

I use https://www.winxdvd.com/winxvideo-ai/ for video transformations… I have NO idea how it compares to Topaz

R

RjL190365Author

Legend

During those sessions, it is already consuming nearly 500W. That’s more than all of my household’s refrigerators combined! And to have that run for several hours straight during a render! The only appliance which consumes more power that’s in regular longer-term use is central air conditioning.

And yes, they are paying the bill.

This is why I am planning to significantly reduce its usage. However, downgrading to lesser-performing desktop components is not the answer as it simply trades maximum power consumption for time-related total power draw.