The effect of different settings on a PC on the amount of energy in watts used while running rendering and FPS tests.
Abstract:
The data shows that the Eco friendly settings take much less power to run, about an average of 100 watts, but in the experiment I did see that the performance was worse. I saw the rendering was slower than the normal and overclocked modes and in the FPS test it looked a little worse. The data also shows that the control and overclocked modes were both very close in power consumption with about 110 watts for the normal and 115 to 120 watts on the overclocked one.With this data I can say that if you want to save power the eco friendly mode is the best and I only saw a small performance drop in the experiment. I also saw that the FPS tests seemed to use less energy which I don't think is surprising because in the rendering test you are rendering a photorealistic image. This experiment was done without one of the most power consuming parts of a computer, a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU), so data is susceptible to change if you have a PC with that part.
The eco friendly mode required the least amount of energy to run. I also claimed that it was the best overall because in the experiment I only saw a small performance drop. Going forward with this experiment I might try to measure the power consumption off of multiple machines to determine the best parts for an eco friendly PC.
Bibliography/Citations:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32820821444.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/forza/comments/9l5s80/forza_horizon_4_benchmark_1440p120/
Additional Project Information
Project files
Research Plan:
My plan for this project was to find out how much energy my gaming habit consumes so that I could calculate my carbon footprint and find ways to offset my carbon footprint. To do this project I will change settings on my PC to hopefully reduce the amount of energy consumed. There will be 3 settings Eco-Friendly, control (base settings), and overclocked (a preset that boosts the speed of my computer). Then I will measure the amount of power consumed by using a power meter and measuring in watts. My tests will be a Forza Horizon 4 benchmark test and a Cinebench rendering test.
Questions and Answers
1. What was the major objective of your project and what was your plan to achieve it? I wanted to figure out how big my carbon footprint is just from my gaming habits.
a. Was that goal the result of any specific situation, experience, or problem you encountered? No I have not had any experiences or problems I was just interested.
b. Were you trying to solve a problem, answer a question, or test a hypothesis? I was trying to find ways to decrease my carbon footprint and become more Eco-Friendly.
2. What were the major tasks you had to perform in order to complete your project? The major task was trying to change the settings in the bios of my computer because the bios is hard to navigate and I wanted to change the settings that would make a big difference.
a. For teams, describe what each member worked on.
3. What is new or novel about your project? Something that I found new and interesting was that the Eco-Friendly mode had a large drop in energy consumption and when I was doing the project i didn't see a large performance difference.
a. Is there some aspect of your project's objective, or how you achieved it that you haven't done before? I had never gone into the bios to change the settings of my PC.
b. Is your project's objective, or the way you implemented it, different from anything you have seen? I had seen people measure performance but I have never seen anyone measure power consumed.
c. If you believe your work to be unique in some way, what research have you done to confirm that it is? I have read an article that talks about something like this but I still did different things like having multiple settings.
4. What was the most challenging part of completing your project? The most difficult part was trying to find the right settings to change on the Eco-Friendly mode so that there would actually be a difference.
a. What problems did you encounter, and how did you overcome them? The only problem was I tried the Eco-friendly mode multiple times with different settings because there wasn't a change from the control mode.
b. What did you learn from overcoming these problems? I learned that there is always another way even if it doesn't work.
5. If you were going to do this project again, are there any things you would you do differently the next time? I might try and do the project on multiple computers to see if that made a difference.
6. Did working on this project give you any ideas for other projects? I might try multiple systems with different parts to find the most Eco-Friendly PC.
7. How did COVID-19 affect the completion of your project? Covid-19 did not effect the outcome of my project.