Cost & Carbon

Speed rules, but let's not go broke or melt the ice caps in the process, eh? The cost to game -- both in $ and to the environment -- depends how you game and where you live.

Based on our numbers, a light gamer could use between 5 and 375 kWh/year depending on system choice, while the numbers for an extreme gamer would run from 37 to 1100 kWh/year. This translates into costs as high as $2200 over 5 years and CO₂ emissions as high as 2000 pounds each year if you live where electricity is expensive and your utility relies heavily on coal to make power. The most intense system setups can use twice as much energy.