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German utility provider introduces 'gaming electricity' plan targeting high-consumption households, like those running multiple high-end gaming PCs — plan requires 2,500 kWh per year to offset a higher base price, claims to use renewable energy This could lower your power bill but won’t fix your skill issue. German utility provider and energy retailer SWK Energie just launched a new marketing strategy targeting gamers. According to ComputerBase [machine translated], meinGAMING has a lot of gamer-focused marketing, like comparing its reliability to “your favorite server” and influencer marketing by game streamers like Limcube. However, this doesn’t mean that the company infused its power grid with some magic gaming juice to let gamers squeeze extra FPS from the outlets. Instead, it offers an electricity plan designed for high-consumption households, whether you’re running four RTX 5090 gaming PCs or charging four EVs simultaneously every day. The company says this in its FAQ section — the plan is worthwhile for households with a consumption of over 2,500 kWh annually, either “through gaming, streaming, or simply because many devices are running.” Even though it claims to be cheaper than the competition, meinGAMING has a higher base price, so it does not recommend the service if you do not hit the minimum recommended power use. But even if you’re a Germany-based gamer who uses a lot of electricity, that doesn’t mean that you should switch to this service right now. Instead, you should compare your current rates with what the company is offering, as the tariff may vary depending on your location. Many companies have been targeting gamers in their marketing material, from computer components, peripherals, and furniture to food and beverages, promising to improve their performance and reaction times to gain an edge over their opponents. While some of these gamer-branded things do offer an item or service that’s a little better compared to the average consumer item, a lot more are unfortunately snake oil with RGB slapped on and prices afflicted by “gamer tax.” Still, many buy them because gamer branding and marketing are quite eye-catching. Even government agencies have dived onto the gamer marketing bandwagon — the U.S. Army has targeted gamers in its recruitment drives while the FAA’s last hiring campaign focused on gamers and hit 94% of its hiring goal. Even the Royal Navy has recognized gaming as one of the hobbies of its sailors, with its latest ship hosting eight high-end gaming PCs for LAN parties on the high seas. While meinGAMING won’t make you a better gamer, it could potentially help you save on electricity costs if you consume a relatively high amount of electricity. As an additional bonus, the company says that its power is 100% sourced from renewable energy, reducing the load on your wallet and conscience as you spend hours in front of your gaming PC. However, how it ensures the power used actually comes from renewable sources remains an open question. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds. Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics. - Fomdoo As an American I assumed that would put you in a higher price tier. Even Germany isn't as ruthless as us.Reply - Zaranthos The hardware and gaming industry that focuses on bleeding edge use cases lost me long ago. I don't want my computer sucking insane amounts of power simply to play a game. If a game requires or even recommends hardware that consumes absurd amounts of power it's off my list. I stopped chasing the high end when the power requirements became absurd. I can afford it, but I just can't justify basically paying rent to my gaming PC every month. I buy AMD GPU's for a few reasons now. They're good quality, they're more power efficient, and they're cheaper than Nvidia. AMD wins every category when ranking price, power, and performance bang for buck in what I'm looking for. There are also things I like about AMD drivers and Linux support, even though I primarily game on Windows still. My view on this likely won't change unless electricity rates get cheaper. Even then things like battery backup options become problematic when you start buying 1000W or larger power supplies. It starts to feel like madness just to play a game. Reply - Vicecrow Not so sure about AMD efficiency. My system Is running with 72w idle with a RTX 5070 I have a 14700, Intel optane 280gb, a Toshiba server Nvme 1920gb, 32gigs ddr4 4000mhz and 4 akasa piranha fans. with some tweaks, Using the Intel IGPU and the Nvidia almost can push the system at my target of 200w gaming, all the time. Before the RTX 5070 I have a RX 9060XT not work with the Intel IGPU, Drivers crash try'n to push the graphics lowest power possible. From same power at 2560x1440 from AMD 60 fps to above 120fps on nvidia. My daily consume of power with this config now stays at 1.6kw/h day The new titles got around 2.5 at 3.2 kw/h day to keep the machine up 18hours Reply - bit_user Zaranthos said:I buy AMD GPU's for a few reasons now. They're good quality, they're more power efficient, and they're cheaper than Nvidia.The power-efficiency claim needs testing. Perhaps, within the same price tier, you're right. However, back when Jarred tested the RTX 4090 at different power limits, he found you could drastically reduce its power limits with relatively little impact on most games. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/improving-nvidia-rtx-4090-efficiency-through-power-limiting The key thing, in that above statement, is to look at the specific game. Those which under-utilized the GPU showed the least detriment from reducing power limits. Games which drive high utilization also tend to burn a lot of power, and will tend to suffer more from shaving the power limits. I'm honestly not trying to take a side, here. I would really just like to see some FPS/W data on different GPUs, with different games, and at different power limits. That's a lot of testing, though. So, I don't know if anyone has done it. Zaranthos said:Even then things like battery backup options become problematic when you start buying 1000W or larger power supplies.I recently had to replace a bad 750W power supply with a 1kW model, not because I needed that much power, but just because the market for premium PSUs seems to have disappeared below 1kW. I was worried this might cause an issue for my 900W/1400VA UPS, particularly with regard to inrush current, but it did not. I have APC, while a friend has a comparable CyberPower model and neither of us had issues with inrush current overloading the UPS. Going up to even higher-wattage PSUs, I expect you'd need to be very careful about UPS compatibility. Reply - nayir Fomdoo said:As an American I assumed that would put you in a higher price tier. Even Germany isn't as ruthless a Fomdoo said:As an American I assumed that would put you in a higher price tier. Even Germany isn't as ruthless as Fomdoo said:As an American I assumed that would put you in a higher price tier. Even Germany isn't as ruthless as us.They pay 2-3x more for electricity Reply - QuarterSwede How are they going to discern between gaming PCs and other high electricity applications like EVs?Reply - USAFRet QuarterSwede said:How are they going to discern between gaming PCs and other high electricity applications like EVs?They don't. it offers an electricity plan designed for high-consumption households, whether you’re running four RTX 5090 gaming PCs or charging four EVs simultaneously every day. Reply - bit_user USAFRet said:They don't.@QuarterSwede , it could hypothetically work via smart grid, where the EV charger tells the grid how much current it's using and when. Then, that could potentially be billed at a different rate. Reply - FunSurfer This is nice, but what happens if Nvidia will pull another 'GTX 580 to GTX 680' one, where the latter card is more powerful and use much less power, so the user's choice will be: don't upgrade and stay with weaker hardware or upgrade and pay more because the new hardware will not reach the minimum recommended power use...Reply - bit_user FunSurfer said:This is nice, but what happens if Nvidia will pull another 'GTX 580 to GTX 680' one, where the latter card is more powerful and use much less power, so the user's choice will be: don't upgrade and stay with weaker hardware or upgrade and pay more because the new hardware will not reach the minimum recommended power use...Or switch their electricity plan. However, I'll believe a Nvidia card using less power than its direct predecessor when I see it. The next generation might not use more power, but I seriously doubt it'll use less. The reason is simple math: more frequency = more performance per mm^2 of silicon. Because leading edge nodes are so expensive, they're always going to push them to the upper limit of the frequency range, at the expense of higher power and worse efficiency. BTW, the GTX 680 launched 14 years ago. That's ancient history!: D Reply
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