How Much Does It Cost to Run a Gaming PC?
Based on a 400 W gaming pc running 4 hours a day with a 100% duty cycle, priced at the 2025 EIA residential average for every state. Change the state and hours below for your own number.
Updated Oct 16, 2026
Quick answer
Quick answer, US average (17.3 c/kWh)
About $8.30 a month
The same use costs $5.67 a month in North Dakota and $19.48 in Hawaii.
- Per hour
- $0.069
- at 400 W
- Per day
- $0.28
- 4 h, 1.60 kWh
- Per month
- $8.30
- 30 days
- Per year
- $101.03
- 365 days at the same use
Your state, your hours
Per hour
$0.069
Per day
$0.28
Per month
$8.30
Per year
$101.03
Gaming PC at 400 W, 4 h a day, 30 days a month, 100% duty cycle: 48.0 kWh a month. Using the 2025 US average of 17.3 cents/kWh.
Want to change the watts or duty cycle too? Open the full calculator.
What decides the cost of running a gaming pc
A 650 W or 850 W power supply only sets the ceiling for a gaming PC. The real draw at the wall depends on the graphics card and processor and on what they are doing. A mid-range build with a 200 W class GPU and a mainstream CPU pulls around 350 to 450 W at the wall while gaming, which is the 400 W used here. A high-end card in the 350 to 450 W class with a top CPU can push a system to 600 to 700 W. The same machine browsing the web or sitting at the desktop draws 60 to 120 W, and in sleep it draws under 5.
Most of the cost comes from hours spent actually gaming. Four hours of gaming at 400 W is 1.6 kWh, about 48 kWh a month. Add 4 hours of idle at 90 W and the monthly total is closer to 60 kWh. A streamer or someone running games at uncapped frame rates for 8 hours a day doubles that. The cheapest saving is a frame rate cap. Locking a game to the monitor's refresh rate instead of letting the GPU run flat out can cut the card's draw by a third with no visible difference.
The monitor is a separate load. A 27 inch 1440p monitor at 144 Hz draws 30 to 50 W. A large OLED or a 4K high-brightness panel can reach 80 to 100. Two monitors plus the PC at idle is often more than the PC alone. Peripherals, RGB lighting and a desktop speaker set add 10 to 30 W. The whole desk is worth measuring once with a plug-in meter or a monitoring smart plug, which also tells you whether the machine is really sleeping at night or just turning its screen off.
Sleep versus shutdown makes almost no difference on a modern system. Sleep is a few watts. The money goes to a PC that is set to never sleep and sits at idle all night, or a 'fast boot' setting combined with a wake timer that pulls it out of sleep for updates.
How to cut it
- Cap frame rates to the monitor's refresh rate. An uncapped GPU runs at full power for no benefit.
- Set the PC to sleep after 15 or 20 minutes idle, and check it actually sleeps overnight.
- Enable the GPU's and CPU's power-saving modes. Undervolting can cut 10 to 20 percent with no performance loss.
- Turn the monitor off too when you walk away.
Gaming PC cost by state
Monthly cost for 400 W, 4 h a day, 100% duty cycle, 30 days, sorted cheapest to most expensive. Pick your state above to highlight it.
| Rank | State | Cents/kWh | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota | 11.81 | $5.67 |
| 2 | Idaho | 11.82 | $5.67 |
| 3 | Nebraska | 12.34 | $5.92 |
| 4 | Louisiana | 12.57 | $6.03 |
| 5 | Arkansas | 12.84 | $6.16 |
| 6 | Montana | 12.98 | $6.23 |
| 7 | Utah | 13.07 | $6.27 |
| 8 | Washington | 13.11 | $6.29 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | 13.12 | $6.30 |
| 10 | Nevada | 13.15 | $6.31 |
| 11 | Tennessee | 13.18 | $6.33 |
| 12 | Kentucky | 13.24 | $6.36 |
| 13 | South Dakota | 13.38 | $6.42 |
| 14 | Wyoming | 13.38 | $6.42 |
| 15 | Missouri | 13.49 | $6.48 |
| 16 | Iowa | 13.72 | $6.59 |
| 17 | North Carolina | 14.02 | $6.73 |
| 18 | Mississippi | 14.03 | $6.73 |
| 19 | Kansas | 14.56 | $6.99 |
| 20 | Georgia | 14.73 | $7.07 |
| 21 | South Carolina | 14.96 | $7.18 |
| 22 | New Mexico | 15.08 | $7.24 |
| 23 | Florida | 15.24 | $7.32 |
| 24 | Virginia | 15.28 | $7.33 |
| 25 | Arizona | 15.32 | $7.35 |
| 26 | Oregon | 15.37 | $7.38 |
| 27 | West Virginia | 15.41 | $7.40 |
| 28 | Texas | 15.47 | $7.43 |
| 29 | Minnesota | 15.82 | $7.59 |
| 30 | Colorado | 15.85 | $7.61 |
| 31 | Alabama | 16.10 | $7.73 |
| 32 | Indiana | 16.23 | $7.79 |
| 33 | Ohio | 16.96 | $8.14 |
| 34 | Delaware | 17.13 | $8.22 |
| 35 | Illinois | 17.69 | $8.49 |
| 36 | Wisconsin | 18.16 | $8.72 |
| 37 | Pennsylvania | 19.30 | $9.26 |
| 38 | Maryland | 19.48 | $9.35 |
| 39 | Michigan | 20.01 | $9.60 |
| 40 | District of Columbia | 21.94 | $10.53 |
| 41 | New Jersey | 22.63 | $10.86 |
| 42 | Vermont | 22.92 | $11.00 |
| 43 | New Hampshire | 24.56 | $11.79 |
| 44 | Alaska | 26.09 | $12.52 |
| 45 | New York | 26.39 | $12.67 |
| 46 | Maine | 27.78 | $13.33 |
| 47 | Connecticut | 29.38 | $14.10 |
| 48 | Rhode Island | 29.46 | $14.14 |
| 49 | Massachusetts | 30.48 | $14.63 |
| 50 | California | 32.54 | $15.62 |
| 51 | Hawaii | 40.59 | $19.48 |
Rates: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861, annual average residential price, 2025 (eia.gov). Full list on the electricity rates by state page.
Measure it instead of estimating
Kasa KP125M Matter Smart Plug with Energy Monitoring (2-pack)
Logs daily and monthly kWh in the Kasa app, so you can see the real duty cycle over a week instead of guessing. Rated 15 A, 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi only.
Under $100, live price on Amazon
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P3 Kill A Watt P4400 Electricity Usage Monitor
Plugs in between the wall and any 120 V appliance and shows watts and accumulated kWh. The cheapest way to replace the estimate on this page with your own number.
Under $100, live price on Amazon
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Frequently asked questions
How much electricity does a gaming PC use per month?+
A mid-range build gaming 4 hours a day uses about 50 to 60 kWh a month including idle time, around $9 to $10 at the national average rate. A high-end build at 8 hours a day can reach 150 kWh.
Does a 850 W power supply use 850 W?+
No. The rating is the maximum it can deliver. A typical gaming load is 300 to 500 W at the wall, and the system idles at 60 to 120 W. A larger supply running at 50 percent load is actually a little more efficient than a small one running near its limit.
Is it cheaper to leave a PC in sleep mode or shut it down?+
The difference is a watt or two, under 20 cents a month. The thing to avoid is a PC that never sleeps and idles all night at 80 to 100 W, which is 2 kWh a day.
How many watts does a gaming PC use?+
A mid-range gaming PC draws about 400 W at the wall while gaming, and a high-end build with a top graphics card can reach 600 to 700 W. The same machine uses 60 to 120 W at the desktop and under 5 W in sleep. The power supply rating is a ceiling, not the actual draw.
How much does it cost to run a gaming PC per hour?+
About 7 cents an hour for a mid-range build. At 400 W, one hour is 0.4 kWh, and 0.4 kWh x $0.173 is 6.9 cents at the national average rate. A 650 W high-end build is about 11 cents an hour.
How much does a gaming PC cost to run per year?+
About $100 a year for a mid-range build gaming 4 hours a day. That is 400 W x 4 hours = 1.6 kWh a day, or 584 kWh a year, and 584 kWh x $0.173 is about $101. Idle time and a monitor add to that.
Does a gaming PC use a lot of electricity?+
Less than most people expect. Four hours of gaming a day at 400 W is about 48 kWh a month, roughly 5 to 6 percent of what an average U.S. home uses according to EIA. It only becomes a large load at 8 or more hours a day on a high-end build.
Is it cheaper to game on a console or a PC?+
A console is usually cheaper to run. A current console draws about 180 W while gaming, so 4 hours a day is 0.72 kWh, about $3.75 a month at 17.3 cents. A 400 W gaming PC over the same hours uses 1.6 kWh a day, about $8.30 a month.
Can a power station or generator run a gaming PC?+
Yes. A mid-range PC and a 27 inch monitor draw about 430 W, so a power station with a 1,000 W inverter handles it, and a 1,000 Wh battery runs it for about 2 hours after inverter losses (1,000 Wh x 0.85 / 430 W). On a generator, use an inverter model for clean power to the PC's electronics.
How can I lower the cost of running a gaming PC?+
Cap the frame rate at the monitor's refresh rate so the graphics card is not running flat out for frames you cannot see. Set the PC to sleep after 15 to 20 minutes idle and check it stays asleep overnight. Enabling power-saving modes or a modest undervolt can cut 10 to 20 percent with no loss in performance.
Marcus Reed
Founder and Editor, CrunchYourDollars
Marcus Reed builds the sizing tools on CrunchYourDollars. He is a software engineer with a long-running PC hardware and power supply habit, which is where the watts, watt-hours and surge math on this site comes from. Product specs are pulled from manufacturer data sheets, electricity rates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and water chemistry rules from the Water Quality Association. He is not a licensed electrician or plumber: the tools show the math and the matching models so you can make the call, and anything involving your electrical panel should be checked by a licensed pro.
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