Your PC is a heater. What is that worth?
In winter PC heat replaces some heating. In summer the air conditioning has to remove it.
Your result
About 33% of your gaming electricity comes back as heating you no longer pay for: €17.75 this season.
Season in numbers
How it works
- All power becomes heat
Practically every watt your PC draws ends up as heat in the room.
- What would have made that heat
An electric heater turns 1 kWh into 1 kWh of heat; a heat pump makes about 3; a gas boiler about 0.9 kWh per kWh of gas.
- Summer is the reverse
An air conditioner uses about 1 kWh of electricity to remove 3 kWh of heat.
Tips
- In summer, a power limit or frame cap cuts both the PC’s power and the cooling it causes.
- Gaming in a small room heated by an electric heater: the PC’s heat is close to free.
- Heat only counts as a saving if the room would otherwise have been heated.
Questions people ask
Can a gaming PC really heat a room?
Yes. A PC drawing 400 W releases about the same heat as a 400 W electric heater. It will not replace central heating, but it noticeably warms a small room.
Is gaming cheaper in winter?
Partly. If your heating is electric, the PC’s heat replaces heat you would have paid for anyway. With a heat pump or gas the saving is smaller, because they produce heat more cheaply.
Why does my room get hot when I game in summer?
Because the PC is a heater running at several hundred watts. If you use air conditioning, removing that heat costs roughly a third of the PC’s own electricity again.
Related tools
- How much does undervolting your GPU save?Pick a power limit and see the money saved per year and the performance you keep.
- What does leaving your PC on cost?Idle, sleep or shut down: see the yearly cost of each when your PC is not in use.
- Does a new graphics card pay for itself?See how much electricity a more efficient card saves and how long the upgrade takes to pay back.
Popular graphics cards
- GeForce RTX 5070
- GeForce RTX 5080
- Radeon RX 9070 XT
- GeForce RTX 4070 Super
- GeForce RTX 4090
- GeForce RTX 3080
- All graphics cards
Prices: Eurostat, nrg_pc_204, EIA, Ofgem, ElCom. Updated 31 October 2026. How we calculate.