The Tool Desk
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Estimate the added electricity cost
For a 30-day month of continuous streaming, there are 720 streaming hours. So the calculation is:
Monthly incremental electricity cost = incremental watts Ă· 1,000 Ă— 720 Ă— your electricity price per kWh.
For example, if streaming hypothetically added 100 watts continuously, it would use 72 kWh in 30 days. At the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s 2025 annual average residential rate of 17.30 cents/kWh, that would cost about $12.46 for the month. At the 2025 commercial average of 13.41 cents/kWh, it would be about $9.66. These are arithmetic examples based on an assumed 100-watt increase, not measured GPU-streaming figures. The EIA’s 2025 annual averages ranged from 8.20 cents/kWh in North Dakota to 35.72 cents/kWh in Hawaii; your bill depends on your actual tariff. Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3 (February 2026 preliminary data).
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For another quick reference, every additional watt sustained for 30 days uses 0.72 kWh. Multiply that by your local price per kWh to estimate its cost.
Measure the power that streaming actually adds
The relevant figure is the difference in power between comparable operating states. A GPU’s maximum board-power specification does not tell you how much extra electricity your stream uses. Nor does the fact that the GPU encodes video establish the whole computer’s draw.
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- Choose the comparison you want. To isolate the GPU’s contribution, keep the rest of the computer and workload as similar as possible, and compare the streaming configuration with an appropriate non-encoding baseline. To estimate the cost of the whole streaming setup, compare the complete PC while streaming with the relevant off or non-streaming state.
- Measure at the wall. Use a suitable wall-power meter to record the system’s draw in each state over a representative interval. For a 24/7 stream, avoid treating a brief reading as a full-day average if power varies with the workload.
- Calculate the difference. Subtract the baseline watts from the streaming-state watts. Use the resulting incremental watts in the formula above.
- Apply your own rate and runtime. Use your bill’s price per kWh and actual monthly streaming hours. If you stream for fewer than 720 hours, substitute the actual number of hours.
Wall-meter readings include the complete system and reflect power-supply conversion losses; keep that in mind when interpreting them. There is no universal correction factor established for this calculation.
Why encoder choice does not give you a wattage figure
Hardware encoding uses a specialized component rather than simply running the GPU’s graphics cores at their maximum rated board power. OBS describes hardware encoders as moving encoding work away from the CPU to a specialized GPU component, and recommends them generally for performance. NVIDIA says NVENC is independent of the graphics/CUDA cores. Neither point establishes the incremental wall power of a specific PC encoding a specific stream. OBS Project, Hardware Encoding documentation (January 11, 2022); NVIDIA, NVENC application note and GPU support matrix.
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OBS documents NVIDIA NVENC, AMD AMF, and Intel Quick Sync hardware-encoding options, subject to compatibility requirements. Its NVIDIA note identifies GeForce 750 Ti or newer, while also cautioning that generation matters; AMD and Intel options have their own requirements. Compatibility is not a guarantee of lower power cost. OBS Project, Hardware Encoding.
YouTube describes both software and standalone hardware encoders, and identifies NVIDIA GPUs’ hardware-based encoder as one way to accelerate encoding. NVIDIA’s January 2025 vendor guidance recommends selecting Hardware (NVENC, AV1) for YouTube with an RTX 40 Series GPU, or Hardware (NVENC, HEVC) otherwise. That is configuration guidance, not evidence that an RTX 40 Series card is necessary, cheapest, or draws a particular number of watts. YouTube Help, Live encoder settings, bitrates, and resolutions; NVIDIA, broadcasting guide.
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What to consider before buying a GPU
A compatible encoder alone is not enough to show that buying a graphics card will save money or make a 24/7 stream more economical. Compare the purchase cost separately from recurring electricity, and assess:
- whether your current GPU, integrated graphics, or CPU can already handle the desired stream;
- the card’s actual purchase price and the period over which you expect to use it;
- the measured incremental power of the complete setup, in the workload you intend to run;
- your electricity tariff and monthly runtime;
- the compatible codec, resolution, frame rate, and YouTube requirements; and
- the setup and reliability demands of keeping a local computer operating continuously.
Available encoder guidance does not supply comparable measured power, prices, or a cost ranking across GPU, CPU, integrated-graphics, and automated-streaming options. No authoritative, directly applicable wattage for a consumer GPU continuously encoding a defined YouTube stream—and no representative whole-system comparison—is established here. Your own measurements and tariff are needed to settle the cost.
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