How much does a gaming PC cost to run per year in Canada?
C$24.91 a year. That is the electricity line cost of the worked example below on Ontario time-of-use off-peak pricing: a PC drawing an assumed 250 W at the wall, played 3 hours a day, every day, at the 9.1 cents per kWh off-peak price the Ontario Energy Board set for 1 November 2026. The same PC costs C$32.49 a year on BC Hydro Tier 1 pricing and C$19.34 a year on Hydro Quebec first tier pricing. Same PC, same hours, three bills. The province moves the number more than the hardware does, and the hours the PC sits switched on and idle can cost more than the gaming itself.
The yearly number, three provinces, one worked example
The formula every calculator uses is the same one the bill uses: power in kilowatts, multiplied by hours, multiplied by the price per kilowatt-hour. Divide watts by 1,000 to get kilowatts. The worked example here assumes 250 W at the wall while gaming. That figure is an assumption, labelled as one, chosen because it sits above a single efficient graphics card and below a large tower under full load. Redo the arithmetic with any other watt figure and the method still holds.
At 250 W for 3 hours a day, the PC uses 0.75 kWh a day, or 273.75 kWh over 365 days. Now price those kilowatt-hours three ways, using published rates checked on 4 November 2026.
| Rate used | Published price | Yearly cost of 273.75 kWh |
|---|---|---|
| Ontario time-of-use, off-peak | 9.1 cents per kWh | C$24.91 |
| Ontario tiered, Tier 1 | 11.2 cents per kWh | C$30.66 |
| BC Hydro tiered, Tier 1 | 11.87 cents per kWh | C$32.49 |
| Hydro Quebec Rate D, first tier | 7.065 cents per kWh | C$19.34 |
Two cautions ride with the table. First, the Ontario prices are the Electricity line only. The Ontario Energy Board page that publishes them states that delivery rates are set separately, so an Ontario bill total for the same energy runs higher than the figures above. Second, evening play is what makes the Ontario time-of-use row work. Under the winter schedule, weekdays from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. are off-peak, and weekends and holidays are off-peak all day. Gaming that lands in the winter on-peak window, weekdays 7 to 11 a.m. and 5 to 7 p.m., pays 18.9 cents instead, and the same worked example costs C$51.74.
Which watts count: three numbers that are not interchangeable
Most running cost guesses go wrong before the arithmetic starts, because three published watt numbers describe three different things. NVIDIA specification page for the GeForce RTX 4060 lists them side by side, which makes it a clean example.
| Published number | RTX 4060 | RTX 4060 Ti | What it means for a cost estimate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average gaming power | 110 W | 140 W | The card itself, averaged across 22 games at 4K, 1440p and 1080p in NVIDIA measurement. The closest published starting point for gaming draw. |
| Total graphics power | 115 W | 160 or 165 W | The card ceiling, not its average. Costing this figure overstates a typical session slightly. |
| Required system power | 550 W | 550 W | The power supply size NVIDIA requires for the whole PC. Costing this figure as draw is the classic error: it can multiply the estimate five times over. |
A whole PC draws more than its graphics card alone, since the processor, board, storage, fans and monitor all take power too. That is why the worked example uses an assumed 250 W at the wall rather than the 110 W card figure.
For scale, the card alone at its published average gaming power, 3 hours a day for a year, uses 120.45 kWh. At Ontario off-peak pricing that is C$10.96 of the C$24.91 total. The rest of the assumed draw is the rest of the machine.
A plug-in power meter at the wall remains the only way to replace the assumption with a measurement for a specific PC.
The same PC on the trap rates
Rate plan choice can cost more than a hardware upgrade saves. Ontario Ultra-Low Overnight plan charges 3.7 cents per kWh overnight, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., which suits a car charging while its owner sleeps. Its weekday on-peak price, 4 to 9 p.m., is 37.7 cents per kWh. A player whose sessions all fell inside that evening window would pay C$103.20 for the same 273.75 kWh the time-of-use plan prices at C$24.91 off-peak. Nobody needs to move their gaming to 2 a.m. The point is narrower: a plan built around overnight use punishes evening use, and gaming is evening use.
Thresholds matter at the other end. Ontario tiered pricing charges 11.2 cents for the first 1,000 kWh in a winter month and 13.2 cents above that threshold, with the threshold dropping to 600 kWh in summer.
BC Hydro threshold works out to 22.1918 kWh per day of the billing period, about 675 kWh in a 30 day period, with usage above it priced at 14.08 cents instead of 11.87 cents. Hydro Quebec Rate D allows 40 kWh per day at 7.065 cents, then charges 11.142 cents for the rest, plus a system access charge of 46.154 cents per day that a gaming PC does not change.
A heavy example shows the spread: an assumed 500 W PC played 4 hours a day uses 730 kWh a year, which costs C$66.43 at Ontario off-peak, C$102.78 at the BC Tier 2 price, and C$81.34 at the Quebec second tier price.
The left-on trap: idle hours beat gaming hours
Now the line most estimates never print. Suppose the same PC is left on and idle for the other 20 hours a day, drawing an assumed 75 W while it sits at a desktop with launchers open. The assumption is labelled, and the arithmetic is plain: 75 W for 20 hours a day uses 547.5 kWh a year, exactly double the gaming example. At Ontario Tier 1 pricing that idle time costs C$61.32 a year. At BC Hydro Tier 1 pricing it costs C$64.99. The gaming, the entire point of the machine, cost less.
The fix costs nothing. If sleep or shutdown cuts that idle draw by 65 W across those 20 hours, the saving is 474.5 kWh a year, worth C$53.14 at Ontario Tier 1 pricing. No efficient power supply, no undervolting project, and no new graphics card returns that much for that little effort. Check the sleep settings first. Price the hardware second.
Get your own rate from your own bill, then decide
Every figure above is a published rate, and published rates are still estimates of a specific household bill, since delivery charges, riders and taxes sit on top of the energy price in most provinces. The two minute correction:
- Take a recent bill and find the total amount charged and the kilowatt-hours used in the period.
- Divide the total by the kilowatt-hours. The result is an all-in cents per kWh figure for that household, delivery and all.
- Multiply: watts at the wall divided by 1,000, multiplied by hours per day, multiplied by 365, multiplied by that all-in rate. That is the yearly cost for that PC in that home.
Success looks like this: the estimate lands within a few dollars of what the same hours add across two real bills, and the decision that follows is usually a settings change, not a purchase. A gaming PC in Canada typically costs somewhere between a pizza night and a tank of fuel per year to run. Readers paying far above the range for their province most often have a plan mismatch or a machine that never sleeps, and both of those are free to fix.
General information only, not personal financial advice. Electricity prices were checked on 4 November 2026 from the Ontario Energy Board, BC Hydro and Hydro Quebec published rates cited above; Ontario figures are the Electricity line only, with delivery, riders and taxes extra. Worked examples use labelled assumed wall draws of 250 W, 500 W and 75 W, which are assumptions for the arithmetic, not measurements of any specific PC. Rates change, in Ontario each 1 November, so check the current rate before relying on a figure.
— Penny Hughes, Money Writer — Saving Desk