What is power efficiency?

Power efficiency is the ratio between hashrate and the power consumption. It means how many units of hashrate can be mined with 1 watt. The power efficiency can be expressed in different formats.

• If the hashrate is expressed in H/s, the power efficiency will be expressed in H/W;
• If the hashrate is expressed in KH/s, the power efficiency will be expressed in KH/W;
• If the hashrate is expressed in MH/s, the power efficiency will be expressed in MH/W;
• If the hashrate is expressed in GH/s, the power efficiency will be expressed in GH/W;
• And so on.

You can use this measurement when comparing different results within the same algorithm. If one mining client has larger power efficiency, its ratio between hashrate and power consumption is better. This also means this mining client has higher hashrate for the same amount of power consumed.

At minerstat, we are using hashrate per watt power efficiency, but in some cases you can also see the power efficiency expressed in watts per hashrate, which tells you how many watts are needed to mine with 1 unit of hashrate. In this measurement you are searching for mining clients with lower power efficiency as you want to spend less power for the same hashrate.

Power efficiency should always be as higher as possible since this means that you get more hashrate per watt. You can compare your own power efficiency with power efficiencies of different hardware:

• ASICs comparison is available on our ASIC miners website
• GPUs comparison is available on our GPU mining website

Power efficiency is available right under power information for each hardware. For GPUs, you might need to select algorithm first to see more relevant data as each algorithm has its own power efficiency value and power efficiencies aren't comparable between different algorithms. For example, you can compare GPUs on Etchash by selecting Etchash algorithm and clicking [Calculate].

You can improve your power efficiency by increasing the hashrate and lowering the power consumption. To do that, you can use different tools:

• ClockTune for overclocking and undervolting - you can find reference values for start on our hardware pages;
• AMD Memory Tweak for on the go memory timings changes on AMD cards;
• BIOS flasher for flashing better BIOS to AMD cards or console BIOS flash for Nvidia cards;
• Benchmarking: Try out different mining clients to see which one brings higher hashrate and lowest consumption for your hardware.