How many Watts does a gaming laptop use?
What is TGP? How many Watts does a gaming laptop use? We answer both these questions and more.
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So how many watts does a gaming laptop use? Well it varies: the number of watts a gaming laptop uses changes considerably depending on the model in question.
The chaps at SCAN say that the average gaming laptop draws about 250W and this is a fair estimate, but the range varies quite a bit from less powerful budget options to high-powered premium gaming laptops.
It usually takes a bit of digging to find out the power draw of a gaming laptop (or indeed a regular laptop). If you have the laptop in front of you, you can normally get a good idea by looking at the power brick/block/adapter and finding the wattage listed on there, which will be at least as much as the laptop’s power draw.
If you don’t have the laptop in front of you, your best bet is to check out the in-depth specifications listed on the manufacturer’s website for the watts used by the specific model, or alternatively, it may be mentioned in an in-depth review (most commonly it’s just the TGP that’s mentioned though – more on this below).
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How many Watts does a gaming laptop GPU use? TGP explained
By far the most power-hungry component in a gaming laptop is the graphics card, which can draw as much power alone as an entire laptop in the case of the most powerful GPUs.
GPU power draw is most commonly referred to as TGP (which stands for Total Graphics Power). This is usually the easiest figure to look up when you’re interested in finding out how many Watts a gaming laptop uses, though even this can be hard to find. Again, you’ll usually want to look on the page of the manufacturer to find out this information, or an in-depth review of the gaming laptop in question (retailers often won’t list it).
Below we’ve listed the maximum TGP of most of the Nvidia 30-series laptop/mobile GPU range. Note that these represent the most powerful graphics cards for each SKU – there are a great many RTX 3080 Tis, RTX 3080s, RTX 3070s etc. with lower TGPs than listed below, which means they will perform less well than higher-TGP variants. A high TGP RTX 3070 laptop for example, may even perform as well as an underpowered RTX 3080 in extreme cases.
AMD Radeon graphics cards can sometimes use slightly different terminology than the below to measure their wattage, but the concept is the same:
- RTX 3080 Ti laptop maximum GPU TGP: 175W
- RTX 3080 laptop maximum GPU TGP: 165W
- RTX 3070 Ti laptop maximum GPU TGP: 150W
- RTX 3070 laptop maximum GPU TGP: 140W
- RTX 3060 laptop maximum GPU TGP: 130W
- RTX 3050 Ti laptop maximum GPU TGP: 80W
How many watts does a gaming laptop use? Final Word
We do hope this short guide has helped illuminate you on how many watts does a gaming laptop use? Why not take a little look at our multiple best gaming laptop guides across different price ranges (these can be found in the site’s drop-down menu on the top of this page). We also have other gaming laptop FAQ pages if you want to educate yourself a bit further on these devices.
