I decided to treat myself to a new Asus mobo on friday only to find out it didn’t even boot up, so it’s going back in the morning for a replacement. In the meantime i thought i’d get my old system ready for it’s next life as a backup.
Out went the water cooler, X-fi audio card and 9800GTX+ graphics card, also the 3.0 Dual Core got swapped out for the original 2.2 Dual Core, and my 800 4GB ddr2 was replaced with the original 667 2GB ddr2.
Motherboard now back to the original specs, i crossed my fingers and booted up OpenSuse. It booted up to desktop without problems, i had sound from the onboard Realtek chip, Visuals from the onboard VGA chip and complete with wobbly windows 
Sitting here now listening to my music and typing this out, there is practically no difference from what hardware i had installed and what i have now i.w.o performance. Well there is one big difference…The system is very quiet and nothing like the vacuum cleaner sound i had with all the fans going to keep the system cool 
The only reason i had a water cooled system with a decent gfx’s card was for gaming with windows >:( I bet my electric bill will be lower as well as a result.
So this weekend i’ve learnt how much cheaper it really is to use Linux over Windows
Regards
Yeah some of those GFX cards can chew up even more power than a CPU. It may actually be cheaper to buy a separate machine for gaming that you only turn on when needed.
I was curious about this a few years ago, and made some cost estimates. It will vary a lot from country to country, but it would take anything from two to five years to pay for a cheaper system in power bill savings, which may not cover the useful life of said cheaper system, specially if there’s only one user and you don’t share the same monitor.
But the much quieter system makes a big difference if your work ambient is silent, and also in warmer countries the heat output is something to be considered.
I’ve kept Windows for the odd occasion that i’ll do some gaming, but i haven’t used Windows for quite some time now, and the thought of gaming on-line, running around a battlefield like a headless chicken doesn’t really appeal:disapointed:
A common thought is that having a hobby means you don’t have to justify the cost, but using OpenSuse means i don’t have to think that way anymore
Regards
i have the same problem.
I have a GT8800 in my tower and i do not even use it really.
Windows is not anymore on my computer and i do not even play on the pc. All gaming takes place on my console.
Now i am looking into a mobo with integrated gfx and will shrink my pc to a minimum and hope i get it quieter than right now.