The electricity used by hardware itself consumes water. When people talk about data center water usage they're often also including the water used in electricity generation.
replyIronically, 77% of my electricity comes from flowing water rather than the boiling it, ~90% renewable overall
replyOnce we get to fully renewable (as a country), there should be no water involved in electricity generation as well.
All consumer hardware (not counting XOC) uses either air cooling or closed-loop liquid cooling, so the water usage is zero, always. Power is a little trickier. I'd assume it's less efficient, but also the total usage is less, because the user sometimes turns the machine off, and the hardware idles to a deeper sleep state than server hardware.
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