Re: Low power PC option

["Andy Davies" <dajdavies@xxxxxxxxx>]

Why not go for a Via or if that's too slow Pentium M based machine?

There are plenty of Pentium M chips available on ebay at good prices,
motherboards tend to come up a bit more infrequently though.

Andy

On 22/08/07, Jonathan Shaw <semi.jon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> As mentioned here before I had been planning to use an old Athlon PC
to
> run
> Idratek Cortex as my HA controller.  In the end when my second hand
> Centrino
> laptop turned up instead of using that as a domestic PC it seemed
easier
> to
> run Cortex on that.  It runs XP with an applet that controls the speed
> stepping of the CPU called SpeedSwitchXP.
>
>
>
> Having run a couple of tests over night, the PC & Idratek devices
(and a
> Dect phone on the same circuit) consume 0.24KWh in 12hours and the
spot
> checks showed about 20W being burnt.  In the morning the CPU speed is
down
> just below 300MHz (from 1.7GHz max).  The speed stepping is very fast
so
> load an audio stream or fire up a browser and it opens as fast as one
> would
> expect  (30W consumed with BT Home Hub + PC + Idratek while streaming
from
> BBC).  It is not a huge network at the moment 2 sensors 2 relays, over
the
> coming weeks as I fit more the load may go up, but I am very impressed
> with
> the laptop and how light weight Cortex is.
>
>
>
> The flaw in this is lack of expansion, a docking station for the
laptop is
> available but only takes a half height PCI card, I need a full height
one
> for the voice modem I have bought!  And another if I am to utilise the
> CCTV
> cable I have run!  I am tempted to buy second hand and attack with a
> dremel!
> The alternative is to buy a Core Duo PC which has speed stepping and
see
> how
> slow and lean it can run!  The only person I know with a Core Duo and
a
> power meter has a big graphics card and even at tickover it burnt 150W
and
> this rose to 200+W when gaming.  Impressive for a machine in a v small
> case
> but it does have to have the disk on the top of the machine else it
locks
> up!
>
>
>
> Has anyone with a Core Duo here tried speed-stepping?
>
>
>
> Jon
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


--
Andy


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