Re: Re: 1TB "Green" Drives

[Sam Partington <sam.partington@xxxxxxxxx>]

Whoever pointed out the book "Sustainable energy without the hot
air"
to the list, thank you very much, it was a fascinating read, and
really changed the way I look at these issues. I especially enjoyed
the 'Stuff' chapter, as the following wouldn't have occurred to me
before I read it.

http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/sustainable/book/tex/cft.pdf

Let's apply some of his figures to this example.

His estimated energy cost of a making new computer is 1800kWh. I'd
suspect that your list of components might push this up, but on the
other hand you've not replaced the PSU or the case so let's stick with
this number.

Upgrading the computer saves 90W of power.  Dividing that out, you get
1,800,000Wh/90W =3D 20000h before you recover that cost back.  That's
2.3 years.  But you're also switching it off for 2/3 day as well, so
that's 6 years before we will recover the energy back to the
environment that it cost to build the components.

Of course you are saving yourself on your electricity bill.  You are
saving 0.09kWh * 8h/day * 365days/year * =A30.1/kwh =3D =A326 per year. I
suspect these components cost you rather a lot, and it would take a
long time to recover those costs.  Forgetting the storage upgrade,
which is an actual upgrade, I suspect it would take you 10 years to
recover.

This is not meant as a criticism at all, as I would probably have
thought that it was a good idea before I read that book.

Sam

2009/1/26 Paul Gordon <paul@xxxxxxx>:
> As a matter of interest, I just completed a rebuild of one of my 24x7
> servers with a specific intention of reducing its energy usage.
>
> I measured it before I started at 200W in steady state, - it
fluctuated a
> little of course, say +-10W either side, but 200W was pretty much the
> average.
>
> I've replaced virtually every component as follows:
>
> Gigabye GA8I45P Pro ---> Asus P5Q-WS
> Pentium 4 3.0GHz ---> Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz
> 5 x WD 400GB SATA (RAID edition) ----> 5 x 1TB WD (Green edition)
> 2 x Maxtor 250GB 3.5" IDE ---> 2 x Samsung 120GB 2.5"
SATA
> nVidia 6600 PCE-Ex16 (with fan) ---> nVidia 7300GT with passive
cooling
>
> PSU is the same, memory is the same, cooling is the same. Vista's
> performance index is the same
>
> Using the same meter, I measured this last night at a more-or-less
consta=
nt
> 110W, - that's a pretty good improvement! I'm using the Asus EPU power
> management feature of the new mobo, and set the level at "medium
power
> saving"
>
> I'm also going to stop running this box 24x7, as having thought about
how=
I
> use it, I realised that having it on all day during the week when
no-one'=
s
> home was just pointless. So using a combination of the BIOS wake-up
featu=
re,
> and a Windows scheduled event, I'm havint start up at 17:30 every day,
an=
d
> shut down at 01:30 each morning. running it for just 8 hours/day
rather t=
han
> 24 will obviously cut its energy use by 2/3rds as well, which is no
bad
> thing...
>
> Paul G.
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx on behalf of Ian Oliver
> Sent: Mon 26/01/2009 09:29
> To: UKHA Group
> Subject: Re: Re: [ukha_d] 1TB "Green" Drives
>
> In article <4979F595.8040206@xxxxxxx>, Geoff H wrote:
>> Take a look at the mini-itx.com site http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=3D=
2
>>
>> They do some low power mini itx boards that have 4 sata connectors
on
>> them, instead of the usual two. They use the Via C7 chip and the
mobo
>> and chip pulls around 26W for the 1.8GHz processor or 22W for 1GHz
>> processor. The lower power variation is fanless.
>
> Thanks, but still seems like a fair few watts.
>
>> I did consider this recently but opted instead for an atom mobo.
>
> Yes, that's the way I might go. But the atom pulls just a few watts
and
> the current chipsets a few 10s of watts. I guess the chipsets need to
> catch up.
>
> Ian Oliver
> Sunny Leeds, UK
> Using Java on Tini for control via Dallas 1-wire
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>=20

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