Re: lower power PCs

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

"Dan Lanciani" <ddl@danlan.*com> wrote in message
news:1348312@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> For some time I've been using an old Dell Optiplex P3/600 for some home
> control and A/V functions.  It is a big tower with a number of PCI and
> ISA cards, three older hard drives, and a CDROM.  I was always pleased
> that it lights no LEDs on the power scale of the 1000VA UPS to which it
> is attached.
>
> I wanted a little more CPU power to allow for some MPEG transcoding so
> I'm replacing the Optiplex with a more modern P4/3GHz machine with
> two recent hard drives, a DVDR and an FX5200 video card.  (Everything
> else is on the ASUS P4C motherboard.  This "new" machine is a few years
> old, but much newer than the Dell.)
>
> I was a little disturbed that the "new" machine lit two LEDs on the
> UPS, so I got out my genuine glass-cased watt-hour meter.  Turns out
> that the old Dell draws about 60W while the new machine draws 140W.  Ok,
> I realize the "new" machine is a lot faster but I thought efficiency
> improvements had at least somewhat offset this.  Am I being unrealistic
> or should I be able to do better?

You can do better using the newer CPUs designed for low power consumption.
But you also need to compare the actual juice used over a period of time to
evaluate the green options fairly.  A spot reading can be very misleading.

Desktop processors have been, up until recently, power hogs.  Now the
emphasis is on efficiency, not brute speed, as evidenced by multicore
devices which will enable big companies to replace four 400W servers with a
single box.  The newer the machine and CPU, generally the better performance
from "green" options.  With those options enabled your overall power
consumption is likely to be less with the newer machine than with the older
one.  At least that's what I've found with ASUS boards.  Each new
motherboard gets greener and greener, and as a result, machines left on all
the time really use a lot less power than older, less green "aware"
machines.

Don't get me wrong, older machines had all the same ideas, but I found it
wasn't always possible to wake a from a green "sleep" state without some
sort of brain damage.  Driver writers seem to be more aware now of the need
to write drivers that allow devices to go to sleep without requiring a
reboot to get them started again.

I'm sure you know that Kill-o-Watt meters are great for measuring the actual
power sucked by each server over a week or so.  That should be enough time
to give you a good estimate.  I'll be converting an old 175 watt server with
a dual PS and two 300MHz Pentiums on board.  I believe it's an ASUS P2B but
it's been running for 12 years constantly without major failure or
maintenance required so I really can't say for sure.  I wish everything I
owned was so reliable and required so little futzing to keep running.  As
for replacements, I am seriously thinking of using a laptop with an
identical spare.  With a USB hub and 1TB external drives, there's little I
can't do except add expansion cards.  Built in UPS and the smallest
footprint imaginable.  Also, extremely low power consumption.  USB has
really boosted the usability of laptops used in a server configuration since
so many add-ons are now USB based.  Many are battle-hardened, as well, and
last year's models are always available on Ebay from companies that upgrade
yearly.  Best of all, since they are expected to run for hours on a small
LIon battery, they *really* squeeze every last electron out of their power
source.  Use you old UPS and you could see run times in days, not hours.
More expensive in the short run, but less money to the power company in the
long run.  I am going to put the Kill-O-Watt to a 400MhZ laptop and 500GB
external USB and DVDRW drive to see what they pull and what the payback time
will be.

--
Bobby G.