Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:07:45 -0700 From: Gary Kline <kline@thought.org> To: Chris Whitehouse <cwhiteh@onetel.com> Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: general questions about 7.0 and computer efficiency...... Message-ID: <20080812010745.GA24824@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <48A0CF70.4060903@onetel.com> References: <20080805181926.GA24000@thought.org> <48A0CF70.4060903@onetel.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 12:46:56AM +0100, Chris Whitehouse wrote: > > Hi Gary > > Just back from hols so hope I'm not too late to add 2c. If you do go for > new machines it's worth doing some research. I found there's no single > component to go for when aiming for energy efficiency, you need to look > at them all. tHis was the point one person made, and of course it makes sense to weigh every variable. Including use patterns. E.G., I've cut my personal hacking way down, save for PHP, but still build most things during a portupgrade. > I made energy efficiency and silence the top priorities > when researching parts for my current desktop and the two pretty much go > together. I ended up with Asus M2NPV-VM motherboard and AMD 35watt cpu > and Seasonic high efficiency power supply. The CPU is even lower power > than AMD's low power range (search for ADD3800CUBOX). It was cheap then > but they are hard to find now. There seems to be a lot of variation in > CPU power consumption in CPU's with the same performance, eg > ADO3800CUBOX, virtually identical, is 65 watts. Do you build your hardware from the tower case up? ---Green is "in" these days; so maybe some of us, or each of us, can contribute to a best-of list for those who are going to find a local builder or roll their own. First time I'll be in an "in" group :-) > > You can also reduce consumption by choosing an energy efficient model of > power supply and by choosing lower output power. I calculated the power > consumption for each component and found I could buy the smallest power > supply in the Seasonic range and still have power to spare. Only one > hard drive of course. I bought SATA but it turns out IDE uses less > power. Also limiting the amount of memory and keeping the monitor > brightness turned down keeps power consumption down. Hmm, any idea if a large drive <= 200G is more/less watts than having, oh, 4Gigs of ram?? > > It's a while since I measured the power consumption of the finished > machine but I seem to remember it uses about 35 watts at idle and about > 95 watts while exercising everything to the max. The Dells at work use > quite a lot more, in the region of 60 to 130 I think. Not that bad if you've got only one box. My Ubuntu is a bear to reboot, sometimes, because the mouse goes nuts every other reboot. > > It's a good idea to turn computers off at the wall when not using them > not just shut them down. I was surprised to find mine uses about 25 > watts when shut down. Again the Dells at work use even more. The > corporate environment must waste so many megawatts... > > For servers my workplace is heading towards fewer physical machines and > running virtual servers to implement their 'green ICT' policy. > > It's great to hear that someone else is thinking about the environmental > effects. I've been thinking about my footprint ever since talking to a friend up in Ottawa who was looking into building a hay-bail home. This is [tiny] green [/tiny]. Hay-bail insulation is [HUGE] Green [/HUGE]. I told him I was going to buy some land north of Nome and plant palm trees! gary > > Chris > -- Gary Kline kline@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20080812010745.GA24824>