[ale] Electric bill

[David Hillman]

@Pat, Byron:

My electric bill has been going up since last year.  According to a few
articles that I have looked at, computers, in general, make up less than 10%
of total household electric bill.  Even though it is a small percentage, I
still like the idea of replacing inefficient electronics with ones that are
more efficient and recycling the old boards.  It gives me that warm and
fuzzy feeling, especially for a machine that doesn't even use half of the
processing power that is has.  The only thing that will give me pause is if
I feel I am being taken for a ride.  Take those Mini-ITX boards, for
example.  The economics feels wrong somehow.  Mini-ITX boards are smaller,
less powerful and yet they cost more way more than a more powerful full-size
board.  Even the ones without CPUs cost more money for less stuff.  Take the
Zotac NF610i-K-E vs. MSI G41M-P33.  They are both socket 775 1333 FSB.  Both
have SATA, audio and pretty much the same Realtek LAN chip.  It's pointless
to compare the chipsets; G41 is a way better chipset.  The MSI board also
has more expansion ports, yet it costs $10 less than the Zotac.  Seems like
I'll be taken for a ride there.  Bollocks.

Pat, I like your idea of only using the computer when you have to.  I have
been trying to figure out how to have my media server wake up only when I
want to watch movies on the PS3 console and without doing much manual labor.
 I am thinking it would a good idea to have a small device that acts as a
delegate for much more powerful machines that actually provide the services.
 Whenever the PS3 asks for a movie file from the delegate, it'll relay a WOL
signal to the media server box (if it isn't awake yet).  The delegate only
has to understand the media sharing protocol, but it doesn't have to be
powerful enough to crunch the numbers, etc.  Once the media box comes up,
the delegate can transfer control directly to the media server box.  The
same sort of idea is used for web services.  Is that too complicated for
these types of network services?  I haven't been able to find a way to way
get the PS3 to directly wake the cranky media box; it always just times out.
 The media box is old and takes forever to boot up.

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 1:19 PM, Pat Regan <thehead at patshead.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 4 Jun 2011 12:30:32 -0400
> David Hillman <hillmands at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > more stuff than I need. Supermicro has a couple of dual Atom Mini-ITX
> > server boards, but they are pretty expensive.  You get what you pay
> > for with those boards, though.
>
> I picked up a P3 Kill-A-Watt a couple of months ago and I had some fun
> measuring various devices around the house.
>
> The thing I was most curious about was my home file server (aka my
> arcade cabinet).  It sits right behind me and the cpu and ps fans are
> fairly noisy (the guts I reused are getting pretty old), so I don't
> leave it powered up all the time.
>
> I was hoping that one of those nvidia ion motherboards (with the atom
> cpus) would be fast enough for the games I have on there.  I was also
> hoping that the power savings would be great enough to help offset the
> cost of the "upgrade."
>
> The cabinet currently has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800, five 1 TB drives
> (that are almost always spun down), and a very outdated nvidia card of
> some sort.
>
> When playing games it maxes out at about 135 watts.  When all the
> drives are spun down and it is idling it uses a bit over 100 watts.
> That's less than $100 per year, assuming I run it 24/7 (which I'm
> not).  If the replacement hardware magically used no power it would
> take more than 2 years to pay for the "upgrade."
>
> I keep putting upgrade in quotes because the newer, lower powered
> hardware isn't faster than what I already have.  :)
>
> The internet leads me to believe that the best I can hope for is around
> 20-30 watts at idle.
>
> Pat
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