[ale] Electric bill

[Richard Bronosky]

Sounds like a great feature for a SoHo switch or Linux based router
firmware. You ought to mention it to the tomato firmware guys.
On Jun 5, 2011 3:14 PM, "David Hillman" <hillmands at gmail.com> wrote:
> @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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