Hardware Energy Efficient Hardware Investigated

Idle means it just sits at the desktop DOING NOTHING.

Unlike what you think, browsing the web does consume CPU cycles, and so does listening to music.

 

indeed, if you disable CnQ in bios and use this handy bit of software instead

http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalCPUID/index-e.html

You can run your machine with high voltages for full power overclocks for gaming and have it go down to very low power state at idle and have it ramp up in three stages.

My machine is quite happy with 0.8v at 1Ghz and so I use that all the time, plenty for most (well nearly all) tasks to be honest, but when gaming I want cooking mode 1.6v for the High CPU Overclock.

You can set what mode it boots up in via a start up shortcut which is handy, Auto (like CnQ but with your custom settings) , low, mid, high.

 

Yes but when the web page is loaded, the PC is just sitting there idle while you read it. I did say if it was idle most of the time, not all the time.

Playing music is trivial. It must be using the bare minimum of CPU cycles. Nothing that's going to make the cores clock up.

 

I found the same thing. 0.8v at 1GHz. Under load I undervolt as well so it's using somthing like 1.1 or maybe a bit more.

It's 100% stable but if I tired setting it to even 0.9v at 1GHz in the BIOS, it won't even POST

 

Lol, I think anybody who builds their own PCs is kidding themselves as to how "green" they may be. I mean, upgrading is not a "green" process in itself, even if you sell your own kit, it just means there's more kit out there requiring more resources to be used.

Lol, come on, we ain't "green", the best we can attribute to ourselves is a label of being electricity bill conscious.

 

Edit: Just quoted myself.

 

If we wanted to be green we could use nettops.

 

48x0 cards have silly idle clocks, just use ati tray tool or change bios to underclock them and you will get same low idle consumption as 58x0, my clocks (2d = 160/200(default was 500/900); hd-video+3d = 730/1000 - just 2 profiles in att, switching automaticly)

 

Or, they could simply do an overall power consumption review for specified periods of time and calculate the total wattage and percentage difference and let people do their own math on the cost side of things. Then it would apply to pretty much everyone.

 

Fixed, and added your math into the article.

 

"green" and "efficiency" marketing is one of the oldest tricks in the book. It's only being compounded by global warming guilt these days. Buy a $25,000+ hybrid and "save" money on gas, or buy a $15,000 sedan that gets 35MPG and is PZEV rated. It would take longer than the 5 year loan to make up $10,000 worth of saving on gas alone...

 

If you want to save money and save the environment, you get a 2nd hand car and keep it going for as long as you can.

If you are going to buy a brand new PC anyway, you might as well spend a bit of time and effort trying to be efficient and use less power for the benefits to heat, noise, running costs.

 

Vantec is spelled with a K in the fan graph but with a C in the article body.

Rull nice article, just had time to glance through and read the conclusion right now, but I'll definitely give it a look later today.

 

for £4 a year ill take 3* quicker even if its more lol

 

Nice article.

Gotta say the real supprise here is the sound card! Obviously it got to use some power but I never thought it would use quite so much at idle. I suppose the Xonar's that require external power use even more.

 

Nice bit of time invested in the Article. But I suspect that unless you generate your own power, or you have a overloaded circuit, you wont even contemplate how much your PC draws.

I think its also worth saying that the whole low power thing was driven by the masses of office computers drawing power during non active times. Rather than the individual PC enthusiast.

Even when current trends are mandating that computer are left on all the time in the Enterprise (e.g. Microsoft Networks * update services). Wake-on-Lan and standby / hibernation can lead to massive savings when managing thousands of workstations.

From what I've seen, I think Servers will always be a write off in terms of power, especially blades. I know of a particular HP chassis that needs 3 phase (440V - Australian) just to power 8 blades at once.

On an individual level I think that turning off the power from the wall socket will save more per year than PC green tech. I know my Asus MB draws 14 watts when turned off from the PSU (as opposed to from the wall socket). That's nearly half the power of my always running server/router (draws 35 watts).

 

it's 0c outside and i'm trying to keep my room @ 20c. all that extra power from my pc just means less money on heating, and while electricity costs more than gas - my pc is heating the room i am in so is more direct rather than heating whole building. In uk, there is only 2 months of the year where it really is wasted energy.

 

Just give the average kw/u and see what your electric company charges per kw/u.


Anyway. Is it not easier to let the PC go in standby withing 10 min of inactivity. My rig drops from 200w idle to 4w standby. Its up and running again with the touch on the mouse button. It saves a lot of energy.

 

Unfortunately quite a number of people do not understand how to do that.

Heck, even the system administrator in my school kept being puzzled when the system went into standby mode (which I set it to, as I was spending the day there and it would waste lots of electricity if I just left it on during discussion.)

For the shame of, a system administrator should have known.

 

Meh, who cares about 'green'? Give me the biggest and fastest anyday, if the bills get too high i'll just ban the missus from using the tumble dryer .