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Small Form Factor Would an Intel stick be good for ->

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by Vault-Tec, 18 Oct 2017.

  1. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Yeah, it's high power items and stuff with heating elements that you need to watch for really - stuff like electric showers, kettles, ovens, hairdryers, and halogen lights. Stuff that draws relatively little power but is left switched on all the time might be a factor but it's generally the big stuff that you have to watch for. Of course, it does all aggregate up, but if you're looking to clamp down on your electricity bill then the biggest gains will be from cutting out the thirstiest appliances.
     
  2. Arboreal

    Arboreal Keeper of the Electric Currants

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    We've changed almost all our bulbs from trad or halogen to LED, and it has helped the bills; especially when the young uns leave the lights on all the time....
    The biggest one to sort is our R7 240W (was 300W) linear halogen uplighter; I can't find a decent high lumen LED conversion that won't mess up with the dimmer fitted.
    A new whole uplighter in LED that spec is £125, which is a lot of kWh burned.
     
  3. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    This is my breakdown for the week ending the 8th:

    [​IMG]

    The lower part of the graph is gas (central heating, hot water, and hobs) and the upper part 'leccy (oven, everything else). £17.32 that week, which was apparently £3 more than the week before. That's with LED lighting pretty much everywhere, but a non-LED Samsung Series 6 LCD TV that spends more time than it should switched on.
     
  4. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    Thanks guys all good advice. When my wife was here I used to leave the hall light on all night (flouro tube thinger energy saving). Couple of reasons. 1 - I hate the dark (it's an Aspie thing) and 2 - if I get up for a pee in the night I am usually off my face on pills. I take a dose of Seroquel at bedtime and a dose of Zopiclone and yeah, if I wake I am out of it. And I've hurt myself a couple of times walking into walls and one night the chest of drawers. Bugger me that hurt, 17 stone walking fast face first into a high chest of drawers.. However, lately I have been turning it off and being careful, then turning it on, doing what I gotta do then turning it off again. I do, however, have a weakness and that is my Edison lamp which probably chows down on leccy.

    [​IMG]

    I run that when I go to bed (around 10pm atm) and have it on for 2-3 hours before turning it off and going to sleep. It took me until I was 35 to sleep with the lights off :(

    Just checked the PC etc wall and I am pulling 202-203w now.
     
  5. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    Blimey. Just shut the PC down, 22w at the wall lol. So I am pulling 180-200w idle.
     
  6. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    Personally the biggest savings I've found was to make sure the fridge isn't too cold and banishing halogen light bulbs.

    As for PCs, well it is all a bit complicated, the problem is that the whole 80 Plus rating thing doesn't apply until you get up to 20% load, so PSUs are tweaked to be efficient with a 20% to 100% load, efficiency at sub 20% loads be damned.
    The only exception are the Titanium rated PSUs as they have to be efficient at 10% already, but given the premium they cost you'll never recover the initial cost.

    What you could do is to get yourself a nice big windows tablet (be careful to make sure it has at least 4GB Ram, Win 10 does not play nice with 2GB) and then turn on the PC only when needed (Teclast X3 Plus or something along those lines).
     
    Last edited: 19 Oct 2017
  7. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    Our uplighters were a killer also as mentioned in the thread, we switched out for some CFLs at 14w total, similar light level but hell of a lot of watts saved, we don't use a dimmer though, so easy.
     
  8. bawjaws

    bawjaws Multimodder

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    Yeah, halogens are thirsty. The only halogens remaining in our house are the security lights (at 240W each), but I'm minded to try and source some decent LED replacements as we quite often have the front security light on of an evening.
     
  9. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    I'm thinking I might have to have another magical mystery tour of what's using power in my house too. Bill is around £80/month but beyond coffee machine and appliances I don't think there are any significant users, especially now that I don't even have a desktop. I feel it might be lots of sippers together which might be tough to pin down - I've switched fully over to LED for instance, but they're mostly Hue bulbs which take a constant drip feed. That along with Sonoses (Sonii?), networking gear, cams etc etc... it wouldn't surprise me if half of my usage is a whole bunch of things that sip ~2-5w.

    Halogens can be brutal... when I moved in there were 18x50w in the kitchen! Never mind the power usage, it was like being in a sauna regardless of the time of year.

    So if we're talking about using power consumption as an excuse to get a new toy that we want anyway, that's one thing, and not a problem. I've upgraded things before on this excuse "oh, it's a lower power CPU so will save money AND the environment", when in reality I'm not breaking even for a looooooong time.

    It would be at least a couple of years to break even, for instance, using a low power windows tablet instead of that PC some of the time, so I'm not sure the "I'm saving money" argument is all that solid, standing on its own anyway, especially for the compromises involved with using a cheapo tablet vs a real PC.
     
  10. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    I don't want anything as fancy as a tablet etc. I've just spent about an hour doing some research and decided against Ubuntu. Mostly because to connect to the Dlink I have is as confusing as f**k and very difficult. Lots of messing around in Terminal and playing with the NAS itself. In the end I have this on my shortlist..

    http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/H96-Pro-O...e=STRK:MEBIDX:IT&_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649

    8 core (well, two quads glued together) one runs 1.5ghz the other 1ghz. 3gb ram 16gb storage (more than enough for the few apps I would need). I checked out photo editing apps that's easy, four USB ports so I could just load it up with sticks I already have (two 32s and a 16) and just put music on as I need it and or get fed up with it. I reckon that thing would use 1/10th the leccy I am using now on running the PC just for lols.
     
  11. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    OK so in the end I decided to go with the Intel compute stick with Ubuntu. I forgot that of a weekend I watch football streams and Android will not run them. Ubuntu does, very well using a mixture of browsers (Chromium, Chrome and Firefox). My Windows PC will not play many of them which is odd.

    Any way, I sort of know my way around Ubuntu so I decided to jump on that and a USB hub (powered so it doesn't drive me crazy). Total spend was £49.99.

    So that's part one. Any one know of a good Ubuntu proggy to resize/brighten/tidy up photos?
     
  12. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Do ooboo not still bundle Shotwell? That or GIMP...

    @Gareth Halfacree would be the one to ask on that front.
     
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  13. Anfield

    Anfield Multimodder

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    While there definitely are compromises, the problem is that other alternatives have even bigger compromises.
    Unfortunately there really is no perfect solution to replace a desktop with, so you either work out what exact compromises you can live with (obviously the more you are willing to compromise the more you save) or you end up like me, in a never ending cycle of buying more junk to address "insert first world problem of choice" and almost require a spreadsheet to keep up with what is best for which need.
     
  14. Mister_Tad

    Mister_Tad Will work for nuts Super Moderator

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    I was referring to the alternative of simply continuing to use the desktop in the same manner and focusing power reduction elsewhere, since in real terms even entirely eliminating it is only saving ~10% of the bill.
     
  15. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    Thing is apart from about 2-3hrs of TV in the bedroom (and things I can't remove like the fridge freezer) I don't really use anything else. I use Ubuntu all weekend any way on a Phenom 2 X6 rig, so I do like it. I will pull the cabinet out tomorrow and see what the other stuff is eating on idle :)

    Red - I just need something simple that can resize, trim etc and rotate.
     
    Last edited: 19 Oct 2017
  16. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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    Fairly sure shotwell can do all of that... Last time i did anything meaningful with linux it came bundled with most distros and was GNOME's answer to iPhoto...
     
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  17. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    They do, and...
    ...it can. S'basically the OSS world's answer to Photos.app on t'Mac.

    I like doing things the hard way, though, so I use The Gimp. Krita's another popular option - originally designed with illustration in mind, but I know a lot of people use it for image editing.

    They're all available right there in Ubuntu's standard repos.
     
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  18. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    Wicked cheers chaps. If all goes well I will get a nice fast SDXC card for it, as I don't think 8gb will cut it haha.
     
  19. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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    Well that was a total waste of money. Booted it up and it takes forever to do anything (like ten minutes to load facebook through a browser, for example). Chromium does not work. I removed it, reinstalled it, updated it still won't work. Chrome doesn't run either and then it ran out of storage space and ground to a halt.
     
  20. Vault-Tec

    Vault-Tec Green Plastic Watering Can

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