Power Consumption and the Modern Geek 76
mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech's Loyd Case got his hands on an Extech model 380083 power meter and decided to find out exactly how many watts today's geek equipment uses. He compares AMD vs. Intel processors, Nvidia vs. ATI graphics cards, and even checks out what a cranked up audio system draws -- it's a lot more than a PC."
Re:Power meter model? (Score:3, Funny)
From http://www.extechstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=VI EWPROD&ProdID=98 [extechstore.com]:
Four simultaneous LCD display of Watts, Power Factor or VA, Voltage or Hz, Amps - FOUR!!! LCD!! Come on.
True RMS Voltage and current measurements of sine, square, triangular and distorted wave forms with a crest factor 5 - Richard M Stallman voltage!! Sine waves!
Plug device to be tested directly into the Power Analyzer - It plugs in to something, thats gotta be cool.
Built in Datalogger stores up to 1,012 read
Reactive power - don't worry about it (Score:2, Informative)
P3 International's P4400 Power Meter (Score:5, Informative)
--
Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
Any tool can be the right tool (Score:2)
Before I got my nice clamp-on one I had a similar rig with an alligator-clipped gap in one lead. With this method you can also get power for DC circuits. It's kinda cool to know how much power my mp3 player draws with backlight on vs off.
I know it's cool to have special tools, but why not use the ones you already h
Just a multimeter is not enough, for AC power. (Score:2)
Re:Any tool can be the right tool (Score:3, Informative)
We need RMS power. (Score:2)
Re:Any tool can be the right tool (Score:2)
For example, you can plug the thing in for a period of time. After a day or so, it will tell you how many KWHs were consumed, which tells you how much money it cost.
European model? (Score:2)
By the way, have look at this Electricity around the world [pandora.be] page. The huge amount of different plug shapes is maddening.
Re:European model? (Score:2)
Go outside your house, and time the little power wheel on your electric meter. Then turn on your device, and re-time the wheel. Then do the math.
Re:European model? (Score:1)
Still, it allowed me to discover that my parent's house burns around 100 W at idle, which disturbed me and left me wanting to know more.
Re:European model? (Score:4, Informative)
I have one, seems to do the job!
Re:European model? (Score:1)
Re:European model? (Score:2)
I used to check my usage of my server and found out by just unplugging the CD-ROM drive, it saves about 10 Watts for an idle drive!
Re:European model? (Score:1)
P3 International's web site (Score:3, Informative)
Interesting company: One of the products is a Voice Changer [p3international.com].
How about a 240 volt version - for USA (Score:2)
How about one that's not upside when plugged into outlets that are correctly oriented with the ground pin upwards for added safety reasons?
How about one that can handle 240 volts with American (NEMA 6-15) standard plug and outlet for those of us that run their computers (yes, virtually all PC power supplies will handle it fine) more efficiently? OK, I'll use CEE 7/7 if I need to.
FYI to Europeans ... yes we do have 240 volts here in North America. And it's safer here because the voltage relative to groun
Uh Oh (Score:4, Funny)
i guess it's a good thing that my electric is included in my rent...
Re:Uh Oh (Score:1)
Re:Uh Oh (Score:1)
Can too overclock a CnQ enabled AMD system (Score:4, Informative)
The way Cool'n'Quiet works is that it reduces the multiplier when at idle or reduced load. So the clock speed effectively goes down, which means the CPU draws less current. But it also means that we couldn't overclock. On our ASUS A8N32-SLI motherboard, enabling Cool'n'Quiet disables the ability to overclock.
Maybe they changed it on the A8N32-SLI, but that's not how it works on the A8N-SLI Premium. My X2 3800+ is OC'd by 15%, running 1150MHz in CnQ mode and 2300MHz at full speed. What you can't do is change the core voltage from its default settings with CnQ enabled, so forget about OC'ing a 3800+ to FX60 levels. Since AMD is very conservative with their default voltage settings you have some room to play with if you have proper cooling.
CnQ on desktop CPUs normally runs the processor at 1GHz at 1.1V core while idle and full speed at a higher core voltage under load. In practice this makes a fairly minor difference, but for a machine that runs 24x7 every little bit helps.
Notebook CPUs use 800MHz at an even lower core voltage (usually 0.95V or 1V) as their low-power setting, which makes CnQ significantly more effective than in desktops. You definitely want to keep power management enabled in notebooks.
Core voltage has a much greater effect on power consumption than clockspeed, which is why undervolting is so popular.
You'll want to buy AMD over Intel regardless
Small unsatisfying chunks. (Score:2, Funny)
interesting as that art- (->next)
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Collecting old PC's (Score:1)
Currently we have a shared laptop, 1x 486 (unused, and stored to become a networked storage area), 2x K6-2 500's (testing various linux configs), 1x Duron 1.1 (for business), 2x Athlon (K7) 3000+ machines (for myself and gf), and a K8 3000+ which is about to go live. At any one time we have 2 machines in use: sometimes 4.
I only got my first computer about 6-7 years ago: Since then I haven't got rid of anything th
Re:Collecting old PC's (Score:2)
I used to have a similar list to yours, but most of it is in storage now. I have reduced it to a XP3200+ with a RAID array which is used for storage and thin clients like this: http://www.sigsegv.cx/hp-thin-client.html [sigsegv.cx] for the actual use. This or various Via EPIA systems. 5-15W power consumption. And most importantly - very very very quiet.
Re:Collecting old PC's (Score:2)
(I have a similar situation as the grandparent)
Re:Collecting old PC's (Score:2)
You have to pay.
But the price of a second hand thin client with a warranty from someone like Computacenter is peanuts. Depending on the CPU you can get them for 50-120$ in the US or 50-120£ in the UK (due to the usual way things a priced). If you are brave enough to buy from Ebay you can get them for even less.
Overall, their cost is comparable to the electricity bill for a desktop with a P4 or Athlon (especially one that has not had power management configured t
Re:Collecting old PC's (Score:1)
My mates just won't join a LAN party unless it is a cosy affair (involving beer and sofas), and I am the only one with the kit and the know-how to set it up for them / us / myself.
Maybe I should give up on that ghost considering the electric bill..
Re:Collecting old PC's (Score:1)
Re:Collecting old PC's (Score:2)
my electric bill is out of control (Score:1)
philo
Re:my electric bill is out of control (Score:2)
Re:my electric bill is out of control (Score:1)
the laptops are 1 thinkpad, an old powerbook, my brother's new powerbook and my gf's laptop. the only one that's not in regular service is the powerbook, but since it runs 10.4, i keep it around to stay current on osx.
philo
Some people have free time to burn... (Score:2)
#1: a more interesting debate taking place today regards how much power various devices draw when in standby mode. I've seen estimates that from 5% of 13% of all U.S. power consumption is pissed away in various standby modes.
#2. if you own a house you can just walk out to the electric meter to see what's going on. (Shut down all circuits but one and only draw on one device for a while.)
Re:Some people have free time to burn... (Score:2)
1) In many homes, the builders didn't bother labeling the circuit breakers with which rooms they actually go to (for good reason sometimes, because for instance in my house one of the bedrooms shares a circuit with two outlets in the living room for some odd reason). So you might go through some trouble figuring out which breaker to leave on.
2) If you live with someone, they probably won't be thrilled with you turning their lights off just so you can measure your computer's power consumptio
hehe (Score:2)
I would bet the 160w stereo sucks closer to 1000 at the plug there is a lot of excess heat, even more if i turn on the 2 EQs, the 8-track, and the 4-channel dobly box
Usually a TV on to see if anything is on and 2 computers running when i am home. At least there is no 24/7
I dont imagine the florescent bulbs quite compensate
Would be interesting to compare tohe 2 computers tho, 1 intel 2.4 and one AMD 2500+ that are alm
160W amps actualy consume 1W (Score:2)
If you actually maxed it out, sure. But 160W is quite loud. Too loud to be in the same room. Probably too loud to be in the same house. My 200W integrated amplifier hovers arround 1W most of the time, rarely reaching 2W. Even if the efficiency is only 10%, that's still much less than a modern desktop computer.
Now *this* is why (Score:1)
Re:Now *this* is why (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Now *this* is why (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Now *this* is why (Score:1)
Re:Now *this* is why (Score:2)
Re:Now *this* is why (Score:2)
If only... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If only... (Score:2)
Say, a moderate PC will use about 175 Watt, which is 175 Joule/second. In an hour, that is 175 * 3600 / 1000 = 630 kJ. A peanut butter sandwich contains about 100 kcal, that is 420 kJ. So, with 100% conversion you would need to eat 1.5 peanut butter sandwiches to keep a pc running. Of course, you cannot directly conver
Re:If only... (Score:2)
UNITS people! (Score:2)
Re:UNITS people! (Score:1)
that doesn't quite make sense though--i'd expect boot up to use extra power to overcome platter inertia and that is not reflected on the graph.
I use half the energy i used to use in 1999 (Score:4, Interesting)
Some easy ways to reduce power:
1. use LCD flat screen instead of CRT;
2. replace lightbulbs with flourescent lightbulbs as they burn out (1/8 energy);
3. get a good UPS system ($99 or less on TigerDirect) which allows you to turn off power automatically via software, and send shutdown and kill signals to programs that don't need to be on (such as backup servers, monitors, TVs, etc).;
4. run off of flash RAM USB keychains and such that are low power, and consider using LEDs instead of incandescent lights.
And now I have many times the processing power, even with less energy usage.
Re:I use half the energy i used to use in 1999 (Score:1)
Re:I use half the energy i used to use in 1999 (Score:1)
Re:I use half the energy i used to use in 1999 (Score:2)
I'm not so sure that's true anymore. Todays bright LCD screens draw upwards of 100W, where a modern CRT is about 60W (going by my measurements of my Philips 107Ts here).
Here's what I did (Score:1, Interesting)
You can then log the power consumption for your entire house including those difficult to tap devices like ovens and HWCs.
Minor appliances like desk lamps and laptop power supplies do show up, but it would be good to have some bayesean analysis algorithms that attempt to determine the most likely cause of a sudden rise/fall in usage. Something like "spike detected - whi
Re:Here's what I did (Score:1)
Is that an AC Linux box or a DC Linux box?
huh? (Score:2)
For the first graph, the units for both the horizontal and vertical axes seem to be Watts. Huh? And why would the power draw of an idle processor rise over time? (Maybe as it heats up?)
But the second graph is the real kicker. 6 labels for 12 bars. The significance of the bars, the power draw in watts is simple enough. But what bar is what? The first two Pentiums seem OK - the first bar, above the label, is the idle power, then the bar next to the label is the peak power
Re:huh? (Score:2)
The second graph, they just failed to lable half the CPUs tested. They reference the 955XE, which is not labled anywhere on their graph.
It's not idle/load, it's just peak for each CPU, but they made the graph to small to get all the CPU names on the left hand side... *sigh*
The first graph, I'm lost. I think the horizontal axis should be time. Turn it on, let it sit idle for 10 minutes recording power usage, then run a few loops of 3dmark recording power usage. The trends on
Stereo = Washer (Score:1)
Why buy a "power meter"? (Score:1)
Re:Why buy a "power meter"? (Score:1)
You're failing to take account of it being AC.
What's wrong with making this a DIY project and doing a little math along the way?
You win at irony!
So turn things off when you aren't using them. (Score:2)
It's convenient to just be able to walk up and start using it. But translate that power consumption into the equivalent number of 60W light bulbs, and ask yourself how you'd feel about leaving that many light bulbs on all the time.