Low power PCs

After getting the anticipated electricity bill for next year and picking
myself up off the floor (£1374) I've decided to do something about the
few things I know are eating it.

The chest freezer contents have been eaten / binned (if the use by date
is earlier than 2006) and the remains condensed into the other freezer -
result 1 large freezer turned off.

The pre-amp will be doctored so it can remotely switch the two power
amps off/on, should save ~250W 20/7/365.

The bit I'm happy with is the new server PC I'm building.

I've had one of these lying round for a couple of years:-
http://tinyurl.com/5bcknw
Absolutely *tiny* board, 400MHz CPU, 512MB RAM, consumes about 17W max,
<5W idle. (cost : 0)

Slap a 2.5" 500GB Samsung drive on it, takes another 2W. (cost : £100)

Add an 85% efficient 5V PSU from Maplins, total power is 22.3W maximum.
(cost : £20)

Slightly less than the 140W of the current server

So that'll save about 0.4Kw 24/7/365, or about £350 a year.

 

In a similar vein, I've just bought an Intel D945GCLF2 mini-itx board
from my HTPC. It's a dual-core Atom 330 processor running at 1.6GHz
and
it absolutely flies! The review says it's 23W idle and 26W under load
so not too bad at all. http://www.mini-itx.com/reviews/atoms/

 

What is that server for? If just for sharing a disk, there was some sort of
router with the ability to plug USB disks to it, and then have the disks
shared among all the workstations in the network. The router was also able
to detect on-going http and torrent downloads and continue them to the
plugged USB disk in case the workstation initiating the download were shut
down.

My vein has been recycling a mini-itx Celeron 900MHz station that was used
for playing music at bank offices into an e-mulestation. The LCD in the
front has been conveniently hacked to display current download rate and
total downloaded. Some 70W, mind.

Interesting... I don't feel like replacing my (very olde) Pentium IV with a
quad core, as most of the time I wouldn't use all that power. But one of
these you mention for Office/Internet and the other one for launching
virtual machines with whatever weird project architecture prototype I may be
testing... Not to mention desktop spaces savings.

It seems to be some nerd did it before:
http://www.broadbandreports.com/forum/r21450305-Updated-VMware-Home-Lab-setup

 

'antonye' wrote...>

Nice. I would have bought something like that if I didn't have this one
lying around.

 

'Champ' wrote...>

Oh yes, I know he's "the man" when it comes to PC hardware.

Its destined to become a server thats got to sit there turned on 24/7 to
receive emails, allow me to connect to it remotely, etc.

I will have to set up Linux's power savings so it slows down the CPU and
stops the HDD after so long. More of a PITA than Windows power saving
configuration, but still very much worth it.

Nice. I suspect that how well PCs work when they come out of sleep mode
depends on the hardware, some work really well, with some others enough
bits just don't work you have to reboot - network, USB ports, keyboards.

One thing that did suprise me is how much power a PCs PSU takes all by
itself.

A spare one I had lying around took 17W powering nothing.

(Due to that embedded board just having a 4 pin power connector I had to
trick a PC PSU into coming on whether anything is connected to it or
not, not going to be a problem when its finished as I've got that 5V
PSU)

 

'Domènec' wrote...>

Linux server that runs email, news, web, ftp, ssh, ntp and dns servers,
also it will do file sharing.

Not heard of that one before, sounds ideal for purely file sharing use.

I am in the process of changing ISP to a decent one and hope to move all
the services I run (apart from email and news) to the ISP.

 

I use one of my T30 IBM Thinkpads when I want to leave a machine
running at home all day, for VNC connections etc. It only uses 20W in
total and is very reliable. More powerful laptops are available..

 

Who are you going to, and have you got a mac code out of sky?

I'm curious about how smoothly and unundled migrate out goes.

 

Aye, with processors now supporting deeper power states you can even
make standard desktops greener with little effort.

For those that still like a bit of multiprocessing bang whilst keeping
green, there are a few budget low power Intel Core2Quad (Kentsfield)
on the horizon that are claimed to be 65W TDP, but if they're anything
like the current 65W (Wolfdale) family, they will actually come in
quite a fair bit below that quoted TDP figure.

Obviously not in the Atom/Embedded AMD league, but still better that a
95/130/150W C2Q at the moment !

 

I'm considering that exact same board. Have you found it in stock and
inexpensive? The Dabs price went up £20 from expecting stock to instock :-(

 

My pikey solution was a laptop with a knackered screen. I'd have liked
something like that, but I'm tight and this was going begging.

 

'ginge' wrote...>

I'm going to Andrews and Arnolds ( www.aaisp.com ). Simple reason I've
chosen them is the way they've arranged their capped usage.

Its in three parts, 2GB cap between 9am and 6pm, and an extra 100GB cap
between 6pm and 2am, and from 2am to 9am there's no cap. £20pm

Also they have their own news server, and they seem to know their onions
very well, letting you sort out your own DNS, rDNS, don't block any
ports, don't mind you running whatever servers you want, static IP,
blocks of IPs if you need them.

Getting a MAC code out of Sky was a doddle. 10 mins on the phone and
they arrange to have it sent out to you and they also send it to your
mobile in a text.

 

Yer, but, treat that with a pinch of salt. I just got my latest bill,
322ukp in credit, they are sending me a cheque...... and then the
killer.... raising the DD to 114uk (from 100ukp).... hmmm lets see... I
use *less* than they expected....so they want more of *my* money.

I'll be on the phone tomorrow, may threaten to go to a quarterly bill for
a laugh.

 

Useful to know.

I'm borderline thinking of dumping Sky completely, as I've realised
there's enough stuff to watch on Freeview now. Would probably go be*
for my ISP if I do so.

 

EON just tried to increase my DD payment from £44 to £70/month. I say
tried because I cancelled my direct debit the next day. I was
surprised by how little fuss they made.

<anticipates £210 quarterly bill>

 

I looked and looked and looked some more. Microdirect has it cheapest
(57.26 inc) but never has any in stock. Ebuyer has them listed if you
search but doesn't have any stock. Mini-Itx I've used before so just
went with them as they have stock. Given that it's only a tenner more
than the single core and gave much better results, it's deffo the
one to go for.

I wanted to install XP Pro but it blue-screens during setup with
my install disk, so I've had to install XP-MCE instead. It flies
with 2Gb ram in it!

 

Oddly, PC World Business seems to work out the best in stock especially
with 5% Quidco.

Vista here I come

 

I've turned off my server, and only fire up the media box in the lounge
when I need it.

Chest freezer will be emptied and turned off tomorrow.

Been thinking about one of these, though:

http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=175674

Seems ideal if you want a low power server, or even as a low power media
box.

 

Just got off with the phone with them, the don't seem to care or want to
talk sense.

I was told if I went quarterly I would lose my discount.
Wow ! 3.03ukp....

Think I can survive, DD canceled.

Do what I am doing now, dump it into another account.

 

Strange they don't care. I believe they aren't allowed to generate
interest from DD payments but surely it must help with cash flow in
the business.

That sounds like a sensible idea.