Power-consumption

[AE35]

Hi all. I'm in a mood to post today

I'm not what you might be calling a green guy, but the wife and I have
decided to try to cut back on the power consumption. Usually alle PC's
and monitors would be running 24/7 with CRT monitors on the larger size,
21"-37", not counting the CRT projectors etc.

So, I'm looking at my arcade machines and thinking that each of them
has a CPU at 2,8Ghz minimum each. Even the one running only classic
4-way vertical games like Lady Bug and Donkey Kong(Billy Mitchell HELL
YEAH)

So I'm thinking. Does the CPU run at max power all the time, or does it
go with the flow ? I take it a CPU like that would run about 80W?
Should I turn it down in speed and just have longer reboot? Would there
be something to gain here? Because, with the 21" CRT and the 2,8Ghz
PC etc. we're talking 200W + to play Pac-Man   (don't take it the wrong way)

So what do you think? I really want to hear, just as long as it's not a
suggestion about going flatpanel

Thanks!!

Nicholas

[blueznl]

It depends on the software you run. But if you're running windows, AND hibernate works, I suggest you enable hibernate on all your machines, which makes booting it acceptable.

[BobA]

You can also go the full route and make sure your monitor is set to power down and your monitor and hard drives power down after a specific time of non use.  It is in the Power Options area where you also setup for hibernate and standby.

[RayB]

You'll reduce more consumption by just replacing your incandescant light bulbs and turning off stuff that doesn't need to be on.

[FrizzleFried]

Running your CPU at a slower speed isn't going to significantly reduce your power usage.  The primary culprit is,  of course,  the monitor.

When not using your PC's,  make sure to enable hibernate.  Also make sure your monitors go to sleep when hibernate is enabled...Smartpower strips work wonderfully with Arcade Monitors to shut them down when the PC goes to sleep.  Also,  the less "stuff" the PC has,  the less power it uses.  Do  you have a floppy drive in your cabinet?  If so,  WHY?  Do you have a CDROM/DVDROM in your cabinet,  if so,  WHY?  Are you running on board sound or do you have a Sound Blaster sucking up energy in there?   Is that TV card really necessary in a dedicated cabinet?  Etc...

Replace all your incandescent light bulbs throughout the house with florescent replacements.  There is a HUGE difference between a 100w incandescent bulb that uses,  well,  100 watts and a 100w florescent replacement bulb that uses 13 watts...now if you are like me you have 4 of the suckers running in the garage when you turn on the light.  That would be 400 watts of incandescent power vs 52 watts of florescent power...it really adds up (especially on those nights that in a drunken stupor you forget to turn off the lights for the night).  Helll,  my kitchen uses 7 bulbs!  ...that would be 700 watts!  Instead I run 6 florescent bulbs and 1 incandescent (the one negitive of florescent bulbs is they take a minute or so to warm up and output maximum light...so I run 1 incandescent to immediately light up to full strength when I turn on the light.   So instead of 700 watts to light up the kitchen,  I am rolling with 178 watts.

My Bad Dudes cabinet actually used INCANDESCENT LIGHTS in it (as evidenced by the burn mark at the top of the cabinet).  I now use two 40 watt replacement bulbs in there.  They are 4 watts apiece...8 watts to light up the marquee isn't bad at all...

[AE35]

The PC's in the cabinets are all barebones...only HDD and mobo with
everything onboard!

We already changed all the lightbulbs in the house

I have a feeling that the main drop in usage will be from the normal PC not
running 24/7 anymore. Shut off while at work, and while we sleep.

Thanks!

Nicholas

[FrizzleFried]

I just pulled a GOOGLE on the subject and a high-end gaming system running 24/7 a year,  consuming 330 watts the entire time (monitor never goes off,  running all out all the time),  consumes about $405 a year which breaks down to about $33.75 per month.   That seems a bit high,  especially considering I run not one,  but two computers 24/7 at my home,  one of them being a Mac G4 server and the other being my high-end gaming computer (though I do turn the monitor off).   My electric bill gets down to $45 some months...I doubt I am only consuming $12 on top of the single gaming computing running 24/7.

This is a little closer to reality I would think:

Typical PC at home:

Computer running 4 hours per day with 17″ CRT on for 4 hours = $ 28.47 per year.
Computer running 4 hours per day with 17″ LCD on for 4 hours = $ 19.93 per year.

*Computer running 24 hours per day with 17″ CRT on for 4 hours per day = $ 94.90 per year.
*Computer running 24 hours per day with 17″ LCD on for 4 hours per day = $ 86.36 per year.

*The computers above that run for 24 hours are set to not sleep when they are not in use.
The figures shown above were calculated with a computer that uses 70 watts, CRT that uses 80 watts, a LCD that uses 35 watts, and an electric company that charges $.13 kWh which is as close as I can come to the national average. Check your bill to see what your being charged. A slight change in this number makes a big difference in the final numbers.

So lets round it off to close to about $10.00 a month for an average computer to run 24/7...or so...

[BobA]

Sorry to be off topic.  Just a small divergence.  I have replaced all the bulbs in the house where I can with flourescents.  The house is only 2 1/2 years old so appliances are all energy star.   I have central forced air heating with night setback and no air conditioning.The square footage is 1700 in a split style.  I turn off all but one computer when not in use.  It is not turned off because it does HTPC stuff at night like compacting TV recordings and updating schedules.

My average monthly elect consumption is 850 kwh.   Just wondering how that compares.  I should also say that both my wife and I are home all day so there are no savings for turning the lights and TV off when you go to work.

[lasersoup]

One more off-topic comment, thanks for thinking "green". I'll save the rant.

[NOP]

For windows machines running 24/7, this is another possibly useful tool:

http://www.oldskool.org/pc/throttle

It slows down the clock going to the processor when the machine is idle.  Ideally the program is completely invisible to the user, slowing down the machine when the CPU load is light, and then jumping back to full speed when it gets busy again.

I have no idea what, if any, power savings there may be, but it does give me a warm fuzzy using it.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the author of the program.  (it's freeware/open source so I'm not profiting from this )

It was originally written to slow your machine down for games that run too fast, but it has taken on a little life of it's own as a power saver.

-jeff!

[lordtodd75]

RayB is correct to give you a basis for comparison my electric bill was about 70.00 a month with incandescent bulbs. I replaced all of my incandescnet bulbs with flourescent bulbs and just started shutting everything off when it wasn't needed and my bill went to about 50.00 

[shorthair]

Shutting off anything that's not needed means lights as you move throught the house (nod to BobA)...or you can get sensors.

Question: aside from being automatic, how is hibernate different from stand-by?

[NOP]

Hibernate is when the contents of system RAM are written to the hard drive, and the machine is shut off, minus the bit that monitors the keyboard or button that you use to wake it back up again.  When the machine wakes up, the system needs to restore the state of RAM by loading it off the hard drive before you can continue.

Standby is 1 step above Hibernate, where instead of writing RAM out to the hard drive, it keeps it in self-refresh mode.  Standby uses more power than hibernate.  With hibernate you could physically remove power to the machine and still recover when power is turned back on. 

-jeff!

[shorthair]

So whatever files and programs you have active and internet pages up an all will be restored, exactly, from hibernation?

[NOP]

So whatever files and programs you have active and internet pages up an all will be restored, exactly, from hibernation?

Yup.  Everything that was in main memory (including any active programs and data being used by them) would be tucked away on the hard drive and then restored when you came out of hibernate. 

In fact, you could (although I'm not sure if I'd recommend  this!) edit a word document, not save it, go into hibernate, remove the power plug, come back 2 weeks later and come back out of hibernate and your document should be there in its unsaved state.  At least that's the way it's all SUPPOSED to work.   

It is actually a pretty complicated trick.  I used to work on BIOSes for PCs a few years ago, and there were countless things that had to be dealt with when performing this, like also saving the state of all the other hardware (video card, network card, etc etc)  I'd think that modern machines should have this pretty well ironed out-give it a whirl!  It does take a bit of time to restore everything back, but it still should be faster than loading an o/s from scratch.

-jeff! 

[shorthair]

Cool.  thanks.

[Encryptor]

I saw a special on this not long ago. They were discussing what major items in the household use for power. I'm no power expert and I'm just repeating what they said. They said that an average household pc running 24/7 uses approx $25 per year of electricity. Doesn't sound close to the figures stated above by FF but that's what they said. I suppose it depends on where you live and what time of day and the cost per kw in your area and a host of other figures. Just thought I'd throw in what I had heard on the tube.

Encryptor

[shorthair]

I saw a special on this not long ago. They were discussing what major items in the household use for power. I'm no power expert and I'm just repeating what they said. They said that an average household pc running 24/7 uses approx $25 per year of electricity. Doesn't sound close to the figures stated above by FF but that's what they said. I suppose it depends on where you live and what time of day and the cost per kw in your area and a host of other figures. Just thought I'd throw in what I had heard on the tube.

Encryptor

You mean annually, right?...cos I run mine a good sixteen hours every day, and my bill outside of summer is easily under $20 a month.

[BobA]

Here is a link to a current article on computer power use which includes prices and actual measured consumption figures. 

http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/2006/12/28.html