5 Minutes on Power Consumption
Avi Geiger (Hardware Architect at Microsoft) obsesses about power and battery life for laptops. For Ignite he directed his power obsession at the home computer.
A 100 Watt Lightbulb costs the average American household about 7 dollars a month or ~10% of your electric bill. A standard desktop computer left on all the time is the same as a 100 Watt light bulb or 10% of an American household. Do the math, turning off your computer could save a lot of money and trees.
This video and others from Ignite Seattle are available on Blip.tv and were recorded by Bryan Zug. I'll be posting select videos from Ignite periodically. During the second Ignite we had an issue with sound, sorry for the buzz.
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Comments: 8
[03.13.07 01:50 AM]
I'd turn my PC off a lot more often if it was instantly available when I needed it instead of having to wait through a 2+ minute boot-up procedure. I'm guessing I'm not alone.
[03.13.07 08:08 AM]
I agree with Steve. I have a lot of stuff on my computer, which results in a long boot time. So I am not going to just go and switch it on and off all day long.
Rather switch off a lightbulb!
[03.13.07 02:43 PM]
My favorite part of this talk was Avi pointing out the irony of running climate global warming calculations instead of just powering-off.
[03.16.07 12:39 PM]
How does HDTV compare?
[05.14.07 03:15 PM]
I'm trying to find out the power consumption of
a PC when turned off, because I have a Brennstuhl Power consumption meter (Art no 1 506213) and I was surprised to find that a 2400 Athlon PC consumed 17 W when powered down but with the power still on at the wall socket (and 107 W on idle when powered up). Other components (printer, router, TFT monitor) when asembled with the PC gave 29 W and 148 W when idling. An Athlon 64 gave higher figures of 36 W (off) and 253 W (idling).
I thought that this was a lot when shut down (i.e. nothing running, no fans, soft power
down). Can anyone throw any light on this? Is
this an artefact of the switched mode PSU?
Others in the series of threads commented on
microwaves, TFT TV's etc. Measurements on these
give 30 mA microwave standby (i.e. the clock and
its power supply) 650 W when in use, TFT TV (26
in) 22 W standby, 100 W running. This 22 W for
the TV is why some are argung for a 1 W standby
standard. The TV is probably idle for 20 hours a
day but if left plugged in on standby for 20 hours uses 440 W h.
Those who point out the the PC is unfairly criticised can work out the power used on an
eight hour working day and a 18 hour off in W h
as compared to a few minutes a day for a 650 W
microwave. 14 minutes worth is equivalent to 1
hour of PC consumption at idling load. So the PC
may have something to account for. Laptops, by
their nature and design are far more frugal.
[05.18.07 11:47 AM]
I've started a blog as a convenient way of posting things I measure the power on at http://electrimetric.blogspot.com (not just computers -- TVs, kitchen appliances and so on) While something don't necessarily save a lot of money my theory is that we should be doing the easy stuff (like putting your computer to standby) because while it may only cost nominal amounts now the future cost of cleaning up the energy use of today will be great.
[10.02.07 03:49 AM]
Just measured my pc & 22" Horizon WS monitor together with a cable modem. The consumption is 440mA on 220V, about 96Watts at full load, and around 80W idle. Compared to refrigerators, air conditioners, CRT monitors and old-fashion TV's ... a PC running non-stop can't be declared a waste of power under no circumstances.
For low power consumption PC's buy 35-45W processors, TFT monitors (TCO03 or greater), one bigger hard disk instead of 2 (or laptop hard disks that consume 3-4 times less energy), and use on-board video cards (or PCI-EXpress video cards that have no additional power connectors).
My Dual Core system consists of:
CPU AMD Athlon X2 BE-2350, Socket AM2, 2X512K, bus 2000, 0.65u, 1.4V, 45W, 64bit, (2100 MHz), BOX, Dual CORE, (Brisbane)
MB Asrock ALIVENF7G-HDREADY, nForce 7050-630A , S-AM2, mATX, PIC-E x16, 2xPCI, 1xPCI-x, Dual DDR2-800, U-DMA 133, S-ATAII, Video nVidia GeForce7 256Mb&Lan&SB on board.
2 X DIMM, 1Gb, DDR2, PC-6400, 800MHz, SYCRON, GoldQuadro Series, Radiator, Lower circuit noise level, Lower power consumption
HDD SEAGATE 320 GB 7200rpm 16Mb Serial-ATA II 300 ST3320620AS Baracuda 7200.10 with NCQ&Perpendicular Recording
MONITOR HORIZON 2206SW Wide 22 TFT 81KHz 1680x1050/75Hz 0.297dp c/s 800/300cd 160/160 (H/V) 5ms TCO03 DVI Boxe Black-Silver
CASE KME 2167, ATX, 400W, 5,25X4, 412(H)X185(W)X410(D), black
All of the above costs under 1800RON (750USD)
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Nelsonn [03.12.07 03:19 PM]
["Do the math, turning off your computer could save a lot of money and trees"]
...well, my math does not show that.
A typical desktop PC uses only 1.5% of the average American household annual electrical consumption, according to Federal Dept of Energy statistics. (Laptops use a tiny 0.1%)
Few people run home PC's (...or 100-watt light bulbs) continuously --- so the potential 'money & tree-savings' are very slight ... in turning them off routinely.
Home microwave-ovens & many other typical appliances consume more electricity.
So why pick on PC's ???