Good for power savings
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| cr Nov 23, 2010 11:31 AM EDT |
Thaks for this article, tc, it's stuff I can probably use this week or next to make managing our rsync server less of a pain and thus less of a cost on the monthly power bill. You might well want to get hold of a Kill-A-Watt or equivalent (the cheapest is an 0.01 ohm 25 watt resistor plus clipleads and a DVM and a calculator, plus enough electrical tape to not kill yourself) long enough to measure the soft-off wattage of that box. Since it's a gamer case, the supply is probably selected more for its peak power performance than its power economy, especially the power that's drawn when the machine is shut down but the power supply isn't. I don't have a gamer box to compare, but the boxes around here draw 2-4 watts in soft-off; they're 5-10 yr old consumer boxes: Dells, HP/Compaqs, Gateways and the like. My guess is that the gamer box will draw more because of what it's designed for. An X-10 appliance module (with a 15 amp relay inside rather than a triac) pulls under 1 watt or maybe 20 milliamps, according to my Kill-A-Watt meter (20 mils seems to be the lower limit of its resolution). It's up to you whether the hassle of implementing X-10 controls (I get by with a 'firecracker' module on my main server) is worth the extra power savings. If you're already running lights and such with X-10 then the hassle is strictly incremental; it's simple enough to add X-10 commands to the wakeup/shutdown scripting for your setup. |
| bigg Nov 23, 2010 11:37 AM EDT |
This is an excellent article. I may give it a try. |
| azerthoth Nov 23, 2010 3:33 PM EDT |
Very cool, need to look into configuring my desktop. Not for power savings though, I'm forever on the road and finding myself needing something off my desktop or realizing that there is a critical patch that needs to be applied. p.s. as to power savings in relation to cost, almost all meters power companies use measure inductive load. You can reduce what it measures by adding a capacitive load to the circuit. Additionally there is atleast one company that makes an auto sensing and adjusting capacitive load bank that you can add to the main distribution panel of your dwelling. |
| gus3 Nov 23, 2010 4:20 PM EDT |
Some motherboards support scheduled power-on. My file server has one such board. |
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