Ernest Burden III Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 I do not shut down my computers at the end of the day, I just turn off the monitors. I figure 'takoff and landing' puts the biggest strain on the machines, and I don't like waiting for the machine to boot up, especially the W2K ones. But how much power would be consumed by an idle PC with a +/- 400W power supply with the monitor off? One of the machines drives my printers, so I almost never use that computer, but want it on to allow printing from the main one I do use. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHE Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Why not spend around $40-$50 bucks on a print server instead? I really never leave my computers on unless I'm rendering overnight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted March 20, 2004 Author Share Posted March 20, 2004 Why not spend around $40-$50 bucks on a print server instead? MOST of the time I would just be sending the printer a page or two, so for that a wireless printer driver would do just fine. But there will be times that I will use the other machine to be feeding my large-format printers large prints--let's say 150MB images, all day. I want a dedicated PC with a hardwired USB2 connection to spool and feed the prints. Ruining just one large print will cost about $50 in ink and paper alone. Now I COULD split it up, use a wireless to drive the day-to-day printer, and use the other one for the big printers. That's a good idea! Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonsgaard Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 I resently watched a tv-show here in Denmark about power consumption in regular households... Actually there is a bit of money to save by turning off computer equipment... for printers, 60w light bulbs and such small electronical devices, there is around 70 DDK a year to svae by turning it of when not used...that is around 10-12 US$... so if you have lots of machines and lights on... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
STRAT Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 it also askes the question about powering off ur pc or leaving it on. my IT manager in work says you do more damage when you switch off or power up, so he prefers to leave our pc's in work constantly on. personally i've always switched off at the end of the day and switched on every morning. not done me any harm so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garethace Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 #to be feeding my large-format printers large prints--let's say 150MB images, all day. What size paper is that normally? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted March 20, 2004 Author Share Posted March 20, 2004 What size paper is that normally? My LF printers are both Epson 7000s, nowhere near as big as they get. A renderer friend of mine has the 9000, which does 42" (if I remember correctly) on the short dimension. Mine go to 24" on the short. So while my favorite paper size for prints is 13" x 19", and I would do a lot of those, I will also need to print some up to 24" x 36" or so. Color would be 8bit RGB files, while grayscale are 16bit, so in both cases, the files can get hefty. As I've mentioned before, I am putting together a side business to sell prints of architectural drawings and photographs from a variety of artists. I have a website that will be used for that. I foresee having 'print days', but I don't want to tie up my main PC to do it (and no need to). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
garethace Posted March 20, 2004 Share Posted March 20, 2004 Your problems are interesting, what you really need to go out and do is buy a little Shuttle barebones system with an AMD XP chip in it or something.... take up about as much space as a $45 print server, well a little bit more.... Greg has just built one for his car.... that would be my suggestion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greg Hess Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 I'm "working on" building a system based on a shuttle XPC motherboard...not a shuttle XPC itself. The shuttle's are great boxes though, their latest designs move the PSU out of the case itself, resulting in a nice drop of temps. As for admin's recommending not turning on/off...I can explain. If people ask you if its ok to turn on/off a machine when their not using it...the following generally happens. Everytime user A leaves the room, the machine gets shut off. Everytime user A comes back, the machine gets flipped back on. Considering the average user at my workplace, this would result in 10-20 powercycles daily. I think turning a machine on/off once per day would be alright, its the constant on/off that wears down on the components. I've gone to a machine running flawlessly for 6 weeks, shut it off for some maintance, and watched the psu blow when I Turned it back on. FArking computers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigcahunak Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 We turn off machines on weekends only. Server (printes and backup) is on for months now - its a P3 BX machine, and those can go on and on and on and on forever, even if the building is on fire... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Just from personal experience, not sure if it's just luck, but I tended to see longer life from computers when I left them running all the time. I used to turn my home system on/off nightly, but now leave it running 24/7. I used several systems over the course of 7 year working at my last job and of the systems that were left on 24/7, most ran without problem for 2-3 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ras Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 Jes - I might be misunderstanding your post but as I figure it a 400 w machine uses 9.6 KWh per day. (24 x .4 KW). 1 KWh is about 1,5 kr in Denmark (I´m sure its much cheaper in the US). This means that you use 14,4 kr pr day per 400 W PSU. That is 5256 kr. or 750$ pr. year. Lets say that consumption is generally only 50% when using this model. Then its 375$ Lets see... 1.000.000.000 PC´s with 400 W PSU´s at a constant 50% output. Thats around 375 billion $ worth of coal, oil and Uranium (with Danish prices mind you). If halving this is possible by shutting of the PC at night everybody would be doing the environment a favor. Knowing what is sometimes nessesary to obtain the needed fuel to drive our powerplants I would advocate more humbleness when consuming energy in our everyday. There are lots of issues involved in this as the displays of international agression has repeatedly shown. But of course - if the PC´s break down sooner if we turn them on and of twice a day then it might become a competition parameter being willing to spend energy having the computer turned on 24/7. And it might also spend more energy producing substitutes for the broken down ones - who knows? Here in Denmark only around 20% of the price of the electricity goes to actual production the rest goes to environmental taxation and other taxes. Nessecity is what drives innovation (nessecity teaches naked woman to make yarn). As long as it isn´t rentable to figure out how to save energy, we wont. anyway - powering up and down shouldn´t be more than a technically solvable problem. It´s only a matter of it being rentable or not I guess. Are there ways of powering up and down gently - you know like when you preheat your car-engine with electricity in the winter in order not to wear it down with a cold-start? By the way - Doesn´t the systems get wierd after while when its been on for that long? I reboot at least once a day to refresh my system. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted March 21, 2004 Author Share Posted March 21, 2004 Very interesting post, Ras., thank you. This means that you use 14,4 kr pr day per 400 W PSU. That is 5256 kr. or 750$ pr. year. Lets say that consumption is generally only 50% when using this model. Then its 375$ The basis of my question is enviornmental. But at its core is the simple enough Q of 'how much current does an idle PC draw'? I still don't know. 400W is a potential, and the PC does not draw current evenly. My guess is that at idle its well below 50%, but I just don't know. Knowing what is sometimes nessesary to obtain the needed fuel to drive our powerplants I would advocate more humbleness when consuming energy in our everyday....And it might also spend more energy producing substitutes for the broken down ones - who knows? That's what I think--replacement parts, transport of them, consume more power than idle-but-on PCs. Clearly the most important thing with my example is a hard-powerdown of the monitor--CRTs, since they don't 'idle'. By the way - Doesn´t the systems get wierd after while when its been on for that long? I reboot at least once a day to refresh my system. Not that I've noticed. I've had machines on for weeks without a reboot and noticed no 'weirdness'. The user may get weird, however. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Mottle Posted March 21, 2004 Share Posted March 21, 2004 I've monitored the power increase here as a result of having my computers on all the time and have not noticed anything significant. At most $1-2 per month. My aquarium lights however are easily 3-4 times that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ras Posted March 22, 2004 Share Posted March 22, 2004 Hi Jeff and Ernest Thanks for that, Jeff. That cleared things up didn´t it. Jes was right after all in his numbers. Then in this case I´m sure the hardware question far superseedes the power issue in terms of environmental effect. I did an architectural competition two years back where we looked into environmental effects of all kinds of consumption. It came out that one modern CPU has an "environmental backpack" that weighs about three tonne. What this refers to is the total sum of material consumed in the process of making this one CPU - minus the weight of the product itself (Wuppertal Institute). Thats pretty crazy I think. By the way - I´m not promoting scaredness of the world. I´m just interested in relations of processes. Human technology is at its core no more problematic than natures own green technology - we just haven´t hit our bounderies yet as the green technology has in the bounderies of the earth. Thus we have no absolute need to optimize - but thats another discussion. You guys must have super-stable systems to run them for that long... Do you have procedures to flush the system without doing a power-reset? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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