Electricity Costs

[marcus2704]

I have a pc which I use as a fileserver, FTP, remote connection, IIS for hosting a website and so on as well as being my primary internet downloading pc. For this reason I leave it on all of the time. It has a 570W PSU, approx 5 SATA internal drives, an external drive, P4 CPU. There is a monitor attached but its never powered on as I use RDP.

Ive been advised that the reason for my large electric bill is largely due to this, my question is how Im able to reduce these costs by perhaps buying new components (smaller PSU, larger but fewer HDDs, ditching the external) or would changing these parts make little difference in real terms. I saw a 'green' PSU on OC, would this actually save me money long-term for instance?

 

[Sparky__H]

The uk version of radioshack is always having a sale on mains power readers, think B&Q have them atm too.

Larger fewer drives certainly would reduce it by a few watts but not a great deal.
-Try underclocking/undervolting the cpu.
-Gut as many fans as possible from the system.
-Fewer ram dims.
-Attack the processes running to get cpu activity to a bare minimum.


My fileserver has 3 PATA drives and only uses 83w and worked out at about 30p a day to run.

 

[noxidjkram@hotm]

Check the efficiency of your PSU - a good one will be 80-85% efficient at its power conversion.

Antec do some quality ones (around 83% efficient i think) - I have an Antec Phantom 350w that is fanless and took anything i threw at it - Good Gfx, twin raptor HDDs, x2 3800, 2GB Ram + the usual other stuff.

You could also try using a Mobile CPU if your mobo would support that.

I guess most of your decisions will be based around whether your server will still be capable of performing all its duties if you cut memory, reduce CPU etc...

M

 

[lsg1r]

well first off running a pc 24/7 does soon add up. My pc (opteron 175, 20" ws tft + wireless adapter) uses around 0.1 units per hour when just browsing the net etc. Now take that 0.1 per hour and change to an average day (for me) of 15 hours that 1.5 units per day, 10.5 per week and 546 units per year.
Average price of a unit iirc is about 10p so thats £55 just on idle (assuming all my calcs are right).

Also bear in mind that even though your psu is rated at 570, the compnents may not use the full 570. I have a 480w psu but according to all the info I can get from my ups I'm only using about 200-250w on idle.

But if you really want to reduce power, then the best route is mobile cpu's iirc the core2duo mobile with an onboard graphics card can use as little as 50w on idle.

 

[vincent1989]

my parents managed to work out im costing them around £80 leccy a year, and are starting to charge me for it (bullocks) i already pay them £200 p.m. (which is supposed to be inclusive, as thats what the govt. reckons i cost them )

 

[Cupra]

id tell em to jump tbh

u can get a house share with 2-3 ppl cheaper

are they jobless bums?

 

[moogie]

are they jobless bums?

lmao

 

[vincent1989]

id tell em to jump tbh

u can get a house share with 2-3 ppl cheaper

are they jobless bums?

no they're bloody well not they've worked quite hard to support a family of 5, but i just wished they hadn't found out how much leccy i was using

 

[Markatomic]

We run 5 pcs and a server in our house, along with the hp procurve switch, router and wireless access point. We are yet to have our fist leccy bill in this house... I can barely wait as the server gear is on 24/7. The pcs probably do a good 12+ hrs a day

mark