Green buildings, Green Server Farms?

mstansberry writes "Has IT evolved to the point where it can consider energy efficiency without sacrificing uptime or performance? According to an interview with APC's Richard Sawyer, the answer is yes. The green buildings movement, spearheaded by the USGBC and other organizations has some people thinking about computing infrastructure's impact on the environment. Is it an IT issue or something from C-level executives?"

Comments

Re:"C-Level Executive"?

[Quikah]

CEO, CTO, CFO, etc.

Low-power shopping list

[Brian Stretch]

1) Seasonic S12 series high-efficiency power supply. It makes a VERY noticible difference.
2) Athlon 64 CPU (preferably the new Venice or San Diego core) and Socket 939 motherboard. Enable PowerNOW! power management (current Linux distros like FC3 support it automagically, some BIOSes don't enable it by default). The CPU runs at 800MHz at 1.1V core while idle, jumping to full speed as needed (just like a notebook). Even at full speed power consumption is about half that of an Intel P4 blast furnace. Run 64-bit Linux and get even more work done per watt.
3) Avoid high-wattage video cards like the GeForce 6800 series in favor of 6600GT's. MASSIVE power consumption difference. Depending on how hard-core a gamer you are, the 6600GT's are good enough and a lot cheaper.

See Newegg, etc for the parts.

Re:Why I want low power/low heat

[sffubs]

If you're more worried about heat than speed, something using a VIA Epia board would do the trick.

Overkill is still overkill

[Mr Guy]

You must be out of touch if you think the vast majority of people use that much power all the time.

PSU Needs Calculator

Using this calculator, a sample system I just made up only needed 319 watts of peak power. To get that, I needed to be running the 3gig barton chip, 2 sticks of ram, 2 hard drives, a Radeon X800, sound, NIC, with 3 fans fullblast and 2 cathode tubes, and a dvd player. Keep in mind that's PEAK power required, which means all of that has to be going top speed to get there, which means something along the lines of running 3D mark while copying a dvd from one drive to the other while playing sound while downloading a file over the internet while having all your fans and lights cranked up.

Hate to break it to you, bud, but just cause you have it doesn't mean you are using it.