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Power Consumption and the Modern Geek
mikemuch writes "ExtremeTech's Loyd Case got his hands on an Extech model 380083 power meter and decided to find out exactly how many watts today's geek equipment uses. He compares AMD vs. Intel processors, Nvidia vs. ATI graphics cards, and even checks out what a cranked up audio system draws -- it's a lot more than a PC."
Cheap Power meter: P3 International's P4400. Everyone who has more than 4 computers on at the same time should have one. LOL. Less than $30.
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Before, Saddam got Iraq oil profits & paid part to kill Iraqis. Now a few Americans share Iraq oil profits, & U.S. citizens pay to kill Iraqis. Improvement?
i guess it's a good thing that my electric is included in my rent...
What's the matter, James? No glib remark? No pithy comeback?
I whole heartedly agree with this concept, someday when I will put the bluegene in the basement - I don't want to worry about the 1.7 MWatt power bill. Hey it is in the lease.
"and even checks out what a cranked up audio system draws -- it's a lot more than a PC."
Of course. When was the last time a cranked-up computer shook down the house?
But look at the specs!
I EWPROD&ProdID=98:
From http://www.extechstore.com/index.asp?PageAction=V
Four simultaneous LCD display of Watts, Power Factor or VA, Voltage or Hz, Amps - FOUR!!! LCD!! Come on.
True RMS Voltage and current measurements of sine, square, triangular and distorted wave forms with a crest factor 5 - Richard M Stallman voltage!! Sine waves!
Plug device to be tested directly into the Power Analyzer - It plugs in to something, thats gotta be cool.
Built in Datalogger stores up to 1,012 readings. Choice of single record storage or continuous datalogging - Configurable options, sweet.
Choice of battery or AC/DC adaptor power provides line isolation - isolation something all geeks cherish
Max Recall, Data Hold, Overload Protection - Max anything is always cool. Overlord prote^H, ok well can't have it all.
Sampling (update) rate is 2.5 times per second - 2.5 times per second, thats gotta be a lot of BOGOMIPS
Windows® based software allows user to download stored data or save data directly, and to create an ASCII file. - Windows software just begging to be compiled into a kernel loaded into a router
Computations include phase angle, apparent and reactive power, consumption and cost, and power factor correction - Reactive power, whatever it is, has got to be hardcore badass to the extreme.
Power meters not cool, turn your badge in at the door!
From TFA:
;-).
The way Cool'n'Quiet works is that it reduces the multiplier when at idle or reduced load. So the clock speed effectively goes down, which means the CPU draws less current. But it also means that we couldn't overclock. On our ASUS A8N32-SLI motherboard, enabling Cool'n'Quiet disables the ability to overclock.
Maybe they changed it on the A8N32-SLI, but that's not how it works on the A8N-SLI Premium. My X2 3800+ is OC'd by 15%, running 1150MHz in CnQ mode and 2300MHz at full speed. What you can't do is change the core voltage from its default settings with CnQ enabled, so forget about OC'ing a 3800+ to FX60 levels. Since AMD is very conservative with their default voltage settings you have some room to play with if you have proper cooling.
CnQ on desktop CPUs normally runs the processor at 1GHz at 1.1V core while idle and full speed at a higher core voltage under load. In practice this makes a fairly minor difference, but for a machine that runs 24x7 every little bit helps.
Notebook CPUs use 800MHz at an even lower core voltage (usually 0.95V or 1V) as their low-power setting, which makes CnQ significantly more effective than in desktops. You definitely want to keep power management enabled in notebooks.
Core voltage has a much greater effect on power consumption than clockspeed, which is why undervolting is so popular.
You'll want to buy AMD over Intel regardless
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Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
I am collecting old PC's as I constantly upgradethem, repair them, and replace their components.
Currently we have a shared laptop, 1x 486 (unused, and stored to become a networked storage area), 2x K6-2 500's (testing various linux configs), 1x Duron 1.1 (for business), 2x Athlon (K7) 3000+ machines (for myself and gf), and a K8 3000+ which is about to go live. At any one time we have 2 machines in use: sometimes 4.
I only got my first computer about 6-7 years ago: Since then I haven't got rid of anything that works, although I have passed on hand-me-downs to friends.
My question is: Is this practice of of constant hardware expansion typical?
Some other techies have posted comments about how much computer hardware they own, and even my computer-illiterate friends are starting to get 2nd and 3rd sytems, but is that just the circles we run in, or would you expect 'market saturation' of computers in the home to be above 100%, as with mobile 'phones?
[ insert meme here ]
philo
If you're not an industrial electricty user you don't have to worry about reactive power. It doesn't exist and is literally imaginary. If you have a perfect inductor or capacitor with an ac voltage across it, there will be a current flow. There will, however, be no energy used. Half the time the inductor or capacitor takes in energy and half the time it gives it back. The important thing is that a proper wattmeter does not register reactive power so it isn't billed for. The problem for the electric company is that there is still a current flow. That means there are line losses. So the electric company is providing a lot of current that it can't bill for and is losing energy in the supply lines. The result is that for industrial users, the reactive power is measured or calculated and the ratio between the real power and the reactive power (called the power factor) is calculated or measured. The result is an adjustment to the customers bill (upward). Normally the customer's load consists of large motors which act like inductors. To compensate for this, it is common to put capacitors across the line. That, in a perfect world, reduces the reactive power to zero and the customer has to pay for just the real power. ie. there is no adjustment for power factor.
:-)
There; more than you wanted to know.
Some people have free time to burn...
#1: a more interesting debate taking place today regards how much power various devices draw when in standby mode. I've seen estimates that from 5% of 13% of all U.S. power consumption is pissed away in various standby modes.
#2. if you own a house you can just walk out to the electric meter to see what's going on. (Shut down all circuits but one and only draw on one device for a while.)
As someone into vintage stereos and computers i am pretty sure i don't want to know
:)
:)
:(
I would bet the 160w stereo sucks closer to 1000 at the plug there is a lot of excess heat, even more if i turn on the 2 EQs, the 8-track, and the 4-channel dobly box
Usually a TV on to see if anything is on and 2 computers running when i am home. At least there is no 24/7
I dont imagine the florescent bulbs quite compensate
Would be interesting to compare tohe 2 computers tho, 1 intel 2.4 and one AMD 2500+ that are almost identical.
I switched to an electricity supplier who could guarantee that all their supplies come from renewable sources http://www.good-energy.co.uk/
Before I got my nice clamp-on one I had a similar rig with an alligator-clipped gap in one lead. With this method you can also get power for DC circuits. It's kinda cool to know how much power my mp3 player draws with backlight on vs off.
I know it's cool to have special tools, but why not use the ones you already have?
Man, you really need that seminar!
They'd invent a computer powered off a geek. Solve half of the obesity problem pretty damn quickly.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
What on earth does the graph at http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1937997 ,00.asp mean? What are the units and scale used for the X axis?
Does anybody know of similarly cheap models for Europe? They would need to support 220-240 V @ 50 Hz, and the standard (almost) European plug. I did some search back in December but was only able to find $150 models... Way too much for me.
By the way, have look at this Electricity around the world page. The huge amount of different plug shapes is maddening.
and it's all renewable too (live in Seattle, purchase green power).
Some easy ways to reduce power:
1. use LCD flat screen instead of CRT;
2. replace lightbulbs with flourescent lightbulbs as they burn out (1/8 energy);
3. get a good UPS system ($99 or less on TigerDirect) which allows you to turn off power automatically via software, and send shutdown and kill signals to programs that don't need to be on (such as backup servers, monitors, TVs, etc).;
4. run off of flash RAM USB keychains and such that are low power, and consider using LEDs instead of incandescent lights.
And now I have many times the processing power, even with less energy usage.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
How do you calculate the phase between the Voltage and Current?
Connect a photo-transistor up to a pulse LED-style power meter if you've got one and run a cable back to a parallel port on your Linux box.
You can then log the power consumption for your entire house including those difficult to tap devices like ovens and HWCs.
Minor appliances like desk lamps and laptop power supplies do show up, but it would be good to have some bayesean analysis algorithms that attempt to determine the most likely cause of a sudden rise/fall in usage. Something like "spike detected - which of the folling appliances have you just switched on?".
I've set it up similarly to this guy
You can see how much power I'm currently (heh) using at http://grt.dyndns.org/powerlog
I would bet the 160w stereo sucks closer to 1000 at the plug there is a lot of excess heat.
If you actually maxed it out, sure. But 160W is quite loud. Too loud to be in the same room. Probably too loud to be in the same house. My 200W integrated amplifier hovers arround 1W most of the time, rarely reaching 2W. Even if the efficiency is only 10%, that's still much less than a modern desktop computer.
Exactly correct. The load of a computer power supply is NOT purely resistive, so the power is dependent on the phase. An ammeter and voltmeter are useless for this measurement.
More info: P3's web page. The only model is for 115 volts.
Interesting company: One of the products is a Voice Changer.
This page is complete nonsense.
For the first graph, the units for both the horizontal and vertical axes seem to be Watts. Huh? And why would the power draw of an idle processor rise over time? (Maybe as it heats up?)
But the second graph is the real kicker. 6 labels for 12 bars. The significance of the bars, the power draw in watts is simple enough. But what bar is what? The first two Pentiums seem OK - the first bar, above the label, is the idle power, then the bar next to the label is the peak power.
Then, suddenly, we have a Pentium M, which seems to draw 246W at idle and 101W at peak? Come again? The AMD processors look rather strange too, seeming to use a few watts LESS under peak power than at full load.
Maybe it's my lack of sleep and someone can enlighten me?
Your sound ought to be the equivalent of 3/4 HP and it should dim the outside street lamps with alternating bass lines.
Why would you just buy a power meter? It wouldn't be difficult to take a power socket, mount it on a project box, put a cheap ammeter in there so that it connects in series, then plug anything you want into it to measure current. Power (Watts) = Volts (in the U.S, ~120v) * Current. What's wrong with making this a DIY project and doing a little math along the way?
What you reap is what you sow
This is why you need to turn your PC off when you're not using it.
It's convenient to just be able to walk up and start using it. But translate that power consumption into the equivalent number of 60W light bulbs, and ask yourself how you'd feel about leaving that many light bulbs on all the time.
Single 20 something feminist whore of 2 you ment surely.
How about one that's not upside when plugged into outlets that are correctly oriented with the ground pin upwards for added safety reasons?
How about one that can handle 240 volts with American (NEMA 6-15) standard plug and outlet for those of us that run their computers (yes, virtually all PC power supplies will handle it fine) more efficiently? OK, I'll use CEE 7/7 if I need to.
FYI to Europeans ... yes we do have 240 volts here in North America. And it's safer here because the voltage relative to ground is only 120 volts.
FYI to North Americans ... yes we do have 240 volts here in North America. You just need to wire in a special outlet to get it. Just be sure to orient the ground pin upwards for maximum safety since American outlets are not safely recessed the way some European ones (Schuko) are.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This is why I really want to be able to hibernate/suspend my Linux box.
:-(
If I Was In Charge Of Linux(TM), this would be my top priority. Think of how much energy you could save with a software feature! How rare is that opportunity?
Unfortunately, the most mature suspend for Linux seems to be of alpha-to-beta quality, requires a decent amount of effort to get running, and is incompatible with lots of common accessories. Sigh.