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Building an Energy Efficient, Always-On PC?
An anonymous reader asks: "Like many readers, I find it necessary to leave my home PC running 24/7, for things like web or FTP servers, BitTorrent, or simply to make sure I don't miss any messages on IRC or my instant messaging client. It has been about 3 years since I built my current PC, and keeping it running all the time uses a lot of juice. With my next PC, I would like to do what I can to keep the power-consumption to a minimum, without sacrificing processing power or other features. What should I look for when choosing components for my PC, and what other ways are there to keep the power consumption down?"
A laptop is already constructed to use as little power as possible, so for non-performance critical tasks, it would probably be quite useful for an always-on server. Built-in UPS is also handy, and it can be tucked away in some closet without taking any room, while still having an emergency keyboard and screen if you need to perform administration tasks on it.
For storage, a couple of USB-drives would be useful, I bet they don't draw much more power than the drive itself.
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