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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?"
One major reason that the newer notebooks might consume less power on average is because the desknote type system has been marginalized. Those systems were just monsters in weight and power consumption, I've seen some that used desktop Pentium 4 chips. One guy I knew used carry-on type luggage to haul it around rather than a notebook bag, because it was too big to fit in any existing notebook bag, being 2" thick, 17" screen and requiring two or three honking fans.