Slashdot Mirror
Reducing the Power Consumption of Overclocked PCs
babyshiori writes "Now, that must sound pretty inane. After all, overclockers employ all kinds of power-guzzling methods to improve their CPUs' overclockability. However, there are many good reasons to do so. In this guide, we will not just look at theoretical tips on reducing power consumption in overclocked PCs, we will also look at how well they work in real-life situations. Best of all, we are shown why they will improve our PCs' power efficiency without any real loss in performance. Start doing your part in saving the planet now!"
Energy conservation isn't about saving the planet - the planet doesn't care. It's about saving humans. We'll all die out and the planet will quite happily go on without us.
If you are really worried about it and you drive, drive less.
1 gallon of gasoline = 131 megajoules = ~36 kilowatt hours.
Waving hands around about efficiency and so forth, that's 1 kilowatt hour of energy per mile driven. So that's 5-20 hours of computer use (assuming between 50 and 200 watts, 500 watts is still 2 hours) per mile driven. Using a more efficient computer is good, but finding a way to not drive 5 miles a day is a considerable amount better.
(If you aren't worried about it, that's fine, but if you are worried about it, for god's sake, do the easy, effective things before you start telling people about the difficult, pretty much a wash things that you are doing.)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
He is saving 26megawatts per month? I didn't know Intel made 13.8KV 3-phase E6850s?
I've been hearing a lot of this kind of fluff during earth week.
If you really wanted to save the planet, you wouldn't be overclocking your computer at all or buying a new car because it was hyrid. You would be beating what you have already consumed until it fell apart from overuse.
Most of these "earth saving" techniques seem like nothing more than feel good consumerism. Eco this and green that. Nothing more than words.
And if your computer was burning 24/7 in the development of new energy technologies or new effiencies you would really be saving the planet. And all these real efforts at saving the planet are going to require technology and huge amounts of energy use and chemicals and industry and all that supposedly evil stuff.
Improving the gas efficiency of your Humvee using proper tire inflation.