Computers are fast enough, when will businesses start turning toward efficient computers?

[Jerboy]

The increasing processing power of computers in this technology era has raised its capability more than adequate for most business tasks. Most data entry computers used in doctor's office, DOS-based cash registers are still running old 486's and 386's. Businesses that maily deal with information processing and document handling use computers widely. Most of the work involved are either MS Office or their proprietary software. Whichever it is, the demand on processor/video card is not high. GeForce3, Athlon XP2100+ may sound appealing to consumers who are buying computers with an intent to use them as gaming machines, but what good does it do for average business users? Their task WILL NOT require such computing power. These new gadgets do have drawbacks. When processor die size decreased, power consumption reduced, reaching close to lowest in Intel Celeron series. From there, it was a processing power competition and power consumption went up again. If their 486's are too slow for their tasks, do you think businesses would start looking toward adequate, yet not overpowered energy efficient comptuters granted they're given enough information about them? I'm sure Dell can do pretty good job at designing business computers with low power use in mind. Put it together with low power Celeron, minimal video card integrated on mobo, 5400RPM hard drive, 256MB SDRAM, CD-ROM, FDD and LAN board all on specially designed active PFC power supply with only a small margin for excess power should be able to make it close to 50W or less. Use a nice flat LCD panel with it. Saves energy and space 😀

 

[Mark R]

I think it's because most people don't anticipate that computers have significant running costs other than technical support.

Very few people I know consider energy cost of electrical applicances, certainly for domestic/SOHO use, especially when the power consumption is not known.

Ask people how much power a PC uses, and it's clear that they have no idea. Even many people on this forum have no idea (although, in this forum they tend to over estimate dramatically). Many people also fail to consider that the PC will be on for 8 or 10 hours per day in a business situation. They also fail to consider additional costs, e.g. cooling.

In fact the low-end computers are quite power efficient - mainly because most of the low-end parts, consume less power and more importantly are cheap (e.g. low performance integrated video) - Using a power hungry chip like a duron, means you need a more expensive heatsink and PSU compared to a celeron. If you buy cheap, they tend to be cheap to run.

You'll struggle to get a complete system down to 50 W with current components, but you could certainly get pretty close - remember that a typical computer PSU only has an efficiency of 70% (PFC or not).

 

[Peter]

It is beginning to happen ... PCs built around these here:

http://www.pcchips.com.tw/M787CLR.html
sell pretty well (and $100 cheaper than everything else) here in Germany. Ye olde VIA PLE133 chipset
teamed up with a VIA C3 667 MHz soldered right onto the board, equipped with a tiny fan and heatsink,
a Realtek LAN chip onboard, some SDRAM, a 5400 rpm HDD, FDD, CDROM, AMR modem and a 150 watt
PSU make for an adequate, quiet and economic office or home computer.
I just set up one of those for home word processing and internet usage, using Linux. Sure it ain't fast,
but well fast enough for what it'll be used for. Besides, the money saved on the computer side of things
allowed me to squeeze a very neat 15" TFT into the given budget 🙂

If you can do with even less, ECS/PC-Chips also build a slimline BookPC from the same components,
cutting the box size in half and the PSU to 100 Watts, having no CPU fan anymore, and also no expansion
slots. Shuttle's SV.. boxes aim into the same market niche - and this niche is expanding quickly.

regards, Peter

 

[Migroo]

A quick reaction is that its only a matter of time before people start thinking more in terms of energy.

However I can comment from the small business perspective. Here we run about 5 machines, and various machines that provide network services and never see any end-user activity. While we do use some older machines for some tasks (I'm talking P2-350, P3-667) such as file serving and dedicated backup / CDR machines, we sometimes require machines that can do immence computations, therefore our own workstation machines are fairly high spec, with mine being an XP1500+, half a gig of RAM and 10 Gig of HD space (thats just local HD space, network space is another matter... 😉)

We see video edits, Excel DB lookups that can take 15 minutes🙂Q) on a P3-667 (we just dont have the time to wait 15 mins per request) etc, so I normally build the fastest spec machine we can buy within limits. The exception to expendature is video cards (disragarding a Matrox dual-head G400 for our Vid edit rig) and I normally run older cards here as modern units are not needed.

Conclusion: I think that lower spec 'econo' PCs are much more suited to large corporations where the tasks that the PCs will see is far more determined.

 

[Jerboy]

<< I think it's because most people don't anticipate that computers have significant running costs other than technical support.

Very few people I know consider energy cost of electrical applicances, certainly for domestic/SOHO use, especially when the power consumption is not known. >>



HVAC technicians actually use a true-watt meter to determine the thermal output of all the computers in a office to select a proper HVAC equipment. Computers adds considerable amount of load to HVAC equipment. There is no need for employees to be playing games so take away their ability to play games. Get an underclocked computer which tend to use less power.




<<
Ask people how much power a PC uses, and it's clear that they have no idea. Even many people on this forum have no idea (although, in this forum they tend to over estimate dramatically). Many people also fail to consider that the PC will be on for 8 or 10 hours per day in a business situation. They also fail to consider additional costs, e.g. cooling. >>



Power use of computers are considerable.

Let's say each computer uses 200W. 130W for monitor and 70W for the rest. Say there are 1,000 computers in the buildings.


0.2x2000=200kW. 200kW x 8hrs a day=1600kWh a day=$160 in power@10cents/kWh



<<
You'll struggle to get a complete system down to 50 W with current components, but you could certainly get pretty close - remember that a typical computer PSU only has an efficiency of 70% (PFC or not). >>



Many older system floats around 60-80W.

 

[Shalmanese]

<<
0.2x2000=200kW. 200kW x 8hrs a day=1600kWh a day=$160 in power@10cents/kWh
>>



$160 is a truely piddly amount of money to a corp that owns 1000 pcs. How many lightbulbs wouldthey have in the building? I am guessing they would save more money by just getting lightbulbs that used 10W less power

 

[rgwalt]

<<

<<
0.2x2000=200kW. 200kW x 8hrs a day=1600kWh a day=$160 in power@10cents/kWh
>>



$160 is a truely piddly amount of money to a corp that owns 1000 pcs. How many lightbulbs wouldthey have in the building? I am guessing they would save more money by just getting lightbulbs that used 10W less power >>



Good point... I decided to go about calculating why my electric bill was higher than my friends... mainly it comes from the fact that I keep my place about 5 degrees warmer in the winter and 5 degrees cooler in the summer than anybody else. The major sources of electricity in a person's home is 1- heater/AC, 2- water heater. I figured out that I'm paying about 6.25 cents per kWhr for electricity. I run my ceiling fan all the time, and my monitor is never powered down. My ceiling fan costs me about $4 a month to run. My monitor is about $6. On the other hand, my water heater costs me quite a bit (assuming I did my figures right). Anyway, computers aren't that expensive to run really.

Ryan

 

[CTho9305]

LCDs + crusoe 😉

at work, for a while we couldn't use the microwave unless some computers were off or the breaker would blow 😀

 

[Descend492]

In reality, computers have very little effect on the power consumption of a building.

The biggest eaters of wattage are motors, or other equipment with moving parts. The energy required to move a hige fan blade or to start a motor is exponentially higher than it is to move some electrons around in a microprocessor.

Let me give you some numbers to compare:

Assume 200W usage per computer (all-inclusive). This is about the same as a 3 lamp flourescent fixture, where each lamp operates at 60W. If you're in your office right now, look up and check out how many flourescent fixtures are on the ceiling. Most likely a lot. Add to that all the desk lamps and uplights on the wall and you have much more power consumption than all the computers in the same area.

Contractors and EE's typically put 1600W on a 2000W circuit breaker. That's 8 lamps.
They usually can't even fit one motor on those 2000W cirucit breakrs, and have to go as high as 10kW breakers (I believe, the numbers are hazy b'c it's been a year since my internship at my EE consulting job).

The bottom line is that computers have literally zero effect on the power consumption of a building. Computers are also typically turned off at night, whereas the fans and many lights must stay on for circulation/safety reasons (and by law).

 

[Jerboy]

<< In reality, computers have very little effect on the power consumption of a building. >>



Actually it does. This is why many monitors are going with EnergyStar starndard. EnergyStar shuts off monitor after certain period of inactivity and it saves power consumption, HVAC load and monitor life. Monitor life is reduced conisderably when you leave it on for a long time and keep it at high temp all the time. Power cycling is bad, but the thermal degradation is worse at temperature experienced inside a monitor. Computers also puts alot of stress on distribution system and some buildings have oversized neutral conductor specifically for computer load.



<<
The biggest eaters of wattage are motors, or other equipment with moving parts. The energy required to move a hige fan blade or to start a motor is exponentially higher than it is to move some electrons around in a microprocessor. >>



The energy required to start a motor is not that great. Inrush current and energy consumption is different. I am not talking about industrial facilities with relatively few computers and loads consisting of predominantly 480V(or higher) >10kW three phase motors.



<< Let me give you some numbers to compare:

Assume 200W usage per computer (all-inclusive). This is about the same as a 3 lamp flourescent fixture, where each lamp operates at 60W. If you're in your office right now, look up and check out how many flourescent fixtures are on the ceiling. Most likely a lot. Add to that all the desk lamps and uplights on the wall and you have much more power consumption than all the computers in the same area. >>



completely off. Three lamp F32T8(the most common type today) instant start fixture uses 85-88W. The difference between lighting heat and computer heat is that lighting is installed in the ceiling and alot of the heat can be pushed into ceiling. This heat can be simply pumped outside where computer heat is actually blew out into occupied space meaning more load on A/C system.



<< Contractors and EE's typically put 1600W on a 2000W circuit breaker. That's 8 lamps.
They usually can't even fit one motor on those 2000W cirucit breakrs, and have to go as high as 10kW breakers (I believe, the numbers are hazy b'c it's been a year since my internship at my EE consulting job). >>



The numbers are actually completely meaningless. Building circuit breakers are never rated in watts. They're rated in amps and different delay configs. You can't fit motor on a lighting/general purpose circuit breaker, because many large motors are three phase and it is not possible to power them off of single phase. If you have a single phase motor, it usually requires a special motor rated breaker due to its high inrush current.



<< The bottom line is that computers have literally zero effect on the power consumption of a building. Computers are also typically turned off at night, whereas the fans and many lights must stay on for circulation/safety reasons (and by law). >>




How come many facilities are retrofitting with T8 fluorescent from T12's? The typical saving per fixture is only 50W per fixture for a F40T12 magnetic to F32T8 electronic cnversion. (at the same time, slight reduction in light output). It is an expensive job to replace all bulbs and ballasts in every fixture in a facility and it is definitely a waste of money for home users, but they save money.

If they do retrofit at $60,000 on 2500 fixtures, that is reduction in 125kW. The saved energy is 1.5MWh a day assuming 12hrs/day operation. The saving is only $120 a day, but they recover the cost in 500 operating days and continue saving money after then.


Making all new computer purchases from Dell in huge quantity of low end computers saves initial cost as well as power cost.

 

[Turkey]

Or why not just buy everybody a laptop? You save space, shipping, and moving costs (if the company has a lot of people moving cubes or whatever), plus it sacrifices minimal performance and every business person would probably rather have a laptop than a desktop. Plus, almost everyone I know leaves their computers on at work, but if they have a laptop they put it in standby/hibernation and stuff it in their desk, so they save power over desktops that way too.

But I think the premise that computers are fast enough isn't quite accurate. Have you run Outlook lately? It takes forever to load and render emails, and it takes a while to bring up the "new message" box, etc. Same with IE, it needs a fast HD to load in less than 2 seconds. It's not that these apps don't have acceptable levels of performance on a 700 Mhz chip, but they run better with more RAM, a faster HD, a faster processor, etc.

Interesting question.

 

[kazeakuma]

Unfortunately with the 'computer's are fast enough for most' paradigm is that software is evolving to make use of that extra power. Take WinXP for example, it draws a ton of useless pretty things on your screen with no 'real' operational value. But in upgrading our OS (which is dependent on the business, some I've seen running 95 til recently, some upgrade almost immediately) we've increased our power requirements without actually doing anything.

More to the point on efficient computing. As others have pointed out, it's a growing market, however I don't think it will ever be 'the' business market. Case example: Where I currently work, we have approximately 500 computers in labs and another 500 (possibly more, it's an unknown factor 😀 ) in use by staff and the like. All the lab pcs are left on 24/7 and probably 70% of the staff pcs are also left on 24/7. Considering that you could reduce maybe 75% of the staff workstations to efficient workstations, we are only looking at around 375 efficient pcs. That would represent a large energy saving as well as money saving. But the initial outlay is quite large. (I live in Aus so I work in AU$ sorry peeps). At around say $1800 AU a pc (tiny pc + tft) there's an initial outlay of $675 000. Staff costs are a little harder to factor in but they are there. Even though there are permanent IT staff, much of our time is occupied dealing with network maintenance, problem requests etc. Standard stuff. To do a rollout of this magnitude, contracters or temps would have to be put on, not to mention time lost, irritated people wanting their tech support etc. I would estimate and I have no idea on this stuff so anyone elses guess is welcome that we would probably look at $200 000 in staff costs and a further $50 000 due to lost productivity. So now we are looking at a figure of $925 000. That is a huge initial outlay for a relatively small number of pcs. A more effective way I suppose would be gradual rollout, but then you have the problem of about 4 different groups of pc configurations, and maintaining an SOE (Standard Operating Environment).

Still I think the change to power efficient computers would make great steps towards businesses becoming more energy conscious. It's fairly obvious that power problems abound around the world, this would help alleviate the problem. Currently the trend in technology is 'bigger is better' which currently also means more power hungry. Technology is slowly moving towards integration and energy efficiency (it can be said this has been happening for a long time, but in my view it's only become a focus point recently) which we are slowly seeing the benefits of.

Anyway time to wrap this post up.

 

[Chooco]

so are you saying that Linux would not only speed up the system, but actually reduce power consumption and save money if used on all computers in the office?

 

[EmMayEx]

First I'd aruge that energy efficient PCs and appliances are catching on as evidence by everyone jumping on the energy star bandwagon. Consider how much power a mainframe and all the terminals a system of 20-30 years ago used compared to the vastly more powerful network of PCs and laptops in most offices today and you'll realize that compared to the auto industry (where the average new car gets worse milage than it did 20 -30 years ago, mainly due to the popularity of SUVs) the PC industry is a paragon of power efficiency.

If you look at cost of ownership rather than cost to run something you can see where the economic forces are driving things. With cars, the average life span is around 10 years and most people don't keep them nearly that long. If you spend $500 a year on fuel (about what I spend and I get 30 MPG and drive > 50 miles a day to and from work) that works out ot $5000 over the life of a vehicle. Even a very inexpensive new car costs > $10,000, and insurance for ten years is probably at least $5000 on such a vehicle, probably more depending on where you live, and how many accidents and tickets you have. If you double the MPG rating of a vehicle you save 50% of your fuel costs or about $2,500 over ten years. That's less than 10% of the cost of ownership ($10,000 car + $5,000 insurance + $5,000 fuel + $500 or more for oil and tires) for a very inexpensive car. If you get a $30,000 car (or SUV) instead of a $10,000 one then your potential savings by doubling the MPG rating drops to a few percent of the cost of ownership.

Anyone who hands out in the HOT DEALS forum realizes that most people consider a total savings of a few percent insignificant.

Consider a computer that uses 50W of power instead of 500W. Electricity in the US runs between $0.05 and $0.15 a KWH for residential use with commercial rates as low as $0.03. A years worth of computer use 8 hours a day at 50W computer would cost about $22 (at $0.15 a KWH) while a 500W one would cost $220. The difference works out to $0.54 a day for this example. For most people $0.54 a day is a small price to pay for not having to spend extra minutes staring at an hourglass icon. If you factor in the cost of an LCD screen (at $300 vs $77 for a 15" or $500 vs $90 for a 17") you've already spent your first year or two of savings. Given the cheap prices for systems these days, power is a significant fraction of the cost of ownership so there may be some legitamate economic incentive to buy energy efficient PCs (or at least turn them off when you aren't using them) but it takes years for the savings to be realized if you account for the LCD screen cost and computers do become obsolete fairly rapidly.

Perhaps a better question to ponder is why CRTs haven't been displaced by LCDs since they use about 10% of the power and take much less desk space. I suspect the answer to this is their high cost and limited supply as well as the fact that CRT images are superior in many applications (i.e. video). In the future I think there is a lot more potential for savings from LCDs (or some better display technology) displacing CRTs than from enhancing PC power efficiency at the expense of processor speed.

Max L.

 

[Shalmanese]

Who the hell uses 500W computers?

As I have said before, Computers make such a piddly amount of electricity that there are far more important things you can save money on. Many household appliances easily use order of magnitudes more power than a computer.

 

[Muse]

<< I think it's because most people don't anticipate that computers have significant running costs other than technical support.

Very few people I know consider energy cost of electrical applicances, certainly for domestic/SOHO use, especially when the power consumption is not known.

Ask people how much power a PC uses, and it's clear that they have no idea. Even many people on this forum have no idea (although, in this forum they tend to over estimate dramatically). Many people also fail to consider that the PC will be on for 8 or 10 hours per day in a business situation. They also fail to consider additional costs, e.g. cooling.... snip... >>

The way I look at it, any energy usage is significant and I think about it. I measured my PC some time ago and I think it used something like 80 watts when the monitor was off. I have my monitor (CRT, 17") power down after 10 - 15 min. of non-use. I made a simple device that measures power use and I've used it on all kinds of stuff around my house. It's just a digital multimeter hooked up with a special extension cord I produced with these parts:

2 banana plugs that will plug into the multimeter
a 6 foot length of AC cord, spliced into a regular extension cord on one end and with the banana plugs on the other.

I plug the extension cord's banana plugs into the multimeter, set the meter to AC amps, plug a device into the extension cord, turn on the multimeter and plug the cord into the wall outlet. Very accurate. And cheap.

I figured out that there were/was something in my bedroom that was draining around 70 watts continuously even when I had nothing on. I have a computer, receiver, two phones, answering machine, TV, 2 VCRs and more in this room. A few weeks ago I realized what was draining most of the power. I have a number of AC to DC and AC to AC transformers that were continuously drawing power. One of these went to a video tape rewinder that I bought over ten years ago with the idea that it would save me repairs on my VCR. The transformer for this thing has been drawing 17 watts 24/7 for over ten years and I figured out that this cost upwards of $120 alone! That would have paid for replacing the motor that rewinds tapes in either of my VCRs. To top that off, I never use the thing! I used it a few times and haven't used it in over 10 years. Well, it's unplugged now and will only get plugged in if I want to rewind a tape. Actually, it's plugged into a power strip that's switched off. All I have to do is switch the power strip on and I can use the rewinder, along with my DSL modem, whose transformer gets turned off the same way now, too. All those little power transformers that stay on all the time are a big waste of energy/money, folks.

I also use compact flourescent bulbs. I'm pretty into conservation. I try not to be nuts about it, but I do think about it.