Puter uses 160 W at idle!! How do I reduce that??

[BDSM]

Zepper.. hey there. I read your signature. I think we're twin souls or something..hehe

But.. you should try living in Sweden before you say anything!

 

[AntecCSR]

It has to do with an EC policy. Basically by using PFC you're helping the power companies and they're suppossed to give a rebate for you doing so. However I'm not sure how widespread that is (ie in the US AFAIK no one has that so there's no real advantage to PFC in the US)

AntecSR

 

[BDSM]

Antec.. oh I c.. Thank you for explaining it to me.

 

[Mark R]

In the UK you pay only for 'Actual power' used (Electricity companies are not allowed to charge domestic customers penalties for low power factor). That means that you pay the same whether you use a PSU without PFC, passive PFC or active PFC. In fact, you may pay more for one with active PFC because the active PFC circuit can use up to 10 W [*], though improvements in other parts of the circuit may offset that.

[*Efficiencies of several active PFC designs are about 95%. I've seen several low-cost PSU manufacturers quote lower overall efficiency for their active PFC supplies, than their base models - e.g. 70% for standard model, 65% for active PFC model]

The EC requires that PSUs of more than a certain power (100 W I think) must have PFC (either passive or active), with plans to lower the limit to 30W or less. The electricity companies recognised the problems that low-PFC PSUs caused, and legislation was quickly put in place to help preserve their network capacity.

What are the specs of your machine BDSM?

As a comparison, my system Athlon XP 2500+, 2x 7200rpm drive, Radeon 9700 uses 130W idle and 180W load (200W peak during optical drive access)

An older Athlon 1000, 2x 5400 rpm drive, GF2 GTS, uses 90W idle and 120W load, with an old Celeron 766, 1x 5400rpm drive, i810 graphs uses 45W idle and 50W load.

The big power consumers are the CPU and the graphics card. Hard drives uses a small amount. Optical drives are largely irrelevant as they only use significant power when actively operating (and even then they take big loads when accelerating). Minor components e.g. most expansion cards, fans (apart from the impractical 'overclocking' grade fans), RAM, etc. use little power

To save power, I'm afraid it's a matter of changing to lower powered components. Unfortuantely, laptop power-saving components have not made it to the desktop - these technologies are expensive (mains electricity is cheap, but batteries are very expensive).

As a bit of a fudge, one option (if your motherboard supports it) is to 'underclock' your CPU and 'undervolt' it at periods when you don't need maximum performance - you should be able to achieve savings of up to 10-20W this way.

You may have a lot of accessories that individually use almost negligable power (e.g. speakers, network hubs, USB hubs, etc) - however, together these can be a substatial draw - particularly if they use low-efficiency transformer based power supplies. E.g. I have a USB digital radio (but it needs its own PSU to power it's electronics). The PSU is 5W - but at all times when plugged it it draws 5W. Under load testing with a resistor, it may draw as much as 15W under 5W load. I used to have about 8 similar peripherals before I rationalised things, amounting to about 40W of 'standby' load serving no useful purpose.

 

[BDSM]

Hey there Mark!

Thanx 4 u'r reply!

The specs are T-bred B @ 2430 mhz, Radeon 9000 pro @ stock, IBM desktar 180 gxp, Chieftec 360 W psu.

I have a scanner, printer ans speakers connected. Plus an adsl modem and ofcourse a monitor.

My figures are for all those devices so. I am gonna see in about half an hour what the consumtion of the compuer is alone. The stand by consumption of these devices are around 25 w.

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: BDSM
Hey there Monkyeman

I use speedfan. mucho better than any manual fan adjustment.. and it's free
I'm not sure what to do exactly cuz I luv having my puter up and running at all times.
I'm not sure a lap top would work well cuz they aren't designed to run 24/7.
Hopefully someone will realise computer are drawing more and more power and that soemthing has 2 b done about it.

Laptops should be just fine going 24/7. Their hard drives are generally low-rpm, and laptops aren't designed to act as servers. I'd be most worried about heat, but some laptops do a better job with heat removal than others. Check out Newegg; they've got a selection of cooling pads that just fit under the laptop.

Originally posted by: Mark R
In the UK you pay only for 'Actual power' used (Electricity companies are not allowed to charge domestic customers penalties for low power factor). That means that you pay the same whether you use a PSU without PFC, passive PFC or active PFC. In fact, you may pay more for one with active PFC because the active PFC circuit can use up to 10 W [*], though improvements in other parts of the circuit may offset that.

[*Efficiencies of several active PFC designs are about 95%. I've seen several low-cost PSU manufacturers quote lower overall efficiency for their active PFC supplies, than their base models - e.g. 70% for standard model, 65% for active PFC model]

The EC requires that PSUs of more than a certain power (100 W I think) must have PFC (either passive or active), with plans to lower the limit to 30W or less. The electricity companies recognised the problems that low-PFC PSUs caused, and legislation was quickly put in place to help preserve their network capacity.

What are the specs of your machine BDSM?

As a comparison, my system Athlon XP 2500+, 2x 7200rpm drive, Radeon 9700 uses 130W idle and 180W load (200W peak during optical drive access)

An older Athlon 1000, 2x 5400 rpm drive, GF2 GTS, uses 90W idle and 120W load, with an old Celeron 766, 1x 5400rpm drive, i810 graphs uses 45W idle and 50W load.

The big power consumers are the CPU and the graphics card. Hard drives uses a small amount. Optical drives are largely irrelevant as they only use significant power when actively operating (and even then they take big loads when accelerating). Minor components e.g. most expansion cards, fans (apart from the impractical 'overclocking' grade fans), RAM, etc. use little power

To save power, I'm afraid it's a matter of changing to lower powered components. Unfortuantely, laptop power-saving components have not made it to the desktop - these technologies are expensive (mains electricity is cheap, but batteries are very expensive).

As a bit of a fudge, one option (if your motherboard supports it) is to 'underclock' your CPU and 'undervolt' it at periods when you don't need maximum performance - you should be able to achieve savings of up to 10-20W this way.

You may have a lot of accessories that individually use almost negligable power (e.g. speakers, network hubs, USB hubs, etc) - however, together these can be a substatial draw - particularly if they use low-efficiency transformer based power supplies. E.g. I have a USB digital radio (but it needs its own PSU to power it's electronics). The PSU is 5W - but at all times when plugged it it draws 5W. Under load testing with a resistor, it may draw as much as 15W under 5W load. I used to have about 8 similar peripherals before I rationalised things, amounting to about 40W of 'standby' load serving no useful purpose.

An Athlon 1000? Like, socket or slot? If socket, no way - the later Thunderbirds were power hogs. What I did just think of was maybe to put together a good socket 7 system - with a K6-2+ processor. They were originally designed as laptop processors, but some SS7 motherboards do support them. Use that, and like an old S3 4MB PCI graphics card - that should really cut power consumption.

 

[BDSM]

Alright. I measured the comsumption of my puter ONLY now.. It's @ 146 W at idle. I also clocked it @default speed and voltage.. And it only draws 84 W!!.. wow. that'sa HUGE difference. It also runs 14 C cooler at this speed.. Hmm. Well.. gonna have to try to decide if that extra ghz is worth it all.

 

[Mark R]

The specs are T-bred B @ 2430 mhz, Radeon 9000 pro @ stock, IBM desktar 180 gxp, Chieftec 360 W psu. My figures are for all those devices so

I thought that must be the case - that power consumption was way too high to be just a base-unit on its own. Especially one with out a high-powered graphics card and multiple drives.

That's a pretty impressive overclock - I'm not surprised it contributes such a substantial load, although I'm still amazed that at idle your PC was using over 140 W.

An Athlon 1000? Like, socket or slot? If socket, no way - the later Thunderbirds were power hogs

A Socket-A Thunderbird CPU. My figures are accurate (I have verified them with multiple methods). Although, I've now found my notes, and I recalled the power consumption of my current PC wrongly (it should be 170W on load, instead of 180W).

 

[BDSM]

Hey there again peeps.

I am now at 1.22 V actual core voltage and priming away very happily @ 7,5*200 mhz.

I tried 220mhz fsb at first but it seems at that high fsb the processor needs at least 1.65 V to run reliably no matter what multiplier I use!

Anyway.. It draws a max 82 watts at this speed and 69 (!!) watts at idle.. woooohooo And it's around 27 C idle and 32 at full load with the cpu fan @ 2 % in speedfan

So.. I think I am gonna stay here cuz I can't feel any difference at all since all I do is to play mp3's and chess.. and some general surfing and downloading stuffs.

So.. This way I will save cash and have a really REALLY quiet puter.

 

[0roo0roo]

so how much power would a p4 at low clock use? i'm guessing less then an athlon.

 

[BDSM]

Hey 0roo0roo!

I have no clue how much a p4 would use. But I don't have a p4.

 

[BDSM]

Down to 1.18 V actual voltage at the same speed (7,5*200=1.5 ghz) Prime stable @ 32C with minimal cooling and only 1 case fan.. And today is a warm, humid summers day!