What wattage does/will my computer idle at? How do I measure/estimate? Power bill is sky-high!

[CZroe]

My power bill has always been dirt cheap in our little trailer. Never more than $90 no matter how much AC (Window units) or electronics we left on. I had a barn built in the back yard for all my entertainment/electronics and had it wired seperately with it's own electric bill. Over the last year, my fileserver has grown and grown and now the power bill is far more than the trailer! I can't afford my planned fileserver expansion if I don't solve it first.

Something in the latest issue of Maximum PC got me wondering... They said that their Dream Meachine 2005 idled at 350w. How do they know/calculate/measure that? I'd like to know how much wattage my current setup idles at and what my planned configuration will idle at.

Currently, I am running:
Antec TruePower 430w
Antec SmartPower 350w
Two Promise SuperTrak SX6000 cards w/ 256MB SDRAM (Two DIMMs)
Six 120GB 1200JB Western Digital HDDs
One 40GB WD HDD
Four Hitachi 400GB 7k400 HDDs
EpoX 8RDA6+ nF2Ultra400+Gigabit w/ AXP2000+ & 512MB PC3200 DDR

It's a beefy system. Considering that that same room has a Sony KV-30XBR910 WEGA HDTV + surround sound and always-on Media Center PC, I'm swamped! So what can I expect when I transition to this?

PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 850 SSI
Two Promise SuperTrak SX6000 cards w/ 256MB SDRAM (Two DIMMs)
Twelve Hitachi 400GB 7k400 HDDs
One 120GB 1200JB Western Digital HDD
EpoX 8RDA6+ nF2Ultra400+Gigabit w/ AXP2000+ (Or Mobile Barton?) & 512MB PC3200 DDR

Even if one Turbo-Cool 850 is "more than enough", would two eventually pay themselves off in power efficiency?

 

[biostud]

The Seasonic S-12 line has the highest efficiency of PSU's. They're the only one in +80, where the efficiency stays above 80% in 25, 50 and 100% load. So you could get the S-12 600W.

 

[Allio]

5 terabytes?!

 

[imported_Kensai]

Nah, get one 850W SSI and love it.

 

[dwcal]

Think about getting a power meter like a Seasonic Power Angel or a Watts Up. It'll tell you exactly how much power the system is using. Try it with different components in the system to see how much difference each part makes.

 

[theMan]

i like the seasonic s12-600.

 

[CZroe]

The Seasonics are interresting, but even two of them seems like I'd be appraoching 80 or 90% load and therefore 80% efficiency. I've done some reading... If PSUs are more efficient when they are not at full load, perhaps I should give more consideration to two Turbo-Cool 850 SSIs to have "overcapacity" and maintain the advertised 85% efficiency? This setup, considering that it also has loads of fans and an optical drive, should be using close to or over 50% of a single Turbo-Cool 850's load (Maximum PCs 350 watt idler used about a third of the drives!). Because it gets 85% efficiency (At low loads?), I'm tempted to use two of them over Seasonic which promises 80% at 100% load (which I'll be darn close to even with two of them). Over time, that 10% may pay off like PCP&C advertises. I'm considering the Seasonic for the Media Center though. Hopefully they'll make their 1u PSU "+80" so I can mod it into a Shuttle.

 

[CZroe]

Originally posted by: Allio
5 terabytes?!

Yeah. CD and DVD image library, weekly HDD images, restore HDD images, MCE HDTV recordings, etc. It wasn't expensive to build so I went for it little by little (Watched Hot Deals for 1200JB drives LIKE A HAWK for months). The current 600GB array has been slap full for the last year and a half. I've already filled up a couple 400GB drives that aren't even in an array yet. Dunno what to do when I get all twelve.... The transition is going to be hell! Even after the expansion, I can fill it up