Any forum on power efficient computing?

[gorion83]

Just wondering if there is any forum/website on power efficient computing.

After googling a bit I didn't find any.. i would be interested in seeing how one can minimize it's PC power draw (writing wasting 100w right now).

[Syonyk]

Use a laptop.

[Syonyk]

So, since I'm on a keyboard now:

Desktop power consumption generally isn't that good.  The power supply ranges from 70-90% efficient (high efficiency power supplies are expensive, and only make a big difference if you're pulling north of 1000W), you've got external monitors that aren't usually built for incredible power efficiency, and you connect everything with decently long cables that take a non-trivial bit of power to drive.  They're also generally built more for performance than power savings - higher power chips (that process faster), large hard drives, etc.

Laptops are literally optimized for power consumption.  Battery life is everything anymore, and so they are hyper-focused on that.  The chips are chosen for low power consumption, everything is tightly integrated, etc.

So, to save power, use a laptop.

Or, you can go with a desktop built out of laptop parts (or close to it).  The Intel NUC systems are quite low on the power consumption scale, but you then have to consider the monitor power consumption (laptop screens are optimized for low power consumption, desktop screens typically aren't).

Now, why do you care?  The best option in terms of saving money is to use your current machine (if it's only pulling 100W, it's not that absurd), sleep it when you're not using it, or power it down (both use little power).  If you're paying $0.10/kwh, it costs you $0.10 to run your machine for 10 hours, so $7/mo for it being always on.  You're not likely to be able to replace it with a comparable laptop for the expected cost savings.

If you're off grid and running on solar and battery, then the payoff looks better for dropping power consumption, but if you're grid tied, just put it to sleep aggressively and call it good.

[Retired To Win]

...
Now, why do you care?  The best option in terms of saving money is to use your current machine (if it's only pulling 100W, it's not that absurd), sleep it when you're not using it, or power it down (both use little power).  If you're paying $0.10/kwh, it costs you $0.10 to run your machine for 10 hours, so $7/mo for it being always on.  You're not likely to be able to replace it with a comparable laptop for the expected cost savings.

If you're off grid and running on solar and battery, then the payoff looks better for dropping power consumption, but if you're grid tied, just put it to sleep aggressively and call it good.

Sounds good to me.  All I'll add is to make sure to TURN OFF THE FRIKKING MONITORS. (My wife runs 2 big ones at once off her laptop and would leave them on 24/7 if I didn't turn them off when I shut the house down for the night.)

[alsoknownasDean]

Liliputing focuses on portable and small form factor stuff, which by design is usually pretty power efficient.

But yeah, as far as desktops go, there's a handful of changes you could make (more energy efficient CPU, ditch a separate video card and use the integrated GPU, maybe remove an unused hard drive or use a more efficient display), but further gains would be made from using something designed from the ground up to be power efficient.

[FIRE 20/20]

I agree with everything that's been said so far, but if you are still looking for a forum that will help with efficient computing you may want to look at:
http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/

While the focus there is on noise reduction, the most important things you can do to reduce noise are to reduce power consumption and reduce inefficiency. 

[Syonyk]

I'm still trying to figure out the "Why?" here...

If it's to save money, a typical desktop computer that is operated in a sane manner (being put to sleep/displays off when not in use) doesn't use enough power to make it worth spending any money to reduce the power use.  You can probably justify replacing an old CRT monitor with a LCD display (preferably LED illuminated), though - CRTs are basically space heaters with a side effect of a visible display.

If it's because of off grid power systems, it makes more sense to replace it with a laptop, but that's an uncommon use case.

If you want to go nuts for the sake of going nuts, the new Broadwell chips don't use much power (nor does Haswell), and you can get some systems optimized for very low power consumption/passive cooling.  Arstechnica reviewed one this week that's totally passively cooled - https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/05/a-quick-look-at-logic-supplys-fanless-industrial-mini-desktop/

Apple hardware also tends to be very good at sipping power - a 21.5" iMac (Haswell), according to one site:

Power consumption is incredibly low, given the potential performance available. Absolute peak consumption with screen fully bright and processors at maximum, the 21.5-inch iMac drew 85W from the mains. Sat idle with the screen at a sensible 120 cd/m2, it consumed just 26W.

And it'll draw even less with the display off.

It makes absolutely no financial sense to replace a desktop with an iMac to save power, but they will typically draw a lot less power.  I can say that my office runs a lot cooler with an iMac as the "always on" system (display is not always on, but the machine does not sleep as it maintains network connections to a lot of things) than it did previously with a high power desktop serving the same function.

[gorion83]

Thanks everyone for your answers so far.

I agree that it doesn't make any financial sense to replace the pc only to cut the power consumption. I know it.

However please note that where I live energy is more expensive (€0.20), and the typical consumption ranges from 100w (idle) to 250w (full load).

My idea was simply to replace some components over time when needed with something more power efficient (aren't we mustachians trying to reduce wasted energy as well?). For example switching to a geforce 750ti when my fellow 9600GT will die.

I was curious, however, to see if one could find out new cpus with equivalent performance to my (5 years old) x6 1055t and significant power savings. For example with the i5-4590t I could get everything in a 35w package. would it be enough in terms of performance? Adding for psu waste and hard drives consuptions one could have a 40-45w load consumption which compared to my 250w load consumption is about 1/5, thus €0.16 saved every 4 hours in full load.

Sure, that won't be enough to cover the upgrade, but one could always have some targeted gifts and cover the difference by selling the old rig.

Or, to find out if there is any trick to cut down consumption even more (downclock?)

Notebooks are a solution, but I always liked expandability and freedom of choice you get with a desktop, even if in a mini-itx case.

[gimp]

For what do you use your computer?

Any i5 is enough - really, more than enough - for almost any user, running almost any operating system and almost any set of programs.

That's the problem for some companies (intel) these days; we're in the era of good-enough computing power. That's why the past couple generations have given only very modest (5-10%) single thread performance increase, but very large performance-per-watt increase due to decreasing power.

In other words, the newest i5 or whatever will be much less power hungry than your 5-year-old chip.

With that said, system power != cpu power. You have to power the CPU, yes, but also the power supply is not perfectly efficient, you have to power the PCH and/or bridge controllers, all the voltage regulators, all the various little chips and regulators etc on the motherboard, your ram, your graphics if it's standalone, your usb hubs, your hard drives / cd / floppy / etc drives, and so on and so on. On the plus side, modern systems are improving on all of those as well, and modern CPUs have more on-die than ever to reduce power use, and the CPU still tends to be the biggest power consumer.

[Syonyk]

However please note that where I live energy is more expensive (€0.20), and the typical consumption ranges from 100w (idle) to 250w (full load).

Still doesn't make that big of a difference... just put it to sleep instead of letting it idle.

I was curious, however, to see if one could find out new cpus with equivalent performance to my (5 years old) x6 1055t and significant power savings. For example with the i5-4590t I could get everything in a 35w package. would it be enough in terms of performance? Adding for psu waste and hard drives consuptions one could have a 40-45w load consumption which compared to my 250w load consumption is about 1/5, thus €0.16 saved every 4 hours in full load.

Your CPU is a small fraction of the total power consumption of your system, and going to a less power hungry CPU without changing out the rest of the system will make a 10-15W difference, tops.

Short of building a new desktop focused on power consumption, there's not much you're going to be able to do that will be a meaningful reduction in power consumption.

[gorion83]

With that said, system power != cpu power. You have to power the CPU, yes, but also the power supply is not perfectly efficient, you have to power the PCH and/or bridge controllers, all the voltage regulators, all the various little chips and regulators etc on the motherboard, your ram, your graphics if it's standalone, your usb hubs, your hard drives / cd / floppy / etc drives, and so on and so on. On the plus side, modern systems are improving on all of those as well, and modern CPUs have more on-die than ever to reduce power use, and the CPU still tends to be the biggest power consumer.

True. However Windows or some software is now able to turn off the discrete GPU and use the iGPU to save power. That's the biggest power eater in the rest of the system. Hard drives use 4-5w maximum, with a good MB and RAM not going over 10w under load.

More efficient CPUs and GPUs should lead to significant power savings. I'm curious to see with upcoming releases (even more geared towards power efficient solutions) what would be the saving.

As it is now one needs 10k load hours to make the change financially sound (with a 200w save) or 25k idle hours (assuming 80w saving). At my current on-time this means about 22.8 years assuming a €400 upgrade cost.

[gimp]

All modern consumer-level CPUs have an integrated GPU, and almost no new/newish lower-end PC or laptop even has a discrete GPU, so windows or any other OS being able to turn off the dGPU is kind of a moot point. :)

Also, 5W here, 10W there, considering there are new CPUs that run at around 15W, I wouldn't be so quick to ignore system power.

But yes, upgrading only to use less power is not likely to make financial sense.

[GetItRight]

There's no ROI in it if you're only using around 100w for web surfing and other light duty tasks. As others have said, laptops will generally use less, particularly ultrabook and other non performance/dev/CAD type machines. You won't reach ROI though if buying something new just to reduce power consumption below 100w, and consider if you live in an area that gets cold that heat is not wasted for a large part of the year.

Do you leave this machine on 24/7 to share files or host a website or similar? If so you can buy purpose built devices that use less power and have better power saving features for a NAS. You could also build a server or NAS using a micro ATX board, suitable enclosure, etc. as a low power always on device for whatever your needs are.

[gorion83]

All modern consumer-level CPUs have an integrated GPU, and almost no new/newish lower-end PC or laptop even has a discrete GPU, so windows or any other OS being able to turn off the dGPU is kind of a moot point. :)

Also, 5W here, 10W there, considering there are new CPUs that run at around 15W, I wouldn't be so quick to ignore system power.

But yes, upgrading only to use less power is not likely to make financial sense.

True, unless you keep it on for 24/7.

However, I hope to see more MB like this: http://us.msi.com/product/mb/H81M-ECO.html#hero-overview

[Fastfwd]

An iphone is a computer, so is an ipad mini or full size ipad. Then there are small laptops with tiny screens and slow cpus that don't draw much power. Really depends on what you do with it.
I have a Mac mini running 24/7 is my closet without a screen. I never checked but being made of laptop components and without a screen it can't be drawing much power.

[waffle]

The Mac Mini is the most power efficient desktop computer out there. They are getting to be less user friendly for modifications, but my 2.5 year old model runs star craft as good or better than most of my friends gaming PC's. They made fun of me for using a mac for gaming, but mine has never frozen or bogged down the game like theirs regularly do.

[jmusic]

The Mac Mini is the most power efficient desktop computer out there. They are getting to be less user friendly for modifications, but my 2.5 year old model runs star craft as good or better than most of my friends gaming PC's. They made fun of me for using a mac for gaming, but mine has never frozen or bogged down the game like theirs regularly do.

True that.  The reason for this is that it's got laptop internals in a desktop form factor (Same with the Imacs).  If someone wanted to do this without the Apple markup, you could look at the Intel NUCs ("Next Unit Computing"). 

If you do go the Mac Mini route, it's important to note that the new ones are totally locked down.  Soldered RAM, totally buried hard drive.  Not at all like the 2012 model. 

[Sid Hoffman]

Sounds good to me.  All I'll add is to make sure to TURN OFF THE FRIKKING MONITORS. (My wife runs 2 big ones at once off her laptop and would leave them on 24/7 if I didn't turn them off when I shut the house down for the night.)

Even monitors have come a long way.  I have a several year old 21.5" 1080p screen I use for work.  It's LED backlit and in the "Eco" brightness setting it is just the right brightness level for my eyes and draws 15 watts.  Back in the old days of CRTs I had a 21" CRT that pulled about 130 watts.  It's kind of amazing to think that in less than 20 years, computer monitors dropped power consumption for a same-size display by a factor of over 8x.  If you want to help make it more automatic, you can also go into the display settings for your wife's computer and set it to turn off the monitors after X number of minutes.

[RyanAtTanagra]

The new raspberry pi2 is quad-core and arm7 which has both Windows10 and Ubuntu builds that can be run on it, and uses about 4watts of power.  At $35 it can be worth replacing an inefficient desktop for.  Granted, I've never used one as a desktop, but I know people do.  I use it as a media PC hooked up to my tv, doing 1080p quickly and flawlessly, so I'd be surprised if it couldn't handle average desktop use (internet and office-type applications).  I'm a huge fan of the pi, they are ridiculously awesome little things for how much they cost, and there's such a huge hobbyist user base that everything from cases to wifi adaptors are crazy cheap.

[Syonyk]

You can do things with a Pi, but that's an unreasonably painful way to make a user do much of anything...

It's not going to be able to do many things at once, and I hope you don't care about Flash or anything on the web.

[RyanAtTanagra]

You can do things with a Pi, but that's an unreasonably painful way to make a user do much of anything...

It's not going to be able to do many things at once, and I hope you don't care about Flash or anything on the web.

Don't confuse the pi2 with the pi.  It is leaps and bounds above the old one (I just upgraded).

[Syonyk]

I'm referring to the Pi2.

It's still radically slower than even a cheap x86 machine.

I'll borrow some results from here:

http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/forum/index.php?topic=166.0

1min 32s - Intel i5 (3.33 GHz - compiled and generated on Linux 64b - metered by liquid)
...
6min 57s - Intel Pentium 4 530 (3.00 GHz - precompiled FET with Windows XP 32bit - metered by y)
17min 15s - Broadcom BCM2836 Raspberry Pi 2 - ARM Cortex-A7 (0.9 GHz - Raspbian - metered by Volker Dirr)
1h 11min 25s - Broadcom BCM2835 Raspberry Pi - ARM1176JZF-S (0.7 GHz - Raspbian - metered by Volker Dirr)

It's still a very slow system for modern use.

It's about as fast as an iPhone 4.  Which is totally fine for a smartphone, and will be painful as a desktop.

[gimp]

Ras pi is fine if the only thing you are doing is CLI mode - that is, no windows, just a single full screen command line interface. (Okay, technically you get a small handful of screen you can switch between using an ALT+Fx command if I remember correctly, or is it CTRL+ALT+Fx)?

However, the moment you launch its graphical user interface, it slows to a crawl.

So if you're the kind of person who likes to write code in a single terminal, great. If not, not so great as a general purpose computer.

[Sid Hoffman]

The Mac Mini is the most power efficient desktop computer out there. They are getting to be less user friendly for modifications, but my 2.5 year old model runs star craft as good or better than most of my friends gaming PC's. They made fun of me for using a mac for gaming, but mine has never frozen or bogged down the game like theirs regularly do.

Starcraft is a 17 year old game.  I'm not sure your comparison is valid.  At any rate, the OP hasn't made any mention of being a gamer, so I think the previous suggestions to buy a laptop are pretty safe.  Even my old work laptop only draws 10 watts when hooked to an external monitor and doing basic web browsing and word processing type activities.  That would be a 90% reduction from the 100 watts he mentions currently using.  That's probably good enough to call it a day.

[Ricky]

IMO thinking in terms of pennies will only allow you to earn pennies. I just don't think the savings are worth the energy expended by the neurons moving through your skull thinking about this sort of thing.

[gorion83]

  At any rate, the OP hasn't made any mention of being a gamer, so I think the previous suggestions to buy a laptop are pretty safe.  Even my old work laptop only draws 10 watts when hooked to an external monitor and doing basic web browsing and word processing type activities.  That would be a 90% reduction from the 100 watts he mentions currently using.  That's probably good enough to call it a day.

In the end that's the route I've taken right now.
A friend had an abandoned Vostro 3550. I took it for free and upgraded the ram with a spare 2gb module I had.

I will also remove the SSD from my desktop to replace the ODD on the laptop and then I'll sell the desktop (probably I'll get $200 or so).

I do game a bit, but I found that gaming on the HD 6630m is acceptable for SC2 (the only game I play right now).
I will also replace my xbox 360 (got one for free one year ago by opening a bank account) with a DIY Steam-box, but for that I'll wait 2016 to see what Skylake, HBM and Zen bring on the market.