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Hardware

Voltage Frugal PCs? 70

Posted by Cliff from the computing-on-a-budget dept.
Red Rocket asks: "There's no shortage of information on building special-purpose PCs. Water-cooled PCs, refrigerated PCs, overclocked monsters, quiet PCs, tiny PCs... it's all there. But there seems to be little info about building a PC that sips the minimum juice from the power grid. So I'd like to throw it out to the Slashdot throng to see what you've done." It would seem like a PC with a low power consumption would be an interesting selling point, especially for those people who are more concerned with something other than high clock speeds. Is there someone marketing a low-powered PC solution (CPU and monitor), if not how difficult and at what expense would it cost to build one?

"I'm going to leave this thing on 24x7 using electricity that I'm paying for so power consumption becomes a real issue. Which CPUs, chipsets, memory technology, and hard drives provide the thinnest power profile for an always-on machine? I'll be running NetWare because it provides the stability of Linux/BSD, exceeds the configuration ease of Windows, and provides the security and worm/virus immunity of...well, NetWare. That'll let me set up that yummy iFolder [novell.com] and have constant access to my data from anywhere on the Net. It also means I'll probably need to stick to an AMD or Intel CPU since AFAIK the Transmeta and Cyrix/VIA chips, like most IS managers, don't really get NetWare. CPU speed isn't much of an issue. 633 MHz should be plenty. Am I the only miser setting up a server?"
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Voltage Frugal PCs? More

Voltage Frugal PCs?

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  • I recommend... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Stone Rhino ( 532581 ) <mparke@gm a i l.com> on Monday February 04, 2002 @02:54PM (#2951366) Homepage Journal
    A shuttle SV24, [spacewalker.com] since that thing runs on a fairly low wattage power supply but has integrated ethernet, small form factor, quiet operation, and plenty of other stuff useful in a server. It also looks cool and supports PIIIs up to 1 ghz.
    • err... here's a better link:
      http://www.shuttleonline.com/sv24.htm [shuttleonline.com]

    • Re:I recommend... (Score:2, Informative)

      by Alpha27 ( 211269 )
      This box coupled with an LCD monitor would be a pretty cost efficient on power consumption. The SV24's power supply gives about 150W of power, which is about 80-100 less then a typical box system. As for the monitor, a 17" LCD monitor consumes 50W of power, while a CRT equivalent consumes 80-95W.
    • A laptop with 14" LCD, 256M, 20G, DVD, 1GHz, PCMCIA, and USB will cost you around $1000 and it comes with its own built-in UPS. I think, at best, after you have added all the bits and pieces, you'll be able to pull even with the SV24, and it will be a lot more work.
      • did I mewntion this has integrated FIREWIRE, as well as USB? it's also expandable and user-serviceable, unlike a laptop. I priced out one of these+parts and for $1000, I can get a DVD, Geforce2 (for DVI out), good proc, 256 MB RAM, 15" LCD, wireless keyboard, 40+ GB hard drive, floppy drive. essentially a complete system with larger monitor and hard drive, and better performing too, all for the same price.
  • I was under the impression that the amount of power to the CPU was nothing compared to the power to the Monitor.

    Your best bet is proabaly a laptop with the AC adapter lugged in to the wall. Those are already designed to be low power usage machines.

    • Laptop: Yes (Score:2, Informative)

      by crow ( 16139 )
      Yup, that's exactly what I'm doing for my home firewall. I happened to have an old 120MHz laptop sitting around, so instead of buying a LinkSys router for my cable modem, I'm using it with two network cards.

      Now if I had a four-port PCMCIA ethernet card, I wouldn't even need a hub.

      • You do have to be careful though. Some notebooks don't deal well with being on 24x7 in a confined area For really bad ones, you may have to put it up on rubber feet to keep air moving around the shell, and leave the screen up while it is running.

        It all depends on the particular machine. They're just not designed for 24x7 server-applications.

  • Yes. (Score:5, Funny)

    by nadie ( 536363 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @03:16PM (#2951534) Homepage

    "Is there someone marketing a low-powered PC solution (CPU and monitor)"

    I think some manufactures built computers that run on only 12V rather then the 120V you get from that outlet in the wall. They usually go by the name of "LAPTOP". Rumor has it they can run for hours without being connected to power grid at all! And I hear they have a "sleep" mode whereby they can run for days using just a trickle of electricity! They come with a built-in "LCD" monitor! And they are very quiet as well, I hear. (Or rather, don't hear.)

    Of course, with all those features, they cost a bit more then your standard tower & CRT monitor, but some think that it is worth it. I hear that a company by the name of Toshiba makes some that are well regarded in the marketplace. I believe that other companies make "Laptop Computers" as well. Maybe you could try a Google search on that term?

    • Re:Yes. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by nadie ( 536363 )
      And to improve on that idea, follow Google's [slashdot.org] example, and replace the disk drive with a flash disk [simpletech.com]!
    • I know that was supposed to be funny, but it is a good idea. Take a laptop, add a larger monitor (LCD?), external keyboard and mouse, and a cooling plate or something to sit it on, and you're good to go.

      If you're intent on a real desktop, remember to just get rid of components you don't really need. Even idle components use power. Consider a fan bus also to throttle fans back when they're not needed. If this will be a firewall or something rather than a normal desktop, consider one of those LCD displays that fit in a 5 1/4" bay to display statistics rather than a monitor. If you're desparate (or like many of us and already do) leave the case open to save on cooling power. There's plenty of room to cut corners. Just remember that that's what you are doing; cutting corners. You need to ballance your power use with the function you need, but you already know that.

    • I had the same thought about using a laptop, but in the original posting, there is also this:

      I'm going to leave this thing on 24x7

      I have no problems imagining a desktop running 24x7, but I have a feeling that laptops are not designed to handle that kind of duty cycle -- especially the hard disk drives. Otherwise, I'd think there'd be lots more reports of people using laptops as a NAT box / firewall.

      Granted, that's based on anecdotal evidence and hearsay... is there anyone out there who has actually TRIED running a laptop 24x7? How did it work? Any problems to be aware of? (Oh, and what vendor and model was it?)

      Separately, I worked at a company which made extensive use of PC-104 components which are designed to be small and low-powered. That was a few years ago, but a quick search on google [google.com] should turn up numerous resources.

      Good Luck!

      • Re:Maybe (Score:2, Interesting)

        by silicon_synapse ( 145470 )
        If the laptop has a healthy ammount of RAM, it shouldn't hit the HDD that often for a firewall should it? Get a decent laptop, pull out the hard drive, beef up the RAM, and boot from a CD-RW or something. Run the OS from a RAMdisk. I wouldn't think a laptop would have any trouble running 24/7 in such a situation.

      • Re:Maybe: 24x7:Yes (Score:3, Interesting)

        by nadie ( 536363 )

        Yes, I run laptops 24x7.

        Yes, I use a laptop as a Nat box/firewall/wireless router, goes without saying, really that it never been turned off for the past 4 months. Is that unusual? I don't think it is.

        Yes, my daily machine is a laptop that never gets turned off. When I close the lid it goes to sleep, screen off, hd spun-down, etc. I would be suprised if this was actually unusual, laptops are made to run all the time, going into sleep mode rather then being turned off. That is part of the feature set, IMHO.

      • I have a feeling that laptops are not designed to handle that kind of duty cycle.

        Some friends of mine also got amazed when they learnt I left my computer on for days. They though just a server could be left on.

        But what is a server ? Nothing more than a normal PC running special programs.

        Most of the wear of a laptop would come from vibrations, heat and power cycling.

        Heck, laptops supposedly are very much more stressed then regular desktop. Do you usually walk with your desktop? Or take it in the car to have a Sun bath ? Or power it off to preserve batteries everytime you will do something else ?

        So why should they be so fragile when being used as a server ? Theorically it should be the opposite. A laptop in a server room would last much longer than a laptop used daily at work.

        • I'm sorry - WHAT?!?!?! (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          But what is a server ? Nothing more than a normal PC running special programs

          Umm, NO!

          Servers are WAY more than "normal PC"s low-end servers cost more than average desktops FOR A REASON.

          "standard" desktop PC's are not designed to run 24x7 - the power supplies, HD's and motherboards even in low-end servers all have higher MTBF's than a desktop system.

          RAM in a server usually includes ECC (even in low-end server systems)

          In addition to rack-mountable cases, higher-end servers frequently include things such as redundant hot-swappable power supplies, hot-swappable SCA drives, and hot-pluggable CPU modules.

          Your belief that servers are the same as desktop PCs only shows that you've never seen a real server.

          • Re:I'm sorry - WHAT?!?!?! (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Lord Sauron ( 551055 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @06:20PM (#2952542)
            Pardon me, but mission critical servers are not the scoop of this thread. According to your definition, this article is plain wrong.

            If you read this article carefully, you'll notice the poster is concerned with power consumption, wich hints he doesn't dream of using redundant power supplies. He was even considering to use the VIA chipset. Yet, his last phrase was: "Am I the only miser setting up a server?".

            Using your [mis]conception of a server, this wouldn't be a server. But, hey... Big news ! A server does not need to have a $10K price tag. A server does not need a 9" rack mount. A server can run without ECC very well, thanks.

            A server can be much cheaper, probably like the submitter wanted. He wanted a home server. Yes, there are things like home networks, with just 2 or 3 clients. Even small companies, that won't go bankrupt if they have a 2 second downtime, can stand servers like this.

            And, for your info, the definition of server is something that serves. It can serve webpages, in the case of a - guess what - web server, or file in the case of a - yes - file server. Get a TCP/IP stack on a Commodore 64 and you can have a small server.
      • Yes, I've done it.

        I (ab)used a Dell Inspiron 7000 (500MHz PIII) as my dev workstation for quite some time (>18 months). I'd work at it all day, then leave it humming so QA could test the installation in the "dev lab".

        yes, the dev lab was my laptop...
        yes, the company is out of business...

        certainly wasn't because of the electric bill, though...
      • I ran a IBM TP701/C (486 DX4/75) 7x24 as a firewall, nat, mailserver for 2 years before upgrading it. The machine didn't die, it just ran out of horsepower and storage capacity to do what I wanted to do with it.

        I replacded it with a FIC Sabre 1815 [fica.com] It shares a monitor/Keyboard with another PC via a kvm switch. The box is reasonably small, only has one fan, has 3 PCI and 1 PCcard, 1394 and usb, 10/100, audio, and video on the Motherboard. I put a slow (read cooler) 733 P3EB in it.

        Overkill for the need, but it works like a charm, and linux supports everything there.

      • as a (soon to be) college student, and a healthy sum of cash, i decided to go ahead and get a powerbook g4 550 w/combo drive.... when it's not at a lan party, it's at home running OS X @ about 4% cpu usage, blank screen screensaver, aim, and occasionally a download manager running in the background. the laptop runs cool enough at this level of usage, the hard drive comes on only when you move the mouse/trackpad enough to "wake" the screen, but goes back to sleep in about 5 min. it's been running flawlessly for about a month now (since i got it)....i have it sitting upon 2 cd jewl cases to aide air flow, but that's about it. runs great,
      • I've been running a Compaq Armada LTE 5380 (P133) laptop continuously for at least a year now, with no apparent problems. It gets very light use (display off 99% of the time, but hard drive doesn't spin down), but has been powered on continuously - without any apparent problems yet.
      • I played Diablo2 for 14 hours straight on my PowerBook with one break in the middle to go to the bathroom and stretch. When we were finished the dinner tray I had the PB on was pretty warm to the touch but the system was running just fine. It isn't one of those metal encased G4 models either, it is a slightly aged Lombard 333 with a fairly new IBM TravelStar in it.

  • misreading (Score:3, Funny)

    by hkon ( 46756 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @03:33PM (#2951632) Homepage

    So I'd like to throw it out to the Slashdot throng

    You know it's time to go home when you wonder for a minute what a slashdot thong looks like.

  • Power consumption (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lord Sauron ( 551055 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @03:42PM (#2951689)
    Theres no answer to your question. Everything depends on the way you use your machine. A processors power consumption depends, among others, on the processing load. In most modern OSs (I dont know if it applies to Netware, but am sure that it applies to 2000/XP and Linux), when the kernel notices theres nothing to process, it issues a HLT instruction, replacing idle cycles with a suspend mode. Then not only the processor takes less energy, but it also cools down.

    For older Windows versions, there are some programs that cool down the processor [vr-zone.com], thus lowering power consumption.

    So the power consumption depends on you OS, how you use your machine, etc, etc. But lets face it. Nobody really cares to [desktop] computer consumption, because it usally takes more money to build a low power PC than the savings itd result in a lifetime.

    For instance, the cost difference between a $159 17" CRT [compusa.com] and a 15" LCD [compusa.com], wich takes less power, simply would be enough to pay you computer power bill for years, IMO. And also, do you really think server monitors should be turned on 24x7 ? The server probably will be locked in a room. Get a cheap CRT and simply turn it off when not using. Its much cheaper.
  • Maybe but an "all in one" PIII motherboard and rather than utilizing a regular PIII, use a PIII wit the Intel "Speed Step" technology. Then throw in an LCS monitor and you are good to go.

    Notes:

    1. Not sure if a chip meant for a laptop will fit in a regular mother board.

    2. Not sure about the "Speed Step" term but it is something along those lines from Intel. Used to save power in laptops but running the CPU at lower MHz.

  • EnergyStar (Score:3, Informative)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @04:29PM (#2951997)
    Here is a list of computers that meet energy star guidelines:

    http://yosemite1.epa.gov/estar/consumers.nsf/con te nt/computers.htm
  • Does anybody have any (verifiable) figures about how much money it costs to keep an "average" desktop computer running for 365 days? I have seen a lot of figures and the numbers vary greatly (from fairly insignificant to not-so-insignificant).

    • Don't have any real links or figures right now, but I recall that a typical home or office PC with CRT monitor uses about 100 watts of power, about the same a light bulb.

      Remember that the wattage rate on the power supply is peak capabilty, not normal use, which is the total of all the parts of your system. Procesor=15 watts. HD=25 watts, etc.

    • A good way to get a quick estimate is to view the capacity usage percentage on a UPS (via monitoring). APC Back-UPS Pro and Smart-UPS models support this, so you could check via the software (nice tools) what is being used, and calculate the VAs or Watts being used... or you could in-line a Fluke with your power line.

      Once you know the power being pulled, you can extrapolate that out to a month/year, and factor in your local $/kWH. Depending on where you are, and what you are using, I'd expect $5-20/month...
    • I can just let you know my experience, granted it isn't hard scientific numbers or anything. My home machine is on 24/7 (light server duty, mostly workstation use), with the monitor on about 8 hours a day. This increased my average juice bill by $4 a month. Not too bad-- Dell Dimension 8100 P4 1.4Ghz, 256 RDRAM for the record. This is a rough unscientific comparison- $$ before owning a computer and $$ after owning a computer.
    • I've lived in my current apt for 2 years now. Elec is separate from heat, so I know exactly how much I've used.

      Since last year, I've added a DSL modem, netgear firewall/router, two 4 port hubs, an 8 port switch, a p166 running FBSD (on 24x7), a celeron 500 with Win98 (on 24x7), a 500W UPS, and several monitors which are usually in powersave mode.

      Last December (2000), I used 187KWH. That's really low, the average "home" uses about 720KWH in my area. I don't use much electricity, all my appliances do use it sitting idle; I should probably just unplug them all and save myself a bit more cash..

      This December (2001), I used 244KWH. That's it. So my home network in total added roughly 60KWH for a month. That comes out to less than $3 (before taxes).

      Of course, when I'm not actively using my systems, they're sitting idle (but not in standby), maybe serving 20 pages an hour or 20 emails a day. If your systems are more active, they will suck up more electricity, but I have no idea how much more.

      Well, I hope that gives you some idea.
    • My room mate figured out last spring that it cost us $10 a month to keep a PC on 24/7, roughly.
      Mind you, this was during the so-called
      power crisis in which our electricity rates
      in San Diego seemed to triple.


      This has most certainly gone down after summer,
      and I would guess that it is now costing us no more
      than $5.

  • Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @06:42PM (#2952621) Homepage
    I'll try to give some pointers here, since nobody else is actually contributing anything useful.

    First, turn off the monitor. Always. That'll suck a lot of power up.

    Don't wory about the power supply capacity, switching power supplies only draw what they need.

    For a processor, the latest from Via are pretty frugal, plus you can get away with just a heatsink.

    I never quite figured out if you could put an embedded pentium on a desktop pentium motherboard. The socket is the same, it's more a matter of weather you can get the motherboard to supply the right power, so that might be an acceptable alternative. You can't put any of the laptop/embedded pentium II/III/4 processors on a desktop motherboard.

    For a motherboard, I'm not 100% sure. I think you probably want a i810/i815 motherboard with the integrated video still there and not much else integrated, except perhaps ethernet. You might have to email the manufacturer of the motherboard to get exact power specs, however.

    CD-ROM drives, floppy drives, and hard drives all don't suck up that much power while idle. So don't stress too much about that. They only draw power while they are in use. Although, to be carefuly, you can always remove the CD-ROM and floppy drives.

    Try not to put too many pieces of RAM in the system. Ideally you want one DIMM that's big enough. That will generally eat up some power, too.

    And don't install anything you don't need. You don't need a sound card in a server machine, so don't put one in.

    • Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)

      by dead_penguin ( 31325 )
      First, turn off the monitor. Always. That'll suck a lot of power up

      Errr... Yes and no. Turning on and off frequently is not the best thing to do to save power. Whenever a monitor is powered on it will draw a higher amount of current than when it's normally running, so just switching a monitor off for only 5 minutes will probably *increase* your power consumption. Also, having a monitor come on and off many times a day probably isn't the best thing for it either; you can buy a lot of electricity for what it costs to fix or replace a monitor!

      Play with your dpms settings; I find having my monitor power off after ~15 minutes works out best, meaning that if I haven't touched the computer in that time I've probably left the room. Of course physically turning off the monitor when leaving is the best thing to do. That way you *know* it won't turn on just because someone's bumped the desk or something.

      • Re:Well... (Score:3, Informative)

        by cmowire ( 254489 )
        Very true. I have the dpms on my monitor set similarly. ;)

        What I was pointing out is that if you were building a low-power machine to be used as a server, you shouldn't stress too much about having a LCD screen instead of a CRT, just get any old CRT, leave it off, and use VNC or X to get at the machine if you need to.

  • Speed. (Score:4, Informative)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 ) on Monday February 04, 2002 @08:03PM (#2952951)
    CPU speed isn't much of an issue. 633 MHz should be plenty.

    Holy crap, I just _upgraded_ my main server to a PPro 200. What are you people doing on these machines?

    (It's replacing a 486/66, and the only reason I got rid of that was to get a second IDE channel and some PCI slots instead of ISA. Otherwise, the 486 would have been fine.)

    --saint
    • Sounds like mine. I have my main server as a PPro200 w/96mb of RAM. It does my routing, acts as my firewall, makes a good development database server, a good webserver (with JServ), and acts as a damn fine samba server. It has 3 network cards, and no video card. Whenever I need do access it, I use ssh and X.
  • Why wouldn't netware support VIA or Transmeta chips, they use the x86 instruction architecture just like intel chips. They work in the exact same motherboards as p3s, so the surrounding system architecture is the same. The power advantage of the C3 is a noticable amount, click here for a chart [viatech.com].

    If you're sure you can't use the C3 I think you would be better off purchasing a newer celeron, (celeron 1200 and faster) which is similar to the pre-tualatin P3(1.13GHz and up, iirc), but is cheaper and is on a .13 micron process which dramatically reduces power requirements.

    Also on a practical note, if the motherboard supports voltage teaks you can lower the voltage to the pci slots, dimms, and cpu. That will reduce power consumption and heat dissapation, which also reduces the amount of power consuming active cooling is needed. Not having enough power to a component can cause instability but shouldn't cause long term harm. As always, change each setting individually to assure dependability. And be sure to do a big stress test before deployment.

    • It costs money, lots of money, to test an operating system for compatibility with a CPU. Why bother testing fringe CPUs when 99.9% of your customers are running on Intel or AMD. Many companies don't officially support their software on AMD systems. It will probably work but it wasn't tested on that platform.
  • I'm looking to do the same thing, except that my target OS is Linux. I'm hoping to use an old switch-mode Amiga power supply that I have (no fan), and one of:

    Nearly perfect Crusoe board, but I need 2 PCI slots :-( - maybe I can mak [ibase-i.com.tw] Does netware definitely not run on Transmetas?

    SA110 eval board - not so useful for Netware, but OK for Linux, and I'll have to use a 5v -> 3v regulator [simtec.co.uk]

    Or just a Via C3 based socket 370 solution (see earlier posting for link).

    Hmm, why doesn't anyone make an ATX transmeta board? Maybe I need a PCI board, with 2 or more PCI slots, and a PCI->PCI bridge chip on it, if such a thing exists...

  • Hey, why not try an Athlon? Low power, no AGP bugs, no chipset issues...God bless AMD!
  • Almost two years ago, I put together a low power system:
    • DFI Socket 7 motherboard
    • 192 Mbyte SDRAM
    • AMD K6II/500 CPU
    • A 20 Mbyte drive
    • El-Cheapo tiny graphics card

    The whole system draws less than 50 Watts. (Of course I added a second hard drive to bring power consumption up to 60 Watts later, but it's still pretty good.)

    The system runs a custom Linux From Scratch [linuxfromscratch.org] install. A very minimal system, but with a very carefully selected set of services: sshd, Apache, BIND, and Postfix for mail.

    The goal (which I achieved) was a UPS hang-time of over 2 hours on a small little UPS. Important for what is my only 24x7 server box.

    If I were to build a low-power system today, I'd go for a VIA C3 [viatech.com] without any doubt. I've seen several of these systems that run quite nicely without even a CPU fan. That's one less moving part!

  • If you live anywhere but inside the United States, switch the little red thing on the back of your PC from 220 to 110!! This will cause your PC to use *half* the voltage it normally would!!

    (Translation: this article is poorly-titled.)

    - A.P.
  • Depending on what you want the computer to do. The PC/104 measures 3.8" X 3.6" consumes far less power than a standard PC system. Avaliable from a 8088 to Pentium type processor.

    http://www.pc104.com [pc104.com]
    http://www.pc104.org [pc104.org]

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