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| How to Save Energy When Using Your Computer |
| By special contributor Howard Fosdick on 2011-08-02 22:18:19 |
| Your computer is an important energy consumer in your home. Can you save
energy when using it? This article offers a few tips. |
|
| Comment by smashIt |
| By smashIt on 2011-08-02 23:33:57 |
|
great article, but there are more severe problems you can find with a wattmeter (not voltmeter as stated in the article) and some times there are simple means to solve them for instance: adding extra insulation to a boiler can reduce power-consumption significantly |
 - Score: 3 |
| Comment by fran |
| By fran on 2011-08-02 23:51:05 |
|
Howard, Great article as usual. Sorry if i repeat anything you already said below. I sometimes build custom gaming pc's on order and can share a few pointers. 1.Check if your computer's PSU (power supplied unit) is 80 Plus certified. Many pc manufacturers uses generic psu's that don’t quality under 80 Plus certification. Check, or let someone qualified check it for you and if not 80+ certified it's a good idea to replace it. 80 Plus certified psu's is not even that expensive. It might also make your pc run quieter. There is three 80 Plus certifications. Bronze, Silver and Gold. 2. LED screen uses less energy than LCD's Rather use LED screen. 3. When adding a second 3.5" Sata hdd go for the "green ones". For instance Western Digital caviar Green Seagate barracuda Green These drives switch off when inactive. 4.The firmware of motherboard sometimes installs a control centre with tweaking options like "eco mode" among other options. 5. AMD Cool and Quit activated via your bios and then from desktop can save a lot power. see below. http://www.amd.com/us/products/t... 6.Hardware Aids in power usage. ZALMAN ZM-PCM1 http://www.zalman.com/ENG/produc... ZALMAN ZM-MFC3 http://www.zalman.com/ENG/produc... Whit this product you can conveniently switch off discs in a multi disk configuration. LIAN-LI BZ-H06 http://www.lian-li.com.tw/v2/en/... 7. Even some Ram can come in ecoform now a days. Kingston Hyper-X LoVo ( Green ) http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/... And lastly. Our pc is many times overkill for what we use them for. If you are only going to use spreadsheets, read email you wont need to buy a high spec pc. Some new Mobo/cpu's unit in one has come out with lower power consumption but still respectable speed and other bells and whistles. For instance. AMD 350 Brazos that uses lots less energy but they still have high def.,hdmi outs,Sata6G, USB3 and many other features while using much less energy. SAPPHIRE E350M1 PURE FUSION http://www.sapphiretech.com/pres... Edited 2011-08-03 00:03 UTC |
| - Score: 8 |
| wireless printer setting |
| By fran on 2011-08-03 00:24:16 |
| On manuals of printers i seen they recommend switching off the wireless capability when not using. Apparantly this saves a bit of power. |
| - Score: 4 |
| RE: Comment by smashIt |
| By kaiwai on 2011-08-03 00:28:58 |
|
> great article, but there are more severe problems you can find with a wattmeter (not voltmeter as stated in the article) and some times there are simple means to solve them for instance: adding extra insulation to a boiler can reduce power-consumption significantly True, and use night-store rates so that you're not heating up water during the day when the peak power prices are high; that combined with a good insulation around the broiler has helped me save a few dollars each month. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Energy usage of ink cartridge manufacturing? |
| By bhtooefr on 2011-08-03 00:49:04 |
|
Ink cartridges don't last nearly as long as toner cartridges (but, admittedly, have less plastic), but in low volume printing, you'll end up replacing ink far more often (in terms of page count), due to them drying up, and you'll probably end up replacing printers far more often due to ink being more expensive than the printer. So, overall cradle-to-grave energy consumption of a laser may be better. |
| - Score: 7 |
| More |
| By transputer_guy on 2011-08-03 02:21:48 |
|
I recently replaced a 140W 20" CRT with a 14W 20" Acer LED ($100) and since that monitor is used 16hrs a day at a 15c KWhr rate, the LED pays for itself after a year or so. The CRT though just won't go and die yet. The CRT still looks way better for square TV/video, but far worse for everything else. My oldish 24" LCD though is closer to 80W and is toasty to sit in front of. Most plain LCDs are not as frugal as they could be, typically 60W and up for 24" and bigger screens. Some of those 27" and bigger Hanspree and HP models are well over a 100W. My next 24" will also be a 1920x1200 LCD from Lenova that uses a half power CC tube at 35W. Wonder why more CC tubes don't use that design since it compares well with LED on power. Still LED back lighting really seems to be smacking LCDs now on power and the price difference is becoming minimal and could easily cover itself in short order. Also LED makes for much slimmer, lighter panels (and woblier too). Also on ATX power supplies, most PCs use <80% efficient PSUs and the power factor is usually bad too. Compare the VA value against the Wattage value, VA is often 20% higher. Since most budget PCs can use a motherboard with built in graphics, they should be able to run on 60W or so esp if a 2.5" HD is used. That means the 300W PSU could easily be replaced by a micro PSU that fits entirely in the 24pin molex connector. These fanless Minibox supplies can deliver from 60W-150W saving space, noise and power and are >95% efficient. They do use an external 12V DC adapter though. Using one though will limit expansion options. For most of my PCs, I also switched to refurbished 2.5" HDs drives leaving the 3.5" HDs only for mass storage used only when needed. Saves power, space and noise. Microcenter often has these for $15-$20 at 40-60GB size. |
| - Score: 2 |
| Dual-graphics cards |
| By WereCatf on 2011-08-03 05:24:34 |
|
I just very recently bought myself a new laptop and noticed that it actually has two graphics cards: a low-power, low-performance one and a high-power, high-performance one. I can switch between them manually or the system can do it based on my power-profiles, though it doesn't switch the high-power one on when I e.g. start a game. I s'spose it's a shortcoming of Windows and the drivers. Anyways, it made me wonder when will PC manufacturers actually start doing the same thing on desktop PCs. It would make sense, even if it'll add $15 to the cost straight-up it'll pay itself back pretty quickly for most people. EDIT: As a side-note I've gotten the impression that switching graphics card on-the-fly is STILL not possible under Linux. I would think that such an ability would be very high on the to-do list, after all it does save power quite a bit, but I can't recall having seen anyone even thinking of working on that. Has this changed yet, does anyone know? Edited 2011-08-03 05:34 UTC |
| - Score: 2 |
| RE: Energy usage of ink cartridge manufacturing? |
| By Johann Chua on 2011-08-03 06:06:05 |
| Laser printers use more power, though. Still, I'm not sure which has the lowest cost of operation once you factor in the cartridges. |
| - Score: 3 |
| My results |
| By spiderman on 2011-08-03 06:30:48 |
|
My PC consumes 20W when used normally. AMD Sempron 3400+, RAM: 1.5G, 2 hard drives, GeForce 7300 SE. It runs GNOME with metacity (no OpenGl effects). The screensaver is a black screen (no OpenGl). It tops at 80W when playing 3D games. The screen consumes 25W: 19' iiyama. It beats your MacBook. My guess is that Macs are bad at energy saving, because they use the hardware accelerated effects to display the desktop. Is that right? One thing I have noticed is that the computer consumes energy when doing computing. These days, the graphic card is more powerful than the processor. It's the unit that consumes the most power. It dwarfs all the rest. Getting green hard drive is useless when you waste 80% of your energy in the graphics card. The hard drive's consumption is not significant. Edited 2011-08-03 06:41 UTC |
| - Score: 4 |
| More tips |
| By spiderman on 2011-08-03 07:03:57 |
|
My computer consumes 1 to 2W when switched off! I bought a plug switch and turn it off so it now consumes 0W when switched off. Some people think there is a spike when the computer is turned on. There is none. If it takes 30 sec to shut down and 2 minutes to boot and you leave for 5 minutes, you will save energy if you switch it off. It's nothing like a diesel motor, not to mention that what people think about modern diesel motors is also false. Switching your motor off is also worth it. If you are using a laptop as a desktop replacement, like mentioned in the article, and it is plugged to the wall, please, pretty please, remove the battery! You don't use it and you are charging it. There is an insane loss of energy to store it, then your battery will loose that energy over time by heat when the computer is turned off. Moreover your battery will live longer if you don't waste your limited cycles. |
| - Score: 2 |
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