Is it 2006 already?

How exactly will you review "green" computing products?

Off the top of my head I can only think of a few categories:
- Removal Of Hazardous Substances (ROHS) compliance
- Energy Star compliance
- Power draw / Performance Per Watt (PPW) / efficiency / carbon footprint
- Waste created during the production of said product (good luck finding numbers on this).
- Life expectancy (?)


From the aforementioned topics, it seems that ecopcreviews would provide more of a corollary to SPCR reviews; with the addition of a general knowledge database (articles). Assuming, ecopcreview will not mix simply mix traditional hardware reviews with an environmentalist component.

Naturally, there will be overlap. There is another category -- toxins and embedded energy. Production of plastics usually involves some toxic materials, some more than others. Lots of PVC, for example, would be a bad thing. No plastic at all would be best. All aluminum would not be as good as all steel. The former takes 4 times the energy to produce an equivalent weight of the latter (say 1kg).

I think you have spotted a (small at the moment) hole in the review market a bit like SPCR in the beginning I suppose and I think it's great that you are making this site.

One problem for making it a unique reference is that many review sites already report power consumption of components when they test them - OK it's pretty random since they measure the consumption after the PSU, but it's still usable unlike the sound level measurements many reviews do. This is one of the main reasons SPCR is and will continue to be unique: you know how to judge sound levels and the others don't have a clue. EPCR might have a bit more difficulty on this front.

I know that EPCR will be about more than power measurements, but many (if not most) people only care about things that have a direct effect on them, comfort for SPCR, cost in the case of power consumption. In fact, you might find many readers that are professionals looking to get low power consumption desktops for their office in order to save on power bills.

None the less, I am personally very happy that you are making this site, I would like to help a bit if I can, but I suck at writing and don't have huge amounts of time to give to the cause

doesn't that depend on whether the aluminium is recycled or not? I was under the impression "secondary" alum. uses less energy than "primary" steel.

Recycled aluminium is much less costly in energy (95% less). I think it is mostly used for casting where a high alloy content isn't such a problem, for cases that are made from extruded aluminium this is more difficult. IIRC about 30% of aluminium used in the EU comes from recycling, but a large part of that probably goes into casting... (I am no expert on aluminium, but I did a school research project on recycling, and got a bit carried away on the european aluminium association's website )

Ok, but is weight the correct metric to use here? Based on the usual rule of thumb that aluminum is 1/3 as dense as steel, an aluminum case weighs 1/3 as much as an equivalent steel case. That means the real difference in production energy is just 33% (aluminum energy = 4/3 steel energy), not 400%. Given how many other variables go into case construction, I'm not convinced this factor is necessarily significant.

Typically an aluminum case weighs about half that of an equivalent steel case. For 'high end" cases, the weight difference is often small, because the case makers compensate for aluminum's lower density by increasing panel thickness. The hefty extruded front bezel alone (of some aluminum cases) is enough to equalize the weight.

Keep in mind that my comments are notes about properties which can be used to differentiate products, not final criteria. It's all being worked on right now, and as with many metrics, adjustments may occur as research brings more realities into light.

afaik (at the moment) most aluminum recycling seems to be most common with packaging -- ie, cans. Whether and what percentage of aluminum used in computers (mostly the case) is recycled would be interesting to find out. Another task for epcr.

To produce, yes, but the energy and equipment investment required to form the cases (some of which are rather intricate) may level the playing field, somewhat.

The specific heat (cp) of Al is almost twice as much as that of carbon steel (up to ~2.1% C). The melting point of Steel is also about 2 times that that of Al (in degrees Celsius). However, Young's modulus for Al is 89 GPa while that of structural steel is 200 GPa (ASTM-A36); temperature was not given, however, I'm assuming it's at 298 K.

It also appears that steel is the most widely recycled material in North America link. Steel also benefits from more mature refining, forging and casting processes.

According to an engineer I spoke with, from bayards, most designers are not used to dealing with Al construction and it is fairly common to see them simply determine the thickness of an aluminum product by 1.2x what they would of used if it was steel; this was in relation to bridges, but it may apply to computer cases, at least partially.


Side notes:
- GPa is Giga-Pascals or 10^9 N/m^2
- 25 deg C (298 K) and 1 atm is considered to be the reference, or dead state, especially in thermodynamics, which is why I assumed that temperature

Please excuse any ramblings and disregard for English grammatical convention as I have stayed up far too late.

While I do commend the idea of EPCR, I must ask this question that I'm sure many other SPCR readers are thinking of as well: does the focus shift on EPCR mean less SPCR content in the future?

wundi,

I can't answer for Mike, but the goals are mutually complementary.

Less noise => less energy used => less emissions => greener pc

However, the potential area of conflict is:

High perf top-of-the-line PC => lots of electricity use (grows exponentially) => very rapid upgrade cycles => lots of fancy cases/big radiators/lots of material used => lots of energy consumed in use and in production => very noisy pc => lots of CO2 emissions and big ecological footprint => very un-green PC

So I'm just thinking out aloud...

What is the role of a very high-performance, ultra-energy consuming PC in the future?

Can it be made near-silent and more ecological than the PCs today?