A Boston-area firm is selling "Earth-PC" and "Earth-Server" computers for smaller firms concerned about energy efficiency:



-- Hub firm rises to challenge of green computing (Boston Globe)

Apparently, a big part of the savings comes from higher-efficiency power supplies, for which the firm gets $5 rebates from the local power company ($10 for servers).

The computers also are configured by default with aggressive power-saving settings (e.g. going to sleep).

The firm selling these "Earth-PC" and "Earth-Server" PCs is called "Tech Networks. Here's their website:

http://www.yourtechoncall.com/

And a link to their intro page on the "Earth-PC":

http://www.yourtechoncall.com/earthpcintro.htm

I was really interested in finding out the system specs for thier server, but they didn't have it listed

looking at thier parts/price sheet though.... they had Pentium D listed there, not exactly the "greenest" chip on my list

I should think a small system based on Athlon or Mobile intel/AMD flavor would perform quite well for them.

Oop, thanks for the link, drees.

What intrigues me about this business model is the fact that they get these subsidies from the power companies. I wonder how much difference the $5 or $10 makes to Tech Networks and to the power companies.

I do hope to see more companies like this.

Hard to say how much the subsidies help, but they also say for each Earth-PC they sell they also donate $50 to an environmental cause, so I doubt that the subsidies do much except offset the amount they donate.

I'm also not very impressed by their specs, it looks like they could reduce power utilization by at least another 20-30% with even more careful choice of components.

The Dell desktops we've gotten here in the past couple years all seem to have inefficient PSUs without active PFC. At least the servers have active PFC, probably since most of them end up on UPS power and without PFC you lose a lot of battery capacity.

Earth-PC Basic: 54W on, 1W standby, 0W hibernation
(Equivalent Dell Dimension B110: 60W on, 3W standby, 1W hibernation)

Earth-PC Standard: 72W on, 1W standby, 0W hibernation
(Equivalent Dell Dimension E510: 106W on, 1W standby, 1W hibernation)

Earth-PC Super: 78W on, 1W standby, 0W hibernation
(Equivalent Dell Dimension XPS 410: information not available)



I think they could've done much better than that? As some of you know I've started a similar project (much less professional) and the basic system I've started with consumes 28 watts. That's based on a 3200+ Sempron which probably performs much less than a Celeron D. But still...

However, I'm glad to see that there are more initiatives developing!

28W is very impressive. A single 3.5" HDD can draw that upon spin-up! Can you list the specs (ie mobo, HDD, etc)? You're almost certainly using a 2.5" HDD?

I have some more info which I'll share soon. Here's my specs, but I think you know most of it. It's still in Dutch only but I hope to have an English version of the site soon.

I know a lot more about hardware and power consumption since I started researching 3 months ago, but could you tell me how a 3200+ Sempron and the Celeron D of the Basic Earth PC compare performance-wise? I find it real hard to compare Intel and AMD.

On-topic: I also wonder how much their NEC LCD monitor consumes. It does have built-in speakers, which I'm still looking for in a low power monitor. The speakers I selected for my system only consume 2 watts.

New Budget Processors Comparison: Intel Celeron D vs. AMD Sempron

I would say the 3200 Sempron is a little better than the Celeron D 330.

OK, let's get real here. Can someone compare the "Super" configuration from EarthPC with the equivalent of Cade PC's analogous offering and tell me how they stack up in terms of:

* Performance
* Price
* Total environmental footprint

(Sounds like an article in the making!)