Search found 157 matches
- Tue Nov 13, 2012 7:49 pm
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: My house idles at 75W
- Replies: 29
- Views: 54570
Re: My house idles at 75W
plus PGE can pay you nothing for the extra juice and then rake it in hand over fist by greedily selling it to your neighbors at full market value. screw the grid, cut the cord! (until power monopolies have to pay a fair rate for the power you are giving them.) The only time you get screwed is if yo...
- Tue Nov 13, 2012 10:56 am
- Forum: Power Supplies
- Topic: Efficiency vs load analyzed for 20 PSUs
- Replies: 9
- Views: 13077
Re: Efficiency vs load analyzed for 20 PSUs
Wow, these charts are awesome and really help visualize the difference in efficiency between PSUs - in particular the low-power portion which is of particular interest to me. Nicely done!
The SS-350TGM really stands out in comparison to the rest at low power thanks to these charts.
The SS-350TGM really stands out in comparison to the rest at low power thanks to these charts.
- Tue Nov 13, 2012 10:45 am
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: My house idles at 75W
- Replies: 29
- Views: 54570
Re: My house idles at 75W
Eventually, we'll be building a new Off Grid home and we're working to get our total demand down so a 1Kw PV array is large enough. Our current demand is over 44Kw per day according to our electric bill. That's what we really need to drop and I'm hoping to get down to below 5Kw per day. Not sure wh...
- Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:52 am
- Forum: Power Supplies
- Topic: Seasonic G360W gold for $60 - Review & Giveaway!
- Replies: 169
- Views: 264309
Re: Seasonic G360W gold for $60 - Review & Giveaway!
Plus, efficiency is just one parameter of many... including convenience, noise, compatibility, price, versatility, other electrical performance factors. For a mini PC, yes, the picoPSU+brick is great. But for mATX or small ATX case, I'd take the G360 hands down. What you get for the price is unmatc...
- Mon Sep 17, 2012 4:54 pm
- Forum: Power Supplies
- Topic: Seasonic G360W gold for $60 - Review & Giveaway!
- Replies: 169
- Views: 264309
Re: Seasonic G360W gold for $60 - Review & Giveaway!
Nice looking PSU - 360W is still overkill for my PCs. I'd love to see a 200W PSU with efficiency numbers pushed up to 90% at lower power outputs, especially in the 30-50W range where most PCs spend their time idling these days.
- Fri Jun 17, 2011 11:30 pm
- Forum: SPCR Announcements
- Topic: Re: Mike's final sign-off - POSTPONED
- Replies: 70
- Views: 145922
Re: Mike's final sign-off
Sorry to hear that you'll be signing off, Mike, but am hopeful SPCR lives on.
By far, your in depth reviews with a focus on noise and energy consumption has been one the most useful tech sites I visit on a daily basis.
The forums here are also top-notch!
By far, your in depth reviews with a focus on noise and energy consumption has been one the most useful tech sites I visit on a daily basis.
The forums here are also top-notch!
- Wed Jul 14, 2010 3:47 pm
- Forum: Power Supplies
- Topic: Dell RM112 235W 80+ Gold PSU
- Replies: 43
- Views: 53406
- Mon Jul 20, 2009 11:12 am
- Forum: Silent Storage
- Topic: Transform 'Cuda 7200.11 1.5tb into Velociraptor Killer
- Replies: 78
- Views: 86609
So shortstroking, combined with Raid 0, should help scratch disk throughput in applications like video editing? Yes - if your application is limited by disk throughput and you don't need all the disk space provided by your disks, you can ensure that streaming throughput is always maximized by short...
- Sat Jul 18, 2009 11:27 am
- Forum: Silent Storage
- Topic: Transform 'Cuda 7200.11 1.5tb into Velociraptor Killer
- Replies: 78
- Views: 86609
It needs to be a single partition, i.e. you do not place any other partitions on it, which you access and which totally kill the performance increase of the short stroke partition. It totally depends on your usage patterns. If for example, you take a common setup of putting your OS, programs on the...
- Thu Jul 16, 2009 3:59 pm
- Forum: Silent Storage
- Topic: Transform 'Cuda 7200.11 1.5tb into Velociraptor Killer
- Replies: 78
- Views: 86609
so completing our large tasks faster still won't get us back to idle state for long. The primary benefit of short stroking a drive is to reduce seek times. For example, short stroking their 450GB 15k SAS drive to 45GB cut seek times from 6ms to 3.8ms. For the 250GB 7.2k SATA drive short stroking to...
- Fri Apr 10, 2009 10:16 am
- Forum: Silent Storage
- Topic: SSD MLC Based HD use in old laptops. Will it [STUTTER]?
- Replies: 33
- Views: 26228
It doesn't matter what OS you are using, you want to make sure that the filesystem data blocks are aligned to the data blocks on the SSD. I don't recall how FAT32 aligns data on the disk, so I don't know how performance will be affected by partition alignment. But for NTFS, partition alignment on SS...
- Sun Apr 05, 2009 3:24 pm
- Forum: Silent Storage
- Topic: SSD MLC Based HD use in old laptops. Will it [STUTTER]?
- Replies: 33
- Views: 26228
For anyone with one of the JMicron based SSDs, you can often significantly reduce the effects of stutter so that it's often not noticable by making sure the partition is aligned on the proper boundary. For example, Vista does this by default by aligning the partitions on 1MB offsets, but older versi...
- Fri Mar 27, 2009 9:18 am
- Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
- Topic: WD Caviar Green 2TB & Seagate Pipeline HD 500GB
- Replies: 42
- Views: 25317
I hope what's next is a stutterless SSD somewhere between 60-100GB at under $100. I really want an SSD for a bood/application HD. Getting close, but the OCZ Vertex 30GB is very good and can be had for about $100 right now. The 60GB can be had for about $170. Performs better than the Samsung disks. ...
- Thu Mar 26, 2009 12:53 pm
- Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
- Topic: WD Caviar Green 2TB & Seagate Pipeline HD 500GB
- Replies: 42
- Views: 25317
Yeah, but now you've got double the noise, double the power and double the chance for failure leading to data loss. It's also not double the chance for failure. If we assume each drive has the same probability of failing, the chance for that one 2TB failing is the same as the chance for one of the ...
- Thu Mar 26, 2009 11:46 am
- Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
- Topic: WD Caviar Green 2TB & Seagate Pipeline HD 500GB
- Replies: 42
- Views: 25317
Yeah, but now you've got double the noise.... It will not be "double" the noise. It will likely be 2-3 dBA at 1m, perhaps less, depending on environmental and installation details. Uh, isn't 3db considered "twice" as loud? 3db certainly takes twice the energy to create, even if it doesn't always so...
- Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:12 am
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: "01" Watts when computer is turned off?
- Replies: 15
- Views: 11042
Re: "01" Watts when computer is turned off?
I rarely turn off my PC, but I did yesterday and I noticed that the power meter showed "01" Watts. If the computer is turned off shouldn't it be 0 watts ? Welcome to vampire load. If you really want something off, you have to flip the switch at the power switch or unplug it. You're lucky - many cra...
- Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:09 am
- Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
- Topic: WD Caviar Green 2TB & Seagate Pipeline HD 500GB
- Replies: 42
- Views: 25317
Very impressive acoustics from the 2TB GP, especially since it has 4 platters. Really the only thing i dont like about the drive from all the reviews ive read is the very high price. Id still take 2 1TB 3 platter drives over it and save a substantial amount. Once the price drops i'll consider it. Y...
- Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:57 pm
- Forum: General Gallery
- Topic: Silent Smoothwall
- Replies: 14
- Views: 15107
- Wed Mar 04, 2009 10:24 pm
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: New Mac mini - <13w at idle?
- Replies: 14
- Views: 13882
New Mac mini - <13w at idle?
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_mini?mco=MTE3MDI Apple is claiming that it's the lowest power desktop in the world and uses less than 13w at idle. That sounds way too low, no? Has anyone been able to reach those sort of numbers with a custom build? I'd love to see their cla...
- Mon Feb 09, 2009 11:16 am
- Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
- Topic: Gigabyte GA-MA74GM-S2: AMD 690G, Take 2
- Replies: 65
- Views: 52200
My fileserver has eight total drives: four are connected to the onboard SATA ports (i.e. AMD SB700). The other four are connected via two 2-port PCIe SATA cards (based on the Silicon Image SiI 3132 chip). Whenever I do any kind of writing to the drives attached to the add-on cards, the computer ins...
- Mon Feb 02, 2009 4:41 pm
- Forum: SPCR Article Discussion
- Topic: Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB: The Perfect Balance?
- Replies: 24
- Views: 19739
^ Very suspicious that they ship in 250GB , 500GB, 750GB and 1TB capacities. Also they claim upt o 160MB/s sustained on the webpage, but the datasheet says 125... Not suspicious at all - drive manufactures have been shipping disks which only use one side of a platter for ages - I suspect that they ...
- Mon Feb 02, 2009 11:14 am
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: New [NAS] build
- Replies: 9
- Views: 9933
illdrift - sounds like you're going down the right track. I'd like to echo andyh's concern over using a cheap mobo - I personally try to stay away from ECS boards after having some bad experiences with them. Please do make sure you go with RAID6 instead of RAID5. I've heard about too many cases of d...
- Sat Jan 31, 2009 10:08 pm
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: New [NAS] build
- Replies: 9
- Views: 9933
My 2c: Dual-core is overkill for a NAS box, unless you're pushing multi-Gigabit speeds. Single core Athlon will be fine, or if you want dual core, use one of the BE series processors. Make sure Cool'n'Quiet is configured and works - all AMD single/dual core processors are within 5w of each other whe...
- Thu Jan 22, 2009 12:29 am
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: Via Eden based NAS w/ eSata; enough oomph for gbit ethernet?
- Replies: 9
- Views: 11225
Typically, you are limited by these things: 1. CPU speed 2. NIC CPU offload features & driver quality From experience, like nick705 suggests, I'd guess that you'll probably only be able to push up to 30MB/s. Also important to know is the architecture of the motherboard. Hopefully the NIC and the SAT...
- Wed Dec 03, 2008 1:38 am
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: test: OS power consumption
- Replies: 11
- Views: 16843
Given the very same hardware I see no reason why there should be any difference whatsoever in power consumption during idle. - There is no computing going on. Except that different OSes enable different kinds of background services by default, which still do stuff when the computer is otherwise idl...
- Fri Jul 18, 2008 11:44 am
- Forum: Cases and Damping
- Topic: Modding & Cutting with Tin Snips
- Replies: 93
- Views: 191946
- Fri Jul 11, 2008 10:08 am
- Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
- Topic: Will going from fx-62 to 4850e draw less power?
- Replies: 13
- Views: 6862
- Thu Jul 03, 2008 9:55 am
- Forum: Green Computing
- Topic: Is Going Green Really Golden?
- Replies: 30
- Views: 23250
I think many/most companies use the "green" label simply to sell things. My poor old aunt was talked into replacing all the older windows with new "energy-efficient" windows.....cost $13,000. When I found out and asked why, she said she'd be saving money on the utility bills. She died about 40 year...
- Tue Apr 29, 2008 12:26 pm
- Forum: Power Supplies
- Topic: 23W savings with PSU swap
- Replies: 2
- Views: 2335
- Fri Apr 25, 2008 12:08 am
- Forum: CPUs and Motherboards
- Topic: Lowest power dual-core
- Replies: 41
- Views: 23912