On Sunday 09 February 2003 08:41 pm, Rohit wrote:
Hi all,
I have a silly question here - a series actually, about powersaving on PC. How effective is the powersave option?
Suppose I set my machine to power-down the monitor, the HDD and everything else, then after half hour, when everything is down, monitor is in sleep mode and comp is not making noise - does it really save power. Aren't all these powered actually by the power supply?
If the PS has AC input and DC output to many parts [including the HDD, mainboard, chip], then does it really save incoming power? For desktops.
I hope I am understood correctly.
I believe for most people who use their computers frequently but with gaps, that the saveing is virtually nill for anything other than monitors. Linux in particular does not like its hard drive shut down because it is logging to it all the time. You no sooner power it down and the log must be written which takes MORE power to spin it up than it would have taken to let it run for some period of time. The nature of DC moters is that they take virtually no power to spin a light or nill load - like disk platters. Accelerating the platter takes way more power. Same for processors. The power saveing can be 30% or better by throtteling back a P4 to 80%, but thats 30% of virtually nothing. And you can't control how long its in power saveing and how long its awakened doing tasks. There is always something running an the machine. Monitors can save quite a bit. They draw more than the computer and if most of that can be shut down you could save about a 200watt lightbulb's equivelent. In power saveing mode, monitors shut down much (but not all) of the electronics and the heaters in the tube, which are some of the biggest power consumers in the device. You have to balance that against the reduced life of the device from power-up and power-down which is harder on the guns in the tube than just running. My personal take on this (without running any power consumption tests, which I do have the equipment to run, but not the inclination) is that if you set your monitor to power off after 30 minutes and do nothing else with the processor and hard drive, you will probably achieve the bulk of the saveing's possible and reduce the wear and tear on other components. -- _________________________________________________ John Andersen / Juneau Alaska