Re: Power supply efficiency on older model Sun equipment

Henry Nelson wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 27, 2008 at 11:18:56PM -0300, D G Teed wrote:
>   
>> rising cost of energy, and the appearance of new
>> processors and standards like 80 Plus, I'm starting
>> to look at my options.  Is it better to save these
>> old Sun machines from land-fill, or is it better
>> to prevent coal from being burned to keep them in operation?
>>     
>
> Better to prevent coal from being burned, IMHO.  Even better to keep
> the old Suns around as mantle pieces or weights for pressing leaves
> than chucking them out.  I'll be using mine for furniture before
> they go to any landfill.
>
>   
Also, some of the older Sun boxes (like those from SGI) were extremely 
well made and almost indestructable. I still have SS20s that have never 
had any failures other than disks. I admit I do not run them 24X7 any 
more. Efficient? No. But fun :-)

I have a V880, that I would like to sell. A great machine, but total 
overkill for home use (I do run my company on it though)  and 3KW power 
consumption makes it too expensive.

Yes, X86 boxes are cheaper to run. However, I think currently the most 
efficient boxes around are the Sun T1000. OK, they are brand new, so you 
won't get one on ebay just yet. But they idle at less than 200W. They 
are really good as long as you are running heavily multithreaded 
applications (single threads are not fast) and one of Sun's cheapest 
SPARC machines.

Bob H