Re: Power supply efficiency on older model Sun equipment

Robert Chase wrote:
> Hmmm,
>
> Interesting thread.  Not sure if I see the point though.  I have 
> several Sun systems at my house including an Enterprise 450.  The 
> problem that I have is not power it's cooling.  With all of my systems 
> on I see an increase of perhaps $40 a month on my power bill however, 
> my A/C system runs around the clock to keep the house cool if I keep 
> all of them on.  On the larger more power hungry systems I only power 
> them up when I need them such as the A3500FC fibre array and the 
> Enterprise 450.  The smaller systems stay on 24/7.  I keep a Netra T1 
> two IBM x305's an IBM Netfinity 7600 a Foundry Edgeiron Switch and a 
> UPS going 24/7.
> http://www.systemv.org/site.html
>
> Even a big system like an E450 takes a lot less power than lets say an 
> A/C unit or a Fridge or a washer and dryer.  If your looking for a 
> power savings don't look at lightbulbs and computers look at your 
> large appliances.  For a small Sun Workstation even an older model the 
> power and heat consumption are probably about the same as a regular 
> PC.  The difference between a Sun server and a PC server is probably 
> too small to measure on most power bills.  What is misleading and 
> difficult to measure is heat output which in turn ends up costing you 
> money when your A/C unit keeps going 24/7.
as the old saying goes, 'all generalizations are faulty...including 
*this* one'.

using the ever helpful Kill-A-Watt device, i've done plenty of 
measurements around my house of how much power various things use. my 
refrigerator is not much of a power consumer. over a 24 hour period, it 
uses roughly 1.2 kilowatts. or in other words, about 60 watts 
continuously. my home PC, a wildly overclocked core 2 duo with high end 
graphics card, burns about 140 watts continuously, peaking at about 
double that when gaming. the netra T1 out in the garage (also 
overclocked, but just a little, and just for the fun of it) burns 85 
watts continuously, and the D130 disk array attached to it burns the same.

the max power consumption of an E450 is rated at 1664 watts, though 
obviously that with everything and the kitchen sink dropped into the 
chassis. still, thats not trivial - it's more per hour than my fridge 
uses in an entire day.

and, a washer dryer, while they may consume quite a bit while they run - 
they generally don't run 24x7, at least not in my house. i even measured 
that - between two loads of wash and a dry (natural gas dry though), 
they consumed 1kWh for what gets done only every several days.

the lesson here i would say is don't guess - measure. the Kill-A-Watt 
device is about $20 on newegg. well worth the price. when i discovered 
that my bigscreen TV was burning 30 watts continuously while it was 
'off', i put it on a kill switch. there's lots of 'leakers' all around a 
typical house. controlling those can save a lot on your energy bill. my 
electric bill dropped by about 25% after i found and killed off all the 
'leakers'.

-- 
Paul Theodoropoulos