Re: Power supply efficiency on older model Sun equipment

On Sat, 30 Aug 2008, D G Teed wrote:


> computer hardware habits.  I plan to consolidate the duties of
> a dual PIII and Ultra 1 into one Atom based file, email and web server.
> The new system will have an 80plus rated power supply.
> Hopefully it will run at under 40 watts.

But will it have enough I/O capacity that you won't be grinding your teeth 
every time you have to copy a few DVD isos to/from the fileserver? Will 
the Atom boards on the market run a real operating system? Will you trust 
the machine with non-ECC memory? Are you ready to put all your computing 
eggs in one basket with no RAS features?

How long will it take you to break even on cost of hardware and effort to 
set things up?

I know I could probably replace my V880 and Blade 1000 with a pair of 
loaded X2200s these days - I don't have many SPARC-only applications. I 
could probably flatten the entire load down to a single T2000, if I did. 
But it'd take over five years to break even on costs - longer than the 
basic lifecycle of the hardware.

That's the problem with replacing hardware to save power - unless you've 
got a *lot* of machines (eg, 24 x E250 was something that popped up in a 
recent study I conducted), it takes too long to break even. It's a lot 
cheaper if you count your time as 'free', but IMHO, most people doing 
power-reduction new hardware run at home are just looking for a quick way 
to justify buying some new toys. Nothing wrong with that, but it isn't 
saving anything. And if one is purely worrying about the environment 
angle, that new low-power PC was probably made under manufacturing 
conditions far, far filthier than a 10 year old Sun.

-- 
Andre van Eyssen.
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