Power hungry

I have the Vantec 520W stealth power supply and notice that it regularly dips to 11.43 on the +12V and 4.84 on the +5V rails.
I wondered if this was Ok and E-mailed support from Vantec and they stated that it was acceptable but it was on the low end and that I should monitor it and if it went to 11.4 to RMA it, but 11.43 is low enough I think to give me screen coruption upon intial startup with my new Powercolor 9800Pro 256MB card.
I have been monitoring it at 11.43 and the corruption just happened. This is the second day and first sign of trouble.
Card runs fine. Maybe a hickup?
Well I am RMA'ing the Stealth anyway as Newegg will take it no questions.
I also just purchased a new Enermax 550 Watt to replace it as from what I read it is a fine power supply.
I am curious if I can O/C better as I think the low V output has hampered the board.
my two other comps have the 430watt Enermax and read both over 12V on the +12V rail.
Would this also be trouble for me trying to use game port with Audigy2 Platinum as I can't seem to free up resources to allow it to load properly even though I disable numerous items.
Thoughts.....

Running Sata and plugs in the way.
No biggie on the game port though as I am also running logitech wingman remote rumble pad connected to USB 2.0 self powered hub.
I did try to remove it along with comm port 2 and even the floppy controller and floppy.
Actually i had removed almost everything but still would not allow to load steering wheel setup in game port.
I am more worried about sufficient power to the system so that is why I am going to try new better P/S.
Won't hurt to try with a P/S putting out +12v plus, hopefully the Enermax 550 watt P/S will do that.
Having a spare P/S with three system is not a bad idea anyway.
I do like the ac outlet software controlled with the Vantec.
I really didn't like the corruption shown upon startup last night but disappeared upon restart, probibly cause power supply was still running with restart and maybe sudden cold start caught the low 12V enough to make the Video card act up.
never happened with the Pny Ti4400.
the powercolor 9800 Pro 256 has run beautifully since Monday and throwing all my fast games at it with high resolution. Quite an amazing card really.

Similar Messages

KDE 4.6 more power hungry?

Hello there.
Just upgraded to the latest KDE release, which worked greate, only thing I noticed is that through Powertop KDE 4.6 seems more power hungry. It seems to draw around 3~4 watts more, does anyone else notice something along the same line?

occam wrote:I see in 'System Activity' that dbus-daemon uses 32% and nepomukserver 22% of the total CPU capacity when running KDE 4.6
In KDE4.5.* those percentages were less than 2%. Maybe this has a bearing on your observation?
Thats the strange part, my system is behaving like with 4.5, nothing is using excessive amounts of CPU or Mem.
locke87 wrote:Well, I had this as well. I removed all files from Nepomuk and akonadi (After stopping both), that solved the issue.
Could you post how you did that? I have turned off Nepomuk, don't know about akonadi.

Getting rid of my power hungry pc tower

Hi there
i was wondering how the macbook pro 17" would compare to my trusty 3 year old desktop pc
(abit ic-7g, single core p4ht 3ghz, 2gb ram, radeon 9800 pro 128, iiyama 22" ma203dt crt)
one selling point for me is the maximum power consumption figures
82 watts for the macbook pro
450 watts (Max) for the pc
140 watts for the crt monitor
my first real question is graphics related, will i get the same, better, or worse performance out of the Mobility Radeon X1600 with 256MB compared to the radeon 9800 pro 128 pci. the only game i play is world of warcraft so if it runs this game as good or better that would be great to know.
second is heat related, i use my pc to watch dvb tv brodcasts and was thinking about getting the Elgato EyeTV Hybrid (DTT +Analog TV) with analog input , would i be better getting something else, something that takes more strain of the cpu to keep things cool for extended periods, four hours plus.
will leaving a macbook pro on for 4 or 5 hours a day send it to an early grave?
finaly, things have moved on since i made my pc, how much though, is it worth throwing my huge power hungry pc monstrocity out yet or, should i wait a few months and see what apple have up their sleeve
ibook G4 1.42 Mac OS X (10.4.7) abit ic-7g, p4ht 3ghz, 2gb ram, radeon 9800 pro 128, iiyama 22" ma203dt crt

Well i went ahead and got a new mbp and it does indeed outperform my clunky old desktop pc, it doesn't sound like a jet fighter taking off though, which is a bonus i guess ^^
i can run wow at 1680 x 1050 with every setting turned up to max, on my pc i was running the game at 1280 x 1024 with one or two settings turned down a tad.
as for the underclocked videocard, i found this somewhere on the net
http://barefeats.com/mbcd2.html
"...Though the CPU clock speed advantage of the 2.16GHz MacBook Pro is only 8%, it outperformed the 2.0GHz MacBook Pro by as much as 43%, depending on the application... we rechecked the 17" MacBook Pro's X1600 GPU's core and memory speeds before, during and after running 3D Games using Graphiccelerator's "Show ATI Frequencies" function. Before starting a series of runs, the core measured 311MHz frequency. When we ran 3D games, it jumped to 423MHz. After sitting idle a few minutes, it fell back to 311MHz. We measured a similar jump in the GPU's memory clock from 297MHz to 450MHz."
all i need to do now is find a good decent dvb device and im good to go i guess

Skype on E72 while on GSM of UTMS is power hungry

I have been using Skype on my E72 last 1 month and have noticed that it consumes about 200mA of current while running in the background with no communication in progress using GSM or UTMS. It consumes much lesser current when using WLAN. However Fring consumes very little curent in both GSM/UTMS and WLAN mode. Skype has to check on this and improve the power consumption issue.

Skype is a power hungry protocol. It's a P2P application essentially which is going to be fairly processor and/or network intensive.
If they'd used the open standard SIP protocol, there wouldn't be problems like this, and they'd be integrated fully into most mobile devices with no hassle and would work efficiently. But they went with their own proprietary protocol . Skype really needs dedicated hardware to work best.
As for Fring. Are you using it for Skype calls? Still Fring is probably just more optimised for the S60 platform, but still I'd bet for Skype calls it drains more power than a SIP call would via the native support.
E72-1 UK CV 052.005

Which 1TB (or bigger) SATA drive is the coolest/quietest/least power-hungry

I have a Power Mac G4 Dual 1.25 GHz MDD (it's this model here) which (as it's unmodified) runs very hot & noisy much of the time.
What doesn't help is that I have 3 hard drives installed. 2 of these (including the boot drive) are IDE (80 GB & 120 GB), and are attached to the cables at the front of the machine (am I right in thinking that this is the ATA-66 bus?). The third is a SATA drive (250 GB) connected to one of the sets of cables at the back of the machine (the ATA-100 bus?) via an IDE -> SATA adapter (not a PCI card).
This adapter took me many weeks of research to track down (& order online from the USA) as there didn't appear to be (at the time - a few years ago) anyone here in the UK that made or sold these adapters. (The opposite adapter - IDE drive to SATA cable - was freely available ironically, even in my local electronics shop). The physical size of the adapter means that I can't sit one of the other drives in the empty drive bay at the back of the machine.
A few months ago, as I was almost out of hard drive space, I decided to get a new (SATA) drive to replace the existing 3 drives. As well as giving me lots of capacity, one drive is going to use less power than 3, give off much less heat than 3, and hopefully reduce the fan noise.
Incidentally, I've found many good articles on reducing heat/power consumption/noise in MDD Macs - see here, here, here, here & here.
At the time, 1TB was the largest size available. After much research, along with some forum postings - see here & here - I decided to go for the Samsung Spinpoint F1 drive, which is currently quite cheap - see here.
However, I recently discovered that Seagate now makes a 1.5 TB drive, which would obviously be preferable - see here & here although it is much more expensive - see here.
However, there are many reports of problems with the Seagate drive - see here, here & here.
What I'm wondering is if there are any drives that are bigger than 1TB apart from the Seagate?
If not, would people recommend that I chance going for the Seagate, and hope that I don't have the problems, or that I'll be able to flash the firmware at some future point to sort the problem if it occurs (I have Virtual PC 7.0.2 installed, running Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 - would this enable internal hard drives to have their firmware updated?) or should I just play safe and go for the Samsung, even though it's "only" 1TB?
The largest capacity money can buy is my primary concern, followed by low power usage, low heat output & low noise.
Many thanks.

Thanks for the info.
I don't really see the point in the expense of a PCI card when the IDE -> SATA adaptor works fine, and if I bought a PCI card, I'd then feel obliged to go through the hassle of selling the adaptor on eBay to try to recoup part of the cost of the PCI card.
I should have mentioned before that I want to format my new drive as a single partition, in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format, and to boot from it. I only want the new drive in the Mac - I don't want any other drives in there. Apart from increased capacity & performance, and reduced power consumption, heat & noise - the main point of getting the new drive is so that there is only one drive in my Mac. Having more than one is a complete pain for me.
At the moment, despite having "Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible" unchecked in the Energy Saver pane of System Preferences, all 3 drives spin down very soon after they stop being accessed, which means an infuriating delay (& spinning beach ball) when they spin up again. One or more of them spinning up even interrupts music playing sometimes, and when I go to shut down the computer, if they are spun down but mounted on the desktop, they spin up again before they spin down as part of the shutdown procedure! Also, with more than one drive, I can't tell which drive a file/folder is on just by looking at it, if it's on the desktop.
As far as Other World Computing goes, they may ship to the UK, but by the time the international shipping charges are added, I very much doubt if the total cost of a new drive would work out cheaper than ordering from a UK supplier & getting free shipping.
Another potential problem I've discovered with the Seagate drive is actually a quote from the Other World Computing website that's reproduced in comment number 66 (on page 3) of the MacRumors Forums thread that I gave the link to in my initial post. Basically it says that if you format the Seagate drive as a single partition on a Mac, the performance isn't acceptable. It's apparently fine though if it's partitioned in 2 equal size volumes, or if you format it as an NTFS or FAT32 drive. Neither of these work-arounds are any use to me though.
Everything so far suggests that I should just go for the Samsung 1 TB drive, but I'm hesitant to do so until it's confirmed to me that there aren't any other drives out there that are bigger than 1 TB apart from the Seagate, and also, knowing my luck, the day after I buy the Samsung, Western Digital or Hitachi or someone will bring out a flawless 1.5 TB drive for not a lot more money, and I'll be kicking myself for ending up with only 2 thirds of the capacity than I could have had...

6131 is power hungry, bad design?

I am disappointed by the battery of the 6131. It is worse than I could ever imagine when I read the reviews mentioning the "battery" problem.
It can't even last 12 hours. I don't spend the day talking...I check my mail a couple of time a day, talk a little, less than 30 minutes per day. It even drains overnight when the phone is off. What is wrong with this phone?
Any suggestion on how to reduce the consumption? Also, does anyone know if there is a design problem for that phone? Some kind of power leak? Anyone had their phone replaced?
The phone is great, the battery is horrible.

09-Sep-200704:11 PM
nj15 wrote:
08-Sep-200709:24 PM
korngear wrote:
Right,infact they should start it immediately.
And 1500 MHz should be the atleast.
The more the capacity, it means bigger battery size.Lets take Nokia batteries as an example.They should start making more phones with a Li-Po..regardless of milliampere count.
How I wish Nokia can make a slim phone with a BP-6M battery!!!Message Edited by nj15 on 09-Sep-200706:12 PM
Message Edited by nj15 on 09-Sep-200706:14 PM
Is(not) it possible to make sizeable battery with more power?

Power-hungry computer?

Hello all.
I have a problem which I hope can be helped by some knowledgeable posters.
My battery only lasts my laptop 1:30 on a full charge, when some months ago I was sure to get over three hours on the same charge.
My battery is 7 months old with 211 load cycles and is at 92% capacity at 4072 mAh. This has not depreciated much from its original state. About two or three months ago, one day, the battery life shortened to 1:30 at best on a full charge, most often less. I noticed the laptop is drawing an obscene amount of electricity from the battery compared to earlier readings, as it now states the amperage to be -2540 per hour. This is better than twice of what it was before this started happening.
If anybody has any insights into the problem, I would be very appreciative. I don't think it is a problem with the battery itself, but I could be wrong. I did, of course, get the 1.1 battery update, and I have calibrated the battery and reset the PMU.
To be clear, here is the battery information:
Battery Information:
Battery Installed: Yes
First low level warning: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 4072
Remaining Capacity (mAh): 3638
Amperage (mA): -2540
Voltage (mV): 12027
Cycle Count: 211
Thanks in advance.
15" powerbook G4 5,8 Mac OS X (10.4.6)
15" powerbook G4 5,8 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

The only way currently to do this is to jailbreak your apple tv and run XBMC on it. It can be a little tricky to set up but it is possible. I agree, this should work out of the box. It is not clear why Apple is resisting this add-on. Most folks don't have an extra computer that they can leave running for content sharing. If they do, its an old one that is too slow to do this.'
Probably not what you wanted to hear, but the truth.

W520 power supply rating vs. performance question

I have had a W520 with the i2820 processor option and the quadro 1000 video for over 3 weeks now. I bought several spare 170 watt power bricks for it, but in one location I kept the 135 watt brick from my W510.
When I moved from the w500 to the w510, when I used a 90 watt w500 brick, the w510 would boot with a BIOS level message that said that the power supply was not adequate and that the machine would be stepped down to a slower speed. The reduction in performance was dramatic and noticable. (The w510 had the 45 watt consumption i920 chip and the more power hungry graphics)
When I use or boot the w520 with the 135 watt supply, there is no message. My benchmarks do not change from those registered when on the 170 watt power supply, starting with the Win 7 system benchmarks for processor and video. Further, the 135 watt brick is cooler to the touch than the 170 watt one under sustained usage (3 hours plus).
The question: given that the w520 in my configuration seems to draw less power than the hot and hungry w510, is the 135 watt supply going to work "as well as" the 170 watt one? As a briefcase lugger, any way to shed weight is valued.
Other considerations: I have no WWAN card installed, and have the CD/DVD removed and substituted with an SSD. The main drive is also SSD, bringing down somewhat the power requirements.
David Gleason. Every T from the T20 to the T61p, W500, W510. Current system: W520 4270-CTO i2820 8GBx4 (corsair), FHD(1920x1080), NVIDIA Quadro 1000M and 2 Samsung 830 512gb SATA III SSD.

I remember another post, that I can't seem to find now, which refers to a software utility that displays wattage being consumed by the system. This would be quite helpful.
Couldn't that be used to study what is being used, and how much of a power adapter is needed to operate the system?
I am trying to come up with a solution for vehicle usage, and I am afraid, it will have to be a 12V to 120v power inverter with a brick plugged into it.
Another factor will be the amount of power consumed when recharging the internal 9cell battery and the external 9cell slice. Doing this while operating the system with WiFi / WWAN active will increase the demand.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
W520 4276-2QU i7-2720QM quad core, 4GBx1, FHD(1920x1080), NVIDIA Quadro 2000M, 500GB-7200, 6205WiFi, 720pCamera, Bluetooth, vPro, 57++9cell, 27++9cellSlice, Win7Pro64
IBM R50 WinXP for backup.

How can i see which apps in my ipad consume more battery power

I noticed lately the power consumption on my ipad 3 has gone considerably up. A full charge lasts me about 8 hrs and to chrge it upm(through the mains), it takes 4hrs +. I downloaded many apps lately and suspect one of them may be power hungry.Is there a good App that allows me to establish which app(s) eat up the power on my Ipad 3 & equally allow me to terminate unnecessary processes?
Any suggestions folks?

The quickest way (and really the only way) to charge your iPad is with the included 10W USB Power Adapter. iPad will also charge, although more slowly, when attached to a computer with a high-power USB port (many recent Mac computers) or with an iPhone Power Adapter (5W). When attached to a computer via a standard USB port (most PCs or older Mac computers) iPad will charge very slowly (but iPad indicates not charging). Make sure your computer is on while charging iPad via USB. If iPad is connected to a computer that’s turned off or is in sleep or standby mode, the iPad battery will continue to drain.
Apple recommends that once a month you let the iPad fully discharge & then recharge to 100%.
How to Calibrate Your Mac, iPhone, or iPad Battery
http://www.macblend.com/how-to-calibrate-your-mac-iphone-or-ipad-battery/
At this link http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/galaxy-tab-android-tablet,3014-11.html , tests show that the iPad 2 battery (25 watt-hours) will charge to 90% in 3 hours 1 minute. It will charge to 100% in 4 hours 2 minutes. The new iPad has a larger capacity battery (42 watt-hours), so using the 10W charger will obviously take longer. If you are using your iPad while charging, it will take even longer. It's best to turn your new iPad OFF and charge over night. Also look at The iPad's charging challenge explained http://www.macworld.com/article/1150356/ipadcharging.html
Also, if you have a 3rd generation iPad, look at
Apple: iPad Battery Nothing to Get Charged Up About
http://allthingsd.com/20120327/apple-ipad-battery-nothing-to-get-charged-up-abou t/
Apple Explains New iPad's Continued Charging Beyond 100% Battery Level
http://www.macrumors.com/2012/03/27/apple-explains-new-ipads-continued-charging- beyond-100-battery-level/
New iPad Takes Much Longer to Charge Than iPad 2
http://www.iphonehacks.com/2012/03/new-ipad-takes-much-longer-to-charge-than-ipa d-2.html
Apple Batteries - iPad http://www.apple.com/batteries/ipad.html
Extend iPad Battery Life (Look at pjl123 comment)
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3921324?tstart=30
New iPad Slow to Recharge, Barely Charges During Use
http://www.pcworld.com/article/252326/new_ipad_slow_to_recharge_barely_charges_d uring_use.html
Tips About Charging for New iPad 3
http://goodscool-electronics.blogspot.com/2012/04/tips-about-charging-for-new-ip ad-3.html
Prolong battery lifespan for iPad / iPad 2 / iPad 3: charging tips
http://thehowto.wikidot.com/prolong-battery-lifespan-for-ipad
 Cheers, Tom

Which is better in term of power consumption for L...

Hello!
I would like to know in terms of power consumption which connection type should I use on my Lumia 1020. 4G LTE or 3G. I'm not a person who watches movies on his smartphone, and I don't browse the Internet intensively using my smartphone. I use it to take pictures, check my e-mails, access Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Flickr.
Thank you.
Cosmin Petrenciuc

3G is in general less power hungry.

Power Consumption Revisited

I was reading an article on tomshardware.com the other day in which they described a process by which they were able to measure the power consumption of various video cards using a simple device that plugs into a standard wall socket and then displays the number of watts the currently plugged in device is using. In light of the ever-increasing PSU recommendations that tend to show up here (I recall seeing one poster recommend "a PSU with 24 or more amps on the +12V rail for anything other than a barebones system"), I decided that it might be beneficial to these forums if I did a little empirical study of my own. So anyways, I shelled out ~$30 for the device shown here:
http://www.supermediastore.com/kilwateldet1.html
...and ran some tests of my own. The results:
Preliminary Testing -
To verify that my power meter would give reasonably accurate readings, I first hooked it up to a 3-way lamp with a 50/100/150 watt bulb installed. The readings returned for the 50/100/150 watt settings (respectively) were 44/94/142, so it would seem like my power meter is at least reasonably accurate. Some other stuff I measured just for the hell of it...my speakers use 3 watts of power in stadby mode, and 30 watts when active (haven't yet tested when active and playing at full volume), and my monitor uses about 70 watts when on, and about 2 watts in standby mode.
Results -
Satisfied that I had not just wasted my money on an inaccurate power meter, I then went and hooked it up to my PC (the one described in my sig) and measured the power consumption under a variety of circumstances. It is important to note that these readings reflect the total amount of power drain being applied to the wall socket, not the amount of power that is actually being demanded by the system. This is because no PSU is 100% efficient (a good one will be maybe 80% efficient, if even that much), so the amount of power that is actually needed by the system is actually about (at least)20% *less* than the recorded values. Anyways:
During startup, the power usage spikes very briefly at 197 watts, then averages 152 watts over the rest of the boot cycle.
The system uses 134 watts of power when idling.
Under full CPU load, the system uses 168 watts.
Running 3d Mark 2001 the power usage is 169 watts.
Playing Far Cry (high detail settings, 1024x768x32), the power usage is again 169 watts.
Conclusions -
So, let's now assume a worst-case scenario, in which the extra 34 watts recorded during full CPU load came entirely from extra CPU power drain (a reasonable assumption), and in which the extra 35 watts recorded during 3d Mark and Far Cry came entirely from extra video card load (a much less reasonable assumption), and in which we have a PSU that is 90% efficient (greater efficiency means that the system would actually have to demand *more* power in order to get the total power drain up that high). In this case we see that if an application were developed that fully taxed the video card and CPU continuously, the total power drain would be 134 + 34 + 35 = 203 watts (which actually correlates rather nicely with the 197 watt spike observed during the boot cycle), meaning that the system is demanding about 183 watts from our unrealistically efficient PSU (note that with the PSU efficiency set to a more realistic 75%, the system would only be demanding a mere 153 watts of juice at full CPU and video card load).
Admittedly, the video card in my system is relatively weak, so let us again take the worst case scenario and assume that if I were to be using a 6800 Ultra, the total power drain would be 100 watts greater (this is above what the actual difference should be given the results posted on tomshardware.com regarding the power use of the 6800 Ultra), so our video card now consumes an astounding 135 watts of power, and our total power drain (in our unrealistic situation where we have some application which is capable of 100% CPU and video card utilization for a sustained length of time) is now 303 watts. With our unrealistic 90% efficient PSU, it would mean that the system is demanding about 273 watts from the PSU (about 228 watts with a 75% efficient PSU).
Note that aside from the weak video card, I have a fairly robust system (which also happens to be slightly overclocked), with 4 HDD's (two of which are WD Raptors), 2 optical drives, several PCI devices, and two large 120mm case fans, and yet the power demands of this system, even in an unrealisticly demanding situation, are *well* within the ability of a quality 380W (or even 300W) PSU to deliver. In this case even if all the power happened to be being sucked off of the +12V rail (which is not the case), any PSU with 18 amps at +12V could still handle it. Furthermore, even if I were to add a needlessly power-hungry video card into the mix, the power demands are *still* safely within what any decent 380W PSU should be capable of (and even what a quality 300W PSU should be capable of, although this may be pushing it a little, though it should always be noted that the numbers indicate a hypothetical worst-case power drain that should be beyond the maximum drain possible in any real-world situation).
So, we can therefore conclude that the power demands of a reasonably robust Athlon64 based system are not astronomical by any means, and that they do not justify a minimum recommendation of a 465W PSU with 24+ amps on the +12V rail for any system which is not "barebones," and that there is no observational evidence to support the idea that a PSU with 18 or fewer amps at +12V is categorically inadequate for use in an Athlon64 based system.
...anyways, I guess that's all, I hope you found this interesting, or at least informative. I'm off to see what else I can do with my power meter thingy...

Really? Do you have measured data which clearly supports your claims, or are you just holding up an opinion as a matter of fact?
My point was, my measured results show that the total power demand of an Athlon64 based system across *all* of the rails is fairly low, even at 100% system load. So, let's recalculate things assuming a 75% efficient PSU, with 75% of all load being at + 12V (which is still probably higher than the actual value), and let's leave the hypothetical 6800U inside of my system. We get .75 * 303 = 227 watts in total that the system is demanding. Of these 227 watts, the system is demanding .75 * 227 = 170 watts over the +12V rail. 170 watts / 12V gives us a total demand of 14.2 amps on the +12V rail. Note that this is with the hypothetically demanding 6800U card installed and is still likely to be at least a couple amps higher than what a *real* system would ever use, and any *quality* PSU capable of 18 amps at +12V should still be perfectly adequate for use in the system.
Furthermore, PSU efficiency dropping to 60% in real world situations supports my results, as it means that the actual system was demanding substantially *less* power than the system in my hypothetical example, making things even *easier* for the PSU. Re-running the above equation with a 60% efficient PSU and 75% of all power demand coming from the +12V rail, we see that the system is only asking for 11.4 amps at +12V at full load with a 6800U installed (and also at full load).
If you want to disagree with my results, that's fine, but don't expect me to take your argument as credible unless you have some actual, measurable data to back up your claims. Saying "this is the way things *really* work because I say so" doesn't cut it, so until you want to break out a multimeter and measure the amps your PSU delivers to the MB on the +12V rail at boot, idle, load, and gaming and then report your results and discuss whether or not they are consistent with your "amps are what counts" hypothesis, I hold my results and conclusions up as being valid, and as soon as I see any measured results which contradict mine, I will gladly stfu about PSU recommendations being needlessly high.

Power saving tipps for desktop PCs

Hi, lately I've been trying to make my boxes at home (router, desktop, fileserver) more power efficient. My energy bill was always kinda high and I think that I waste too much energy.
Most of my experience with computer related power saving comes from my laptop (maximize batterie time ). I've already taken some steps to minimize power consumption but I'm not sure what else could be done. If you have some ideas please let me know!
Some details about the steps I've taken so far:
router (24/7)
Its an really old stripped down mashine (P2) that is underclocked (hard).
It's currently running pfsense (FreeBSD based) that is installed on an old hdd. I was thinking about getting a small usb-stick and running the system on that one... would that be a good idea? (lifetime etc)
fileserver
Runs only when needed. In addition the cpu is undervolted (ondemand). Should be ok I guess.
desktop (24/7)
This one is a bit more tricky. It has pretty much up to date (-> power hungry) hardware but needs to run 24/7 most of the time (ssh, ftp, p2p). Downgrading can only be temporary because sometimes I need the performance (casual gaming, video encoding, photoshop etc...).
So far I did only 3 things:
1. hdds go to sleep when they are not used for 15 minutes --> hdparm -S 180
2. cpu undervolting --> cpufreq-set -g powersave
3. grafik card underclocking --> nvclock -n 250 -m 350 (nvidia only)
I'm a bit frightened to underclock the grafik card even lower... my screen got blocky and froze once while testing. ^^'
2 & 3 are done with a small script that I run when I leave the pc:
#!/bin/bash
if [ "$(cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor)" = "performance" ];
then cpufreq-set -g powersave && nvclock -n 250 -m 350 && xset dpms force off
else cpufreq-set -g performance && nvclock -r
fi
I've a shortcut for the script on my keyboard but some automation would be better if I think about it... triggered by afk time or sth like this.
If you guys have ideas what else could be tweaked please let me know!
Last edited by sen (2008-08-08 01:04:44)

Raccoon1400 wrote:Using a flash drive instead of a HD may save a bit. It may be significant, it may not, but every little bit would help. Flash drive would take much less power. Maybe several times less.
You could also check out solid state drives for the desktop. I know very little about them, so it may be a good or bad idea.
Yeah flash drives uses less power but I wouldn't use them for a desktop pc. The price per GB is far worse compared to normal HDDs and the blocks can only be written around 100000 times... for a system disk this is not really acceptable (caching, temporary files etc). These SDDs are more designed for small (sub)notebooks imo because they have no mechanical parts what makes them more reliable.
For the router this would not a problem though.
omgwtfbyobbq wrote:A stick would definitely be cheaper! The HD power draw isn't as low as I thought it was but it's close. The power supply can be a huge draw like I mentioned before. There's a 20W and 40W difference at idle between a earthwatts 380 power supply and a couple generic power supplies I had lying around. I originally though my PIII used way more than my C7-D system, but after swapping power supplies I found out the PIII used less at idle than the C7-D even w/ two sound cards, a network card, and a video card.
Yeah a quality PSU will probably save allot. Currently the router uses an old generic power supply, so this is really sth i should look into. I have an enermax noisetaker that is not used atm so I'll see what difference it makes compared to the currently used PSU.
The power consumption of HDDs is really not that low (thx for the link). Around eight watts (Idle) for the tested HDDs. So putting the disks to sleep when they're not used is probably a good idea for the most people that leave the PC running for longer times. My desktop has 5 HDDs, so even when they are not really used they need around 40 watts for nothing. Old HDDs (like the one in my router) will probably need more power.
I've asked a friend of mine to lent me his digital wattage meter. With this I can make some detailed tests to see what tweaks are really useful to save power.
I'll post the results when I'm done (probably on the weekend). What I can say now is that the few tweaks I made on my desktop PC (first post) will probably save a bit. The temperature of the CPU and GPU drops around 10-15 °C, the ambient temperature drops allot as well. This pretty heavy considering that the case has a good airflow (2 80er fans in front of the hdds and one 120er fan at the back).
Last edited by sen (2008-09-01 18:33:40)

Low power mode

I went hiking this past weekend and wanted to only take my iphone instead of the usual GPS, camera, and cell phone. Unfortunately, my battery will only last about 24 hours (or less if at extreme edge of cell range).
I used a GPS mapping application that allowed me to cache map tiles on my phone ahead of time, but I found there was no way to turn off the power hungry radio while still leaving my GPS enabled. So every time I wanted to take a picture (with location tags) or get a breadcrumb on where I was I had to turn off air plane mode, let my GPS get a location and then turn off airplane mode. The other problem with this is that when I did have airplane mode off, my email started to sync which just burned up even more battery (and reminded me of all the work I should be doing!).
It would also be ideal if apps had a low power idle state where they could stay running but basically not use any power between waking up every so many minutes. This would be great for a bread crumb tracking app that only updates every so often.

Tell Apple:
http://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html

T420 power use

Hi,
I bought a T420 partly because it seemed to have great power options. I intend to use the laptop on a sailing boat. At times, I need to run power hungry CAD software, and the machine does that just fine. When I'm at sea, I need the laptop to run on minimal power (just displaying navigation software, and running the internal GPS, keeping a log)
Today I took the laptop tp the boat and connected it to the 12v boat battery. I was disappointed to see that it was using around 1.5 amps. This was after using the power manager tool to minimise power use, lowering display brightness, quality, turning off wifi etc. The laptop battery was already fully charged beofre this test, so the power wasn't being absorbed by that.
I thought the T420 could run using just 7-8 watts, so I was expecting to see my ammeter show just over 0.5 amps, rather than 1.5.
Puzzled, and disappointed.
John

First of all try to re-attach the battery.
If it does not help, follow ThorsHammer's tip:
remove Powermanager
remove power management driver
run ccleaner
install power management driver
install powermanager
My home-forum: http://www.thinkpad-forum.de
Wiki: Deutsches ThinkPad-Wiki English ThinkWiki
My ThinkPad-Collection

After "insufficient power" message, N9 appears to ...

Hi,
I've got an N9 on PR1.0 (10.2011.34-1.339.01.2_PR_339). When I connect it to my car charger (2 different, actually), or my GUM plus charger, they're recognized as a computer. I just tap the "X" to dismiss the dialog, but then I get the "insufficient power to charge this device" warning.
But then, the battery icon shows the charging animation just the same. Now so far, it's only been for a quick top-up in the car. Upcoming is a longer roadtrip. Does anyone know if the phone is actually charging when this happens?
Thx,
drew
P.S. All three of these adapters will charge, for example, my power-hungry iPad. I don't think they're not providing enough current, really.
P.P.S. I've read about shorting the data pins on the charger, but I'm not so keen to try this. And I definitely don't want to try that with my GUM plus. :-O
Solved!
Go to Solution.

@aspergerguy
True dat. I did a quick comparison, and the phone trickles towards charged with the non-Nokia charger. The Nokia charger is much, much faster.
If I "short out the data pins" on a non-Nokia charger, like it says out there in the interwebs, that's not going to affect how fast it charges, is it? I know I'll avoid the screen associated with connect as sync or connect as mass storage, but will the phone charge better just because of that?
I have two car chargers, I might just have to try a little surgery on one of them and find out.
Unless someone knows off hand.
:A\>
drew

Power hungry

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