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silux
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 24 May 2003
Posts: 92
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 Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 1:26 am Post subject: Sacrificing energy efficiency for computer effeciancy? |
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I have often disliked the fact that I have to wait around for my relatively slow (1ghz) computer to compile everything that I use on my gentoo box. However I like the customization, secutity, fast release times, and various other features that many of us gentoo users have come to know and love. This is why I have stayed a gentoo user regardless of the fact that
may take days in some cases.
This got me to thinking...
A normal workstation realistically does not need to be run all day. I mean usually we check our email, do some surfing and play games etc. When we are sleeping or at work our computer can and probably should be shut off however. The problem I'm facing is that with the extremely long compile times I find I am not able to shut my machine off as often as I would like. I also find that I am stuck compiling things while I'm using my machine which is not ideal to me.
After I realized this I began thinking... Now I'm not terribly informed when it comes to electricity but my understanding is that if a computer is working hard (aka compiling) it uses much more power then when it just sits idle. By this rationale all gentoo boxes are using much much more power then a debian or mandrake box. By the simple virtue that they must be on for longer periods of time they would use more power. The fact is though that the time that they are up and running they are doing more intense work then most other distributions require.
My question then becomes how much is gentoo hurting the enviroment and my wallet (by my monthly utility bill) and is that really responsible. Especially in a time where energy crises seems inevitable shouldn't we consider this all the more. If anyone has any comments I would love to hear them, but unless someone can make a compelling argument against my logic I'm afraid I will probably wind up switching to debian. |
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Promit
Guru
Joined: 15 Nov 2003
Posts: 344
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 1:38 am Post subject: |
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You can save more on electricity bills by using flourescent lights and turning off stuff when you don't need them than by switching to a different Linux distro.
Just a few 100W light bulbs is about equivalent to the power your computer is using. |
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silux
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 24 May 2003
Posts: 92
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 1:48 am Post subject: florescent and turning stuff off |
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I already use florescent bulbs in all my lights and I can't turn off the computer (if its compiling) because of the way gentoo does things...
and as far as the fact that a computer is only as much power as a couple 100W blubs... 100 watts 24 hrs a day for a month is 72 kwh which is not insignificant at all when you consider the thousands of people using gentoo for years and years. |
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Safrax
Guru
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 422
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 4:28 am Post subject: |
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| The answer is: Not much. Gentoo or any other distro does not cause any significant harm to either the environment or your pocket book. Computers draw much less power than you think, and well if you are that energy conscious go out and buy a high effeciency active pfc power supply. Thatll save several dollars over a year. It might cost you 5 dollars a month to leave your computer and (assuming you have an LCD monitor) monitor on 24/7. |
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Nylle
Guru
Joined: 05 May 2002
Posts: 308
Location: Uppsala, Sweden
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 12:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Safrax wrote: | | The answer is: Not much. Gentoo or any other distro does not cause any significant harm to either the environment or your pocket book. Computers draw much less power than you think, and well if you are that energy conscious go out and buy a high effeciency active pfc power supply. Thatll save several dollars over a year. It might cost you 5 dollars a month to leave your computer and (assuming you have an LCD monitor) monitor on 24/7. |
That's not entirely true, computers do consume quite a bit of power. In my apartment we have 3 high power workstations (Athlon XP 1700+) which consumes somewhere between 100-120 Watts, and one is waterchilled which adds about 40 Watts. This is without monitors, if you add those you have about 300 Watts more in total. In addition to that I have a disk server that consumes about 80 Watts, a router that is about 40 Watts, and another server using about 70 Watts.
This totals to about 890 Watts, and that's not including the monitors to the servers that are on at times or my laptop, which I usually run connected to the wall. This is a lot of power, about the equivalent of 15 60 Watt lightbulbs. I use only power saving florescent lightbulbs in my apartment, and yet I have 3.5 times the power consumption of the standard apartment of the same size, according to my utlity company.
_________________
"Do you hear that sound your Highness?"
"Those are the shrieking eels, they always grow louder when they are about to feed on human flesh." |
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nerdbert
l33t
Joined: 09 Feb 2003
Posts: 981
Location: Berlin
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| Posted: Sat Nov 22, 2003 3:04 pm Post subject: Re: florescent and turning stuff off |
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| silux wrote: | I can't turn off the computer (if its compiling) because of the way gentoo does things...
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at least you can do this:
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emerge -u world && shutdown -h now
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Bigun
Advocate
Joined: 21 Sep 2003
Posts: 2196
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| Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 4:46 pm Post subject: Re: florescent and turning stuff off |
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| nerdbert wrote: | | silux wrote: | I can't turn off the computer (if its compiling) because of the way gentoo does things...
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at least you can do this:
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emerge -u world && shutdown -h now
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Bad idea, I did that once and missed an important system message. My machine wouldn't boot, I had to chroot the system via CD and fix the distro (that's when they switched to using coldplug to detect items).
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"It's ok, they might have guns but we have flowers." - Perpetual Victim |
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lbrtuk
l33t
Joined: 08 May 2003
Posts: 910
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| Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:12 pm Post subject: |
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It depends on whether you live somewhere hot or somewhere cold.
If you're somewhere cold it doesn't really matter because 99.9% of the energy your machine is using is just going into heating your house. |
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Bigun
Advocate
Joined: 21 Sep 2003
Posts: 2196
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| Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:22 pm Post subject: |
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| lbrtuk wrote: | It depends on whether you live somewhere hot or somewhere cold.
If you're somewhere cold it doesn't really matter because 99.9% of the energy your machine is using is just going into heating your house. |
Sad... but true.... call it effecient heat I guess..
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"It's ok, they might have guns but we have flowers." - Perpetual Victim |
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lbrtuk
l33t
Joined: 08 May 2003
Posts: 910
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| Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 5:51 pm Post subject: |
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| Well it's not sad, that's just how things work. The energy going into your machine has to be released as something. It doesn't just get magically sucked up into 'computation'. Would you prefer if your machine constantly emitted 100W of energy as sound? I don't suspect you would. |
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Safrax
Guru
Joined: 23 Apr 2002
Posts: 422
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| Posted: Thu Feb 24, 2005 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| lbrtuk wrote: | | Would you prefer if your machine constantly emitted 100W of energy as sound? I don't suspect you would. |
HELP IM DEAF! |
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