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Low Power PC?

A

Alterscape

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 13, 2003
Messages
78
I'm thinking about building a headless PC dedicated to Misterhouse, a perl-based home automation program. Since a system for home automation would run 24/7/365, I'd like to minimize power consumption -- running my desktop rig already runs my bills up enough.. ;) MH runs fine for me on a PII-300 with 512mb RAM and Win2k, but I could probably squeeze it into a smaller resource footprint if needed (linux without x, for example). Hard disk access speed isn't a priority. I'm guessing something like a fanless EPIA mini-ITX board would probably be the lowest-power-consumption solution? Would a 2.5" notebook HDD save enough over the long term (let's say, two or three years) to be worth the extra premium price? Has anyone attempted anything like this before? If so, what worked, what didn't?
 
I've done a bit of research into this since I have a car computer and have tried to avoid using tons of power...

An EPIA Mini-ITX board like you said, with one stick of RAM and a 2.5inch notebook hard drive would definitely be the best way to go.

However, this might be going a little extreme unless you're just determined to save power. I don't know about you, but my house has at least 4 computers on 24/7 anyway, one more isn't really going to cost THAT much more.

But yeah, I'd say that would use quite a bit less power than, say, a Pentium 4 computer with a full sized 3.5 inch desktop hard drive. :)
 
Alterscape said:
Would a 2.5" notebook HDD save enough over the long term (let's say, two or three years) to be worth the extra premium price? Has anyone attempted anything like this before? If so, what worked, what didn't?
Click to expand...

No on the hard drive. Even SCSIs don't use all that much juice. Maybe 10 watts. I know I've got one IDE drive (3.5") that's rated at 4 watts, 7-8 is more typical though I think. Just use a regular drive. If the disk isn't needed much, configure the system so it'll spin it down when not in use.
 
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