Real-world Power Consumption with Via or AMD Geode

[fluxion]

so im really interested in this:

http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001

for a small (well, smallness isnt a big factor) internet appliance. (linux firewall...maybe running Snort as well, but very purpose-oriented and stripped down. no X server or anything.)

but i was watching this video:

http://www.via.com.tw/en/initiatives/empowered/pc3500_mainboard/index.jsp

and despite the numbers on that page (which i think subtract away power used for hard drives and ac->dc conversion etc), the vid shows the system idling at 37W. that's with vista...but still...it seems a bit excessive for what i need, which is something akin to a re-flashed router.

1.5ghz C7-D has a TDP of like 20W, so i think that's where alot of it is coming from. so im wondering what real-world wattage use people are seeing with other lightweight C3/C7 Via systems. I'm also curious about AMD's Geode LX/GX or whatever...i know they're underpowered, but they're sufficient for what i want, an max wattage is only like 3W, which is sahweet.

basically im looking for input on the best route to go for a very purpose-oriented internet appliance where low power consumption is the key concern, particularly with the real-world power usage i can expect from various platforms. any input would be much appreciated!

 

[bassman]

I have that board in my car computer. It draws a little less than 50W while powered by a regular ATX supply and with a 3.5" hard drive, keyboard, network, GPS, and mouse connected. The GPS is active, but the system is otherwise idle and running XP.

Have you looked at the reviews on mini-itx.com? Some of the nano-itx boards draw 25W at idle - including the PSU, hard drive, optical drive, etc.

 

[bassman]

Have you looked at these?

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS4030713830.html

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9659853883.html

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8150371546.html

 

[mavalpha]

D201GLY2, D201GLY2A. CPU draws 19W max, board probably makes 22W under full load. Add your choice of drive and RAM, you're looking at around 35-40W under stress-tests.

 

[fluxion]

Have you looked at these?

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS4030713830.html

http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS9659853883.html

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8150371546.html

the first 2 look promising, but i could only find a price on the second. bout $300. i think that's reasonable, and likely what ill end up spending if it do this the right way, but i'd like a more DIY approach.

but if it's anything like the first, with 2.4W draw, that's right up my alley.

so im kinda looking at a Geode LX/GX platform at this point. but i know the older Via C3's and maybe lower-clocked C7's draw alot less power than the 1.5ghz C7, so im curious what kinda power consumption numbers people are seeing with those. Geode is a bit pricey, bout $200 for the board and proc, Via seems to be about $100 cheaper but i'm pretty set on a really lower-power setup and i cant seem to find real-world numbers.

and mavalpha, i would definetely consider that setup over a 1.5ghz pc2500/pc3500 board performance-wise, but there's little benefit as far as power consumption and that's my main concern. i'm looking for 15-20W max normal draw for everything: board/cpu, hard drive (i might do CF or a ramdisk to cut this out of the equation), RAM, etc

 

[defaultluser]

Can't you down-clock the C7? If you reduce the clock and voltage (to say, 800 MHz and minimum stable voltage), I would expect the chip itself would use a watt or so at idle.

 

[fluxion]

Can't you down-clock the C7? If you reduce the clock and voltage (to say, 800 MHz and minimum stable voltage), I would expect the chip itself would use a watt or so at idle.

that sounds like an interesting option. do you or anyone else happen to know if via boards allow you to control clockspeeds? that might sell me on a pc2500E or pc3500 via board, since i could downclock it to the bare minimum i need

 

[bob]

Im writing this from the perspective of someone who (still) runs NT 4.0 as a server os (network file sharing, NT4 kicks ass when you are very lazy), on a celeron 500, and RHEL4 on an AMD X2 2Ghz for vmware server. I previously had a 386-SX laptop with 12MB ram as a FTP server... Im saying this, because Id like the reader of the following mess of sentances to understand what perspective im coming from.

I was also very tired at the time of writing, so the following is AS-IS, no warrenty.

so im really interested in this:

http://clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001

for a small (well, smallness isnt a big factor) internet appliance. (linux firewall...maybe running Snort as well, but very purpose-oriented and stripped down. no X server or anything.)

What exactly do you mean by "small internet appliance"? If its just a firewall and snort, a 486 could do that, but in order to be more helpful, could you specify what exactly you were doing, such as the throughput? Or possibly give a reference system and describe if it works/doesnt work (like saying "I have a P3-1ghz and it works fine" etc).

the vid shows the system idling at 37W. that's with vista...but still...it seems a bit excessive for what i need, which is something akin to a re-flashed router. 1.5ghz C7-D has a TDP of like 20W, so i think that's where alot of it is coming from. so im wondering what real-world wattage use people are seeing with other lightweight C3/C7 Via systems.

My C3 mini-itx board, bought it on newegg for ~$45.00. I have one DDR-333 256MB stick in it, a 256MB compact-flash drive, and a low-profile Realtec NIC. All onboard things are disabled in bios except LAN and video (USB, serial, parallel, etc... all disabled).

I see about 30-35W idle, @ 800mhz. It consumes more power at idle, than my K6-II 500Mhz microatx system did (similar setup: 2x sticks of 128MB PC100, 256MB CF drive, 1x realtec nic). The K6 system used about 45-50W under a heavy load, not much more than the C3.

I'm also curious about AMD's Geode LX/GX or whatever...i know they're underpowered, but they're sufficient for what i want, an max wattage is only like 3W, which is sahweet.

3-5W from what ive seen, but its a fairly poor performing platform as a whole. Not much worse than the Via C3's... And the Via C3, in my opinion gets a big frowney-face for performance. Of course the C3 is going to perform worse than a regular cpu, but looking at its power consumption with other cpu/motherboards, not much is gained. For me, I gained the ability to have a fanless router, and I felt it was worth the $45 for it.

My C3 runs as a router, and handles my 6Mb cable (which bursts at about 27Mb/s). Snort, Squid, Traffic shaping, and crappy realtec/onboard NICs. It handles it fine, and if a C3 compares with a Geode GX, then I suppose a GX could handle it, but im not so sure.

The main problem with Geode based systems, is cost. Try to find those on ebay or in google being sold. I can nearly put together a core-2 duo system for that price. Perhaps im looking in the wrong areas, but im seeing $200-$300 for the Geode GX/LX (old or new).

basically im looking for input on the best route to go for a very purpose-oriented internet appliance where low power consumption is the key concern, particularly with the real-world power usage i can expect from various platforms. any input would be much appreciated!

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article313-page5.html

read that breifly, far right column under "System power (AC)". My 939 system, 1.8Ghz 90nm, ~70W with 1GB ram idle (No cool & Quiet enabled)at stock cpu speed when I tested it myself years back, and that was with a PCI video card plugged in to watch the BIOS temp/volt charts. According to that chart, throttled back using C&C, 48W idle (athlon 3000 venice, 2nd chart down).

Im not trying to troll and talk badly of mini-itx systems, but unless you are in a situation where you must have a tiny board, or where the difference between 30W and 40W means being able to do something or not, thats when its a good time to use ITX systems.

There are 744 hours in a 31-day month, my electricity is $0.08 per kilowatt hour, or 8 cents for every 1,000Watts over 1 hour of time, consumed.

744 x 0.120Kw (worst-case scenario for my 939 system) = 89.28Kwh, or $7.06
744 x 0.040Kw x $0.008 (worst-case scenario for an idle C3/C7) = $2.38
Difference of $4.67, which equates to "Whoop-de-doo", at least with me considering I have electric heat.

Though, if you still want a small system with low heat output, but still a moderate performer, go to ebay and search for " intel itx ". 1.0Ghz+ Pentium-M/Celeron boards, somewhat more heat output than a C3/C7 (20-30W more), and at about the same cost with better performance.

and again, dont get me wrong on this... The Via's are the only way to go if you actually need low power, small size x86. I heavily emphasise the word "need", as a celeron/pentium M in a mini-itx board kicks ass, if power consumption is something you arn't overly concerned with. But, buying a Via C3 for the lower-power consumption when you dont need it, is sort of like paying $40,000.00 for a geo-metro because its slightly more fuel efficent and slightly smaller than a $22,000.00 toyota. Fortunatley, small cars with small engines and less features are cheaper. Too bad computers don't work this way.

Anyways, there are many options, but make sure you know what you are getting into before you buy.

 

[zzatz]

I recently replaced my old Celeron 300A router, mail, web, and file server with the Via pc1. With a 750 GB WD Green Power drive, it's drawing 32W. 2GB of RAM, an old Intel NIC for a second interface, a DVD drive for ripping, and an 80+ 380W power supply round out the system. The power supply is overkill, but everything smaller at the local shops was junk that I didn't trust.

I need to compile a more recent kernel (Debian stable) to enable the Via frequency stepping, which may drop the power consumption. The C7 is fast enough for my needs. So was the Celeron 300A, but I decided to move my music collection to this system, and needed a larger drive. I'm not interested in investing in new PATA drives, so SATA was needed.

I considered the Intel D201GLY2, but the single PCI slot ruled it out. I need one for the second NIC, and would like to be able to add a phone card for Asterisk. The Intel board is faster, except for the Via Padlock encryption hardware, which is supported by OpenSSL. My outside access uses SSL (IMAP, HTTPS), so this matters to me. I need to recompile SSH to use the OpenSSL libraries, and see how that works.

 

[fluxion]

thanks everyone for the input. i ended up picking up one of these off ebay:

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=11288&vpn=EPIA-V10000A&manufacture=VIA TECHNOLOGIES INC

paid a slight premium ($70) for older hardware, but i had extra pc100 memory (it'll take pc100 if you jump it down from the 133mhz default), and the C3 1ghz uses 8-10W less power at load that the 1.5ghz C7, and should have plenty of power for what i need.

also picked up a compact-flash-to-ide adapter and a 2gb CF card. gonna boot linux off an initrd and just let it operate off a ramdisk, so no hard drive needed.

gonna stick it in one of these (needed the larger size case for the extra pci ethernet card im gonna stick in):
http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-27518546784426/morex-2766-mini-itx-case.html

my hopes are that it'll idle around 20W. let me know what you guys think. i'll try to post up a little build log when i get this beast up and running.

 

[fluxion]

sunnuva bitch! this damn thing idles at 30W...

im gonna see if there's a way to downclock it a bit, maybe undervolt the 6000+rpm heatsink fan it comes with (or replace it)

just thought i'd let you all know....its shame how hard it is to find real-world power consumption numbers for various platforms, you never really know what to expect when everything's all hooked up

 

[fluxion]

Wow, okay, so you can downclock it to 750mhz (100mhz*7.5) and it only consumes 24W, and at 495mhz (66mhz*7.5) i bet it'll do a tad under 20W at idle. perfect!

 

[fluxion]

okay so im too lazy to do any type of write-up (didnt really do anything interesting anyway), but downclocked to 750mhz with the 2.6.24 series kernel and hi-res timers/dynamic tick options enabled it idles at 15W with a cpu fan (undervolted to cut the noise..dunno if that had any effect power-wise), small case fan, CF flash drive, and 60W psu.

dynamic tick netted some huge power savings (~6W), even tried downclocking to 500mhz and it still idled at exactly 15W due to being in a low-power state i guess (not using dynamic frequency scaling...looks like it got broken at some point before linux 2.6.23 and has since been removed. i tried it with 2.6.23 which still has the frequency scaling driver for the C3/C5 and it freezes up when you switch frequencies)

so just a heads up, dynamic tick + downclocking seems to be a nice route if you wanna cut the power consumption. may be that i wouldve been able to get similar results with a more "practical" (and cheaper) C7 board or D201GLY2, but im happy with how it turned out.

 

[bassman]

Good info. Thanks!

 

[imzjustplayin]

Im writing this from the perspective of someone who (still) runs NT 4.0 as a server os (network file sharing, NT4 kicks ass when you are very lazy), on a celeron 500, and RHEL4 on an AMD X2 2Ghz for vmware server. I previously had a 386-SX laptop with 12MB ram as a FTP server... Im saying this, because Id like the reader of the following mess of sentances to understand what perspective im coming from.

I was also very tired at the time of writing, so the following is AS-IS, no warrenty.


What exactly do you mean by "small internet appliance"? If its just a firewall and snort, a 486 could do that, but in order to be more helpful, could you specify what exactly you were doing, such as the throughput? Or possibly give a reference system and describe if it works/doesnt work (like saying "I have a P3-1ghz and it works fine" etc).


My C3 mini-itx board, bought it on newegg for ~$45.00. I have one DDR-333 256MB stick in it, a 256MB compact-flash drive, and a low-profile Realtec NIC. All onboard things are disabled in bios except LAN and video (USB, serial, parallel, etc... all disabled).

I see about 30-35W idle, @ 800mhz. It consumes more power at idle, than my K6-II 500Mhz microatx system did (similar setup: 2x sticks of 128MB PC100, 256MB CF drive, 1x realtec nic). The K6 system used about 45-50W under a heavy load, not much more than the C3.



3-5W from what ive seen, but its a fairly poor performing platform as a whole. Not much worse than the Via C3's... And the Via C3, in my opinion gets a big frowney-face for performance. Of course the C3 is going to perform worse than a regular cpu, but looking at its power consumption with other cpu/motherboards, not much is gained. For me, I gained the ability to have a fanless router, and I felt it was worth the $45 for it.

My C3 runs as a router, and handles my 6Mb cable (which bursts at about 27Mb/s). Snort, Squid, Traffic shaping, and crappy realtec/onboard NICs. It handles it fine, and if a C3 compares with a Geode GX, then I suppose a GX could handle it, but im not so sure.

The main problem with Geode based systems, is cost. Try to find those on ebay or in google being sold. I can nearly put together a core-2 duo system for that price. Perhaps im looking in the wrong areas, but im seeing $200-$300 for the Geode GX/LX (old or new).


http://www.silentpcreview.com/article313-page5.html

read that breifly, far right column under "System power (AC)". My 939 system, 1.8Ghz 90nm, ~70W with 1GB ram idle (No cool & Quiet enabled)at stock cpu speed when I tested it myself years back, and that was with a PCI video card plugged in to watch the BIOS temp/volt charts. According to that chart, throttled back using C&C, 48W idle (athlon 3000 venice, 2nd chart down).

Im not trying to troll and talk badly of mini-itx systems, but unless you are in a situation where you must have a tiny board, or where the difference between 30W and 40W means being able to do something or not, thats when its a good time to use ITX systems.

There are 744 hours in a 31-day month, my electricity is $0.08 per kilowatt hour, or 8 cents for every 1,000Watts over 1 hour of time, consumed.

744 x 0.120Kw (worst-case scenario for my 939 system) = 89.28Kwh, or $7.06
744 x 0.040Kw x $0.008 (worst-case scenario for an idle C3/C7) = $2.38
Difference of $4.67, which equates to "Whoop-de-doo", at least with me considering I have electric heat.

Though, if you still want a small system with low heat output, but still a moderate performer, go to ebay and search for " intel itx ". 1.0Ghz+ Pentium-M/Celeron boards, somewhat more heat output than a C3/C7 (20-30W more), and at about the same cost with better performance.

and again, dont get me wrong on this... The Via's are the only way to go if you actually need low power, small size x86. I heavily emphasise the word "need", as a celeron/pentium M in a mini-itx board kicks ass, if power consumption is something you arn't overly concerned with. But, buying a Via C3 for the lower-power consumption when you dont need it, is sort of like paying $40,000.00 for a geo-metro because its slightly more fuel efficent and slightly smaller than a $22,000.00 toyota. Fortunatley, small cars with small engines and less features are cheaper. Too bad computers don't work this way.

Anyways, there are many options, but make sure you know what you are getting into before you buy.

I've never owned a via based system but after reading your post, I agree with your conclusion, that the solution is to buy or obtain a used system and use that instead.

Since PIIIs are being dumped by quite a few people, this would be a prime segment to go after in terms of a high performance firewall. I personally use a K6-III 450MHZ for my m0n0wall installation.

 

[pxc]

Nice @ 15W.

I have a cheesy Geode NX 1750 (LV XP-M @ 1.4GHz) system that i've been trying to get running lower power. With a 320GB HD, 512MB and a DVD burner in a SFF case w/200W PSU running XP I can't get it to idle much less than 50W (42W when the HD shuts down, ~58W full load) from the outlet.

PowerNow doesn't seem to work with the motherboard, which is probably the bigger problem besides not having an 80 Plus PSU. When my picoBTX cases + PSUs come in soon i'll try it with E2200 (8W C1E mode) CPUs.

 

[gdonovan]

I've never owned a via based system but after reading your post, I agree with your conclusion, that the solution is to buy or obtain a used system and use that instead.

Since PIIIs are being dumped by quite a few people, this would be a prime segment to go after in terms of a high performance firewall. I personally use a K6-III 450MHZ for my m0n0wall installation.

Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread- I was looking for a power supply for my own VIA C3 powered system and I think instead I'll invest in a ASUS EEE PC since the power consumption is lower!

15-25 watts at max load compared to a C3 system pulling around 30 at idle and I assume that doesn't include a monitor either with the C3 system.

I'm just looking for something very low power to sit in the corner and download torrents time to time. Rather than waste $40-$50 on a SFF power supply I'd rather sell off the C3 and spend $300 for a 2G EEE and plug in a spare USB hard drive for file storage.

Going to do some checking around before buying but does any see any holes in my plan?

Anyone want to buy an itx motherboard with case, laptop drive adapter and 512 mb of ram? =)

 

[bob]

Thanks to everyone who posted in this thread- I was looking for a power supply for my own VIA C3 powered system and I think instead I'll invest in a ASUS EEE PC since the power consumption is lower!

One of the best (this is my opinion, of course) is the sparkle. I had a hard time finding alternatives to the pico-psu, since it isnt that efficent in itself, when you consider that 120vac to 12vdc conversion has to be made. Its overkill for C3/C7/Geode, but I thought I might mention it:

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article773-page4.html

77% efficency @ 31W DC output
83% efficency @ 221W DC output

I havent seen it on newegg yet, but it seems to fit in 1U cases, and is about $45-55 on ebay, cheaper than a Pico-psu even before you buy the 120-12v adapter.

15-25 watts at max load compared to a C3 system pulling around 30 at idle and I assume that doesn't include a monitor either with the C3 system.

Correct, a C3 "system" is just the board, cpu, and ram. The monitor, if you decided you needed one, adds in considerably.

I'm just looking for something very low power to sit in the corner and download torrents time to time. Rather than waste $40-$50 on a SFF power supply I'd rather sell off the C3 and spend $300 for a 2G EEE and plug in a spare USB hard drive for file storage.

Going to do some checking around before buying but does any see any holes in my plan?

Holes? Yes, perhaps. In my asking of the following questions and pointing out certain things, I hope you take no offense, as I mean none. Im not crapping on your project ideas, but just trying to... give a different view on them. Unless ive misunderstood your post, this seems to be a "right idea, wrong reason" sort of thing, or wrong idea right reason... ehh... Its 3:00am, the following might not make sense. Also, this is all just my opinion, with a few links for providing real information... Use your own judgement on what to think, what to buy:

1. Nit-picking over differences in wattage that will mean a few cents per month on the power bill. I pay about 7 cents per kilowatt hour.

24 hours a day, 30 days per month, one month = one billing period.
15W EEpc (DC wattage, not actual AC wattage) - 0.015Kwh * $0.06 * 24 hours * 30 days = $0.65. A candy bar costs more money than this. 30W C3, (dc wattage, not AC) = $1.30. A 20oz soda is $1.25.

My point being, If this is going to be plugged into your wall, you would probably be just as happy with a Cel-420/E1200. Power usage might be 40-60W, I cant find any decent reviews covering motherboards/cpus, specifically C2D's.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=755
52W idle with an E6750, Gigabye GA-33GM board, DVD drive, hard drive, keyboard/mouse connected. With a more efficent PSU and less crap connected, lower-end cpu with less cache... should be better. Not sure if that is AC power or DC power, which was measured.

2. Power consumption is rated before the PSU is considered. My laptop with a Celeron 530 (1.73Ghz single-core conroe, 1meg cache) draws ~12-16W idle, thats with the LCD screen and backlight on, cpu at full speed/voltage, hard drive spinning. Under a load, it jumps up to nearly 50W. But lets say I had fedora idling, just downloading torrents... Idle, about...15W, no big deal, right? well, the 65W PSU for it draws 1.5A at its maximum output, @ 120v, giving a grand total of 180W. If this PSU was this efficent at no-load as it is at 100% load, then I *should* be using about 40W, but in reality the PSU is far less efficent at a minimal load.

The EEpc is going to use less than my crappy acer laptop, but it is going to have the same situation. But, again, this only matters if you want to fuss over single-digit watt differences, and it only matters if those minor differences are a large cost. If you were mounting the system outdoors for, say, a WIFI broadband setup, then 15W vs 30W means about $200-300 difference when it comes to buying solar panels, batteries, chargers, etc. But otherwise, its just pennies.

3. "Rather than waste $40-$50 on a SFF power supply I'd rather sell off the C3 and spend $300 for a 2G EEE"

$40 < $300. Its your money, but I would hardly consider a $40 PSU a waste, in comparison to $300. But, at least the EEpc would come with a built-in battery, keyboard, and LCD monitor. I cant say the same for anything, custom or purchasable, in that price range. Though, for the price of the EEpc, you can have 3 Celeron-420 systems (mobo, cpu, ram) from newegg. You have to chose what you want, but make sure you consider all options avalible with the money you have, then decide what option fits into your requirement. an EEpc for $300, a Conroe Celeron with mobo/1GB ram for $90, or your current C3 with a PSU for an additional $50-$60.... there are more options too, never limit yourself because of a few watts, unless they truely are going to break your balls.

If I havent convinced you, yet, to take a different look on watts... If you use DSL, cable internet or something.. Grab your modem, flip it over or look at its wall-wort PSU, and think about how many watts it uses. Take a look at the back of your alarm-clock, your cell-phone charger, and other things you have plugged in all day long. The insignificance of the actual power consumption of the ITX boards in relation to other electronic devices of any kind shape or form, is one of the many reasons why people love them. My cable modem uses 10-20W, my cellphone charger uses about 9W, my alarmclock uses 6W... And my C3, an entire complete computer system running Freebsd, uses barely 30W at its worst. Sure, it uses more than my Core-2 laptop... but 30W is nothing, especially in comparison to one of the three 2000W electric wall/floorboard heater that just clicked on in my apartment.

 

[gdonovan]

I havent seen it on newegg yet, but it seems to fit in 1U cases, and is about $45-55 on ebay, cheaper than a Pico-psu even before you buy the 120-12v adapter.

Roughly $60 shipped looking about.

Correct, a C3 "system" is just the board, cpu, and ram. The monitor, if you decided you needed one, adds in considerably.

And the EEE would have a smaller footprint in my office than the C3 system and LCD. The LCD isn't a huge issue regarding power consumption as most of the time I keep an eye on what the system is doing via remote desktop software over the network.

Holes? Yes, perhaps. In my asking of the following questions and pointing out certain things, I hope you take no offense, as I mean none.

If I wanted no offense I'd kept my mouth shut ;-)

Always open to another point of view in case I have missed something.

My point being, If this is going to be plugged into your wall, you would probably be just as happy with a Cel-420/E1200.

Except I already own the C3 system and it does have some resale value along with the LCD.

For me the C3 system only has one use, while a mini-laptop I can think up all sorts of uses for aside from downloading/uploading.

well, the 65W PSU for it draws 1.5A at its maximum output, @ 120v, giving a grand total of 180W. If this PSU was this efficent at no-load as it is at 100% load, then I *should* be using about 40W, but in reality the PSU is far less efficent at a minimal load.

Why the EEEpc interests me- 15-20 watt draw is at the plug (as tested by several people) is better than my C3 system with typical power supply or even a high efficiency one.

Take a look at the back of your alarm-clock, your cell-phone charger, and other things you have plugged in all day long. .

Oh that I have done in a big way! This year has been bruising as far as money goes due to a divorce & custody fight.... You can make more money or cut overhead to make your cash go father. By reducing the number of power bricks around the house, having some stuff on gang switches, changing bulbs and other energy saving measures I was able to slash the electric bill down $40-$50 a month.

Thanks for your input- I have not made up my mind yet and will continue to examine all the pro's and cons.

My only real quibble about the EEE is the use of flash ram for a hard drive and projected lifespan of such ram. Without researching it further (a lot on my plate as you can imagine even with things winding down) can the flash ram be replaced if it goes bad? Or is the laptop effectively junk at the point? Projected life span? etc.

 

[fluxion]

power efficiency to me is a lot like overclocking (ironic though that may be). it gets to a certain point where the benefits are hardly noticable (3.6ghz as opposed to 4ghz, 32C as opposed to 38C, etc.), but it's just nice to know you're getting the most bang for your buck, and with regard to efficiency, there is a bit of smugness you can feel about not consuming more energy than you need for a particular task. especially for something so limited in purpose as a small firewall (in my case).

 

[gdonovan]

I have a friend with a kill-a-watt meter, I have an old 266 mhz laptop here and if the readings are low enough I'll use that instead. The Asus unit would be nice and small but if the unit will do the job I'm in like butter.

 

[fluxion]

if you're willing to do with less processing power (seemingly so if 266mhz is sufficient) why not put that c3 of your's to use? i got mine down to 15W @ 750mhz with some tweaks and using a ram filesystem, and found that simply downclocking it to 450mhz would probably put you below 20W idle, and you can still go lower from there (especially if you're considering using linux, note my earlier post in this thread about using a dynamic tick kernel)

 

[gdonovan]

Ok all sorts of impressed now.

Picked up the meter and it indicates that the C3 system is only pulling 26 watts (no lcd on) using a no name desktop power supply while at the desktop with hard drive running.

For a point of reference, my 5000+ X2 system under the same condition is pulling 160 watts.

The laptop with the screen in sleep mode pulls 20 watts, with the screen on 26 watts.

Pulling the battery and cd-rom drive out drove the numbers down to 9-10 watts.

I'd call it all a wash really, I'm not going to get excited about so few watts. Chances are if I had a better power supply for the C3 system it would be using close to laptop numbers for power consumption and be more usable than a 266 mhz laptop in max power saving mode.

I have an Antec tru-power power supply, I'll retest and post the numbers soon.

 

[gdonovan]

Enertainment center (DVD player, Tuner, CD player, Shuttle SFF PC, Tape deck) with 37" LCD HDTV pulls a whopping 22 watts with utterly nothing on.

 

[andmalc]

If you guys are serious about low-power for a network appliance/file server, you should check out the boards that are actually designed for this, and not desktop systems like the C7 EPIA's. Fanless 'Single Board Computers' running the Geode LX800 draw about 5 watts.

These boards use CF cards for storage, mini-PCI for wireless cards, and don't usually include VGA so you control them over serial or ssh. Some have USB for an external hard drive. They cost around $130-250.

Since the Geode is i386 you can run any Linux or BSD distro on them (especially Debian!) but there are several dedicated ones + DD-wt or Open-wrt.

These are some examples:
http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm
https://www.soekris.com/

 

[fluxion]

damn, good links andmalc. i came in here with a strong interest in getting a Geode board but the best price i could find at the time was over $200. found some in the $130 range at that pcengines site, which is a decent price

ah well, maybe in the future. still, the c3 turned out much better than i expected, so im not too dissappointed

 

[gdonovan]

still, the c3 turned out much better than i expected, so im not too dissappointed

Same here- The full size hard drive is only pulling 5 watts (pulled the power to check) so I'm looking at a 900 mhz C3 board with 2 full ram slots pulling about 18 watts with an old Compaq 100 watt power supply.

I'm considering pulling one stick of ram but why bother? Might tinker with downclocking just to see the results though.

 

[widefault]

I've been messing with a mobile Core2Duo embedded board running a T7300(2GHz) and 2GB DDR2-667. Small size, but so far the power usage is high enough I needed to move from a 60 watt power brick to a 100 watter. So far so good, but despite being a half-generation newer it sucks more power and runs hotter than an older Core 2 Duo embedded setup I already have. That's frustrating.

As a result, I started playing with one of my old Geode GX1 boards today. 300MHz, 128MB PC133, and a 4GB CF card on an Advantech PCM-5825 3.5" embedded(4"x5.75") board. Using a 45 watt PSU(2A@5V, 3A@12V), total power draw is 6 watts idling in the BIOS. Not so shabby, although performance leaves a lot to be desired compared to the C2D. Good thing is it'll be a welcome distraction until I get calmed down enough to mess with the Santa Rosa setup.

Now I need to dig out some of the other Geodes I have, I don't remember them being this good on power. Thinking I may replace a few systems with some custom thin clients, be nice to drop a few hundred watts from the power bills.