Reduce power consumption...

[tgrimley]

I'm looking to cut into my power bill.

Any good advice would be thoroughly appreciated.

Here are my systems:

Vista Desktop:
2 x 2407wfp-hc Monitors
Q6600 @ stock, 4GB ram, Abit IP35 Pro
XFX 8800GTS 320MB
LiteOn DVD-RW drive
Klipsch 2.1 Promedia
WD1500ADFD 150GB Raptor System drive (13 GB free)
WD3200KS 320GB system backup drive + ISO temporary storage (48 GB free)
WD3200KS 320GB Ubuntu drive (244GB free)
WD640AAKS 640GB Documents+Steam+VMs (76 GB Free)
Power settings: Displays off after 20 minutes; sleep after 1 hour

Ubuntu Server:
Headless mostly but has a ATI Rage Pro128 16MB AGP Video Card for troubleshooting
Opteron 165 @ stock (1, 1.8 Ghz states; almost always at 1Gz), 4GB ram, Asrock dual-939sata2
Rosewill RC-400 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI V2.2, 32/64-bit, 33/66MHz Networking LAN
5x3 enclosure with 4x SAMSUNG HD501LJ + 1x SAMSUNG HD502IJ 500gb drives in software raid5 (~1.8TB, 260 GB free) /data
ST3200822A 200GB (30GB /root, 153GB /home)
Maxtor 7B25R0 250GB scratch drive

RAID5 array stores media and backups of the 640GB Documents drive from my desktop

Both systems are running off the same UPS and it reports ~480W for light usage.. pretty high I think.

Any suggestions for consolidating things on a very small budget?

 

[CpuMan]

On the Vista Desktop rig,
Consolidate your hard drives, lose the 2 WD3200KS drives and the 150GB Raptor System drive.
And replace them for this drive http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136284

Partition off 150GBs of space on the WD640AAKS 640GB for your OS. That will leave about 450GBs of space left on the WD640 drive and and all the space on the WD1001FALS 1TB. Just partition the space as you wish for your backups, Ubuntu, and documents.

Should save some power running just 2 drives with more space then your existing 4 drives.

As far as the Ubuntu Server, I have no working knowledge of raid 5. And I'm not sure how many hard drives your running in that rig. But if you consolidate those drives it should help cut down on power.

That's about all I can think of.

 

[Dangman]

Swap out the 8800GTS 320MB for this lower power video card instead:
XFX PVT96OSDFH 9600GSO 768MB PCI-E Video Card - $78

Though honestly, you really don't need to do anything really drastic to your computers. Just replace all the lights in your home with Compact Fluorecent Light bulbs and that'll cut down your power bill. Considerably cheaper and less of a hassle than doing strip downs of your system.