Consider the PC that is bought by the average person :
Intel or AMD based CPU,
Motherboard,
RAM
Hard disk
CD/DVD drive
15" monitor
Keyboard, mouse, speakers
If the power requirements of these were calculated: (the values that
are not relevant to the discussion are marked X)
CPU : 75 Watts ( conservative average)
False, the conservative average is far lower. Perhaps you
mean the real maximum of the typical system (which is built
of lower-end parts, the high end parts sell in quite small
volume in relation).
Motherboard : 50 Watts (conservative average)
RAM : 15W (7.5 Watts per module X 2.)
I suspect for a very vague generalization this figures could
work but there really isn't any asurance of them.
Hard Disk : 10 W for read write and 5 Watts for idle. ( this is for
desktop hard disks of 80 GB)
Did you measure this? It seems a bit higher than true
consumption.
CD DVD Drive :20 W for spin up/5 W for operating
What about idle, since most often a drive is idle?
Forgive this presumption since I have not read the rest of
your post yet, but you seem deliberately trying to make a
system seem to be consuming as much power as you felt you
could get away with suggesting. Honestly I have not read
more of your reply yet but let's see if that is true...
15" monitor : X Watts (75 W is a good approximate)
Not true. Did you look up specs for an average 19" LCD? I
would consider that the new *average* monitor. If we wanted
to try to see past systems several years ago, then we would
also have to concede that such old systems didn't have
processor/etc consuming as much power under load, nor at
idle for that matter.
keyboard mouse speakers : X watts
The relevant total power requirement would be : 75+50+15+10 = 150.
(assuming that the CD drive is rarely used)
Motherboard power as mentioned above is conservative since most
presently available boards bundle powerful graphics chips onboard
which increase the power intake.
A discrete graphics card that can offer better performance than the
onboard variant will consume upwards of 75 Watts. So for such systems
the total intake is 225 W.
This is arbitrarilly derived and therefore inappropriate.
We can't just randomly assign a value of 75W, and certainly
that is far higher than the average. Granted some gamers
have extreme video cards, but actually the typical system is
an OEM one that has no video card at all, and most of the
median priced video cards don't consume 75W.
At 150 W per hour, assuming 4 hours of operation per day, the total
daily power consumed is 600W. In a month, this is 18KW. At the average
cost per KW of Rs. 5, the monthly spend is Rs. 90. Annually this is Rs.
1080 or 1100 approx. With a graphics card, the annual expenditure is
Rs. 1350.
Since your figures were off, this is randomly subject to
gross error as well, but just for the sake of argument,
let's assume it were true even though it usually won't be.
A vast majority of people who buy PCs rarely use it at its maximum
potential, which in present day means running games or video/graphics
editing software. The most frequent use is as a media player, or for
document creation or internet browsing. All of these do not require
the computing prowess offered by most CPUs.
Which brings me to the need for a second PC. This one requires special
consideration since it is intended to be a power miser, while offering
all the performance needed to accomplish the most common tasks. These
are CPUs that are presently being put to use in "silent" or "home
theatre" systems, like the ones from Via.
First, you ignore that people may leave both systems
running. Second, you completely ignore that if a person
didn't have high performance needs, their CPU would be
idling at far lower power consumption, and if they really
wanted lower power enough to consider this 2nd PC they would
most likely have already considered underclocking their
present PC. Remember that modern systems allow changing
voltage and speed on the fly, one can consume a lot less
power by only choosing to using the same system. Plus,
having two means either a 3rd system for shared data,
leaving the 2nd on to access data, or shuffling back and
forth with media of some sort whether it be a CD, DVD,
thumbdrive or USB/1394/eSATA/etc removable drive.
VIA's EPIA series of motherboards and embedded CPUs promise a total
load of 20 W, and also support for booting from USB drives. And they
come is a package, the size of the palm, which offers a lot of options
of squeezing it in the same cabinet with the more powerful
components.
I have a Via based system, the performance is terrible and
the bugs prevented the intended use. IMO, such systems are
a terrible idea except for limited, clearly definted tasks.
The idea of squeezing such a low performance set in a box
with "more powerful components" is crazy. You're talking
about years old performance levels with minimal cost
savings, when a trivial increase in cost can buy an Athlon
X2 which has speed and voltage reduction options if one
cares to use them.
The total power in the new configuration can be computed thus
Motherboad + CPU : 20W
RAM : 7.5 (single module will suffice for work at hand)
USB Drive (to be used instead of hard disk): 1W
Have you ever ran such a system? I have, I own one. I have
ran my Via based system with USB and Compact Flash - IDE
adapter. It can't even surf the web acceptibly anymore
because of all the short-sighted web developers out there
that put several flash animated advertisments on websites,
not to mention occasional need to get real work done instead
of websurfing.
If one didn't need the performance, they'd still be using
some old Pentium 3 era system that doesn't use much more
power than the Via CPU based platform.
The problem is based around the Via CPU and chipset. I am
not opposed to lower power usage, but Via should be
completely avoided. Intel and AMD both have better
tradeoffs for low power, and Via's legacy (reuse) of
chipsets for their processors degrades performance even
lower that it would've otherwise been.
Total : 28W (rounded off).
Assuming similar working hours: Annual spend : Rs. 201.6 (28 X 4X 30X
12X 5/1000)
Annual saving : Rs. 900 (Rs. 1150 for graphics card systems).
Ofcourse the discussion is not complete.
There could be many possible combinations of the usage pattern :
higher working hours, proportion of low activity period in the total
active period. There are challenges in achieving a user friendly dual
system cabinet (or interoperating two systems with the same set of
peripherals - keyboard, mouse, speakers, monitor etc). And the
consumption figures themselves are open to debate (for example one
could argue that the power management functions of modern CPUs can
reduce power utilised by them).
But, what is quite clear is that there is a real need for trying to
bring together two systems in a single cabinet. And the people who do
spend on the more power hungry stuff, like faster CPUs, hard disks in
RAID, dual graphics cards and 4 RAM modules - besides overclocking
them, are the ones who can afford to spend in the dual system setup
and see greater savings that recover the additional expenditure
quicker.
If someone is segregating their time, I somewhat agree with
your idea that a separate (web or office, etc) kiosk for
that use might save some power, but not that a Via processor
is the right choice for that. Modern processors do throttle
back in ACPI-HALT idle state to consume a lot less power,
but ultimately the question is one of the minimal
performance the user needs given any particular task.
Via processors just don't meet that need for a general
purpose PC, even for light use (by a power users's
definition). Some tasks may run ok, but others won't so it
would have to be seens a special purpose system.
And even if the regular user will only see a return on additional
investment after five years years (900 X 5 should cover for the
additional hardware), that investment will result in conservation of
power and encouragement of people creating power conservative
technologies. And this would have significant social benefits.
For starters: A monitor splitter can allow both systems to use the
same monitor as output, and there are many sites offering information
on how to use the USB as the only storage device in the PC.
I applaud the idea of saving power. Using USB as the only
storage is just misinformed, there is no good reason to use
USB at all! If you want power reduction, want to use flash
memory, use compact flash over a CF-IDE adapter, or a SSD.
Otherwise it just makes a slow system all that much slower.
Remember, the only reason someone would have a system
consuming as much power as you suggested is if they found
their old system too slow. You are suggesting a system that
is probably even slower than the one they replaced due to
being too slow. The best use for the parts you mentioned is
as a doorstop, because Via board-CPU combos not only have
poor performance but pretty bad bios flaws, historically.
Read a bit about PCChips boards' flaws or in the Via Arena
forums about getting basic bugs fixed.
Via just doesn't seem concerned at all about providing what
the public demands for a _PC_ use nor the support of PC
parts with bios updates. That may seem harsh, and certainly
some Via based systems can run fine if you have the right
combo of hardware, but today we are not so limited as to
need to pick hardware around a poor performing platform just
to build a second PC that frankly, I dont' think most people
will use for many purposes when they have a faster one
nearby. More likely they'd leave the lower powered one
running if they turn it on at all and use the faster system.
I'm not saying your ideas don't have merit (because they
do), I'm just giving one perspective from someone who has
already tried this. My Via based system is currently
unplugged in my basement. It has too many bugs to even be
suitable for a fileserver which was the original goal.
Money wasted, and Via just wants to tout low power instead
of fixing problems.
