Comp Life and performance..

[slorge_gridlock]

The hardest your computer ever works is during startup.  It goes through all the system checks spins up the drives, etc.  So if you like putting your equipment through stress tests a lot, shut the off.  If you can pay your bills, or have some other power arrangement, leave them on.  

What if particle decided to shut down pcrpg everytime he went to bed.

[Particle]

-very high refresh rate (again, good for FPS playing.)

Not true.  60Hz is just fine for a panel no matter what you are doing.  If somebody wants to challenge this, I'll explain why that is so.

[Bovidi]

Do you want to pay out the ass for electricity?
No?
Turn it off.

I leave my computer on 24/7 and it doesn't drain so much energy.....now if you left the monitor on then that would cause your electricity bill to skyrocket

[Dirk]

No, sorry. A lot depends on the PSU of your computer, but even a hefty old CRT monitor doesn't suck down the wattage that a hefty gamer rig will.

[Particle]

You don't realize how little power computers actually pull.  For example, I metered my machine one time.  On average it pulls about 200W (desktop).  Inside this machine:

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
MSI Neo2 Platinum (nForce 3)
13 hard drives
Radeon X800XT PE
1 8-channel hardware RAID controller (real, not those $20 POS psuedo-raids)
1 sound card
2 NICs
1 2-channel SATA constroller
1 DVD+/-RW drive

That's a lot of stuff, yet it doesn't really suck that much energy.

[Bovidi]

13 Hard drives wow that is a lot how much terabytes of storage do you get from all those?

[NFY]

how much terabytes

now I know you didn't just say that...

[KoRo]

lol itd be funny if Bovidi couldnt catch a mistake THAT big

[Bovidi]

Mistake how is terabyte a mistake.....a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes which is easy enough to get I have a total of 1.7 terabytes of storage space in harddrives so I was just inquiring how much space Particle got with the 13 harddrives

[Taurik]

Mistake how is terabyte a mistake.....a terabyte is 1024 gigabytes which is easy enough to get I have a total of 1.7 terabytes of storage space in harddrives so I was just inquiring how much space Particle got with the 13 harddrives

I think they meant the "how much terabytes" rather than "how many terabytes."

[Particle]

2.3 TB

Thing is, I've had multi-terabyte capacity for years and years...back before >1TB was remotely common.

[KoRo]

Hey Particle, whats the general salary a guy in your position would make?

[Particle]

If you were wanting to go into programming, you'd probably make about $50,000 starting (around here).

However, it isn't the salary that matters.  It's that you don't have any children or a wife.  Say you want 4TB of storage.  500GB drives cost about $270.  It doesn't really take all that long.

[slorge_gridlock]

...  It's that you don't have any children or a wife.

BINGO!!

if you have kids and a wife, you are probably playing on a 733 MHZ Celeron with a 40 GB HD, 256 MB RAM, onboard video card......sigh  

it all depends on your priorities, I suppose.

[Lidge Farkley]

Do you want to pay out the ass for electricity?
No?
Turn it off.

i live in a dorm   :roll:

Guess what wizeguy?

Dorm fees are Directly influenced by energy consumption with in the dorms.

Still going to leave the lights on?  Want to make school cost even more than it allready does?  fork that.

Turn it off.

Edit to add:

Lidge Farkley wrote:

-very high refresh rate (again, good for FPS playing.)

Particle responded:
Not true. 60Hz is just fine for a panel no matter what you are doing. If somebody wants to challenge this, I'll explain why that is so.

I know why this isn't the case, but perception varies from person to person.  I have a higher "FPS" tolerance with my eyes and thus play better on a machine with the ability to refresh at a faster rate.  This has been tested, by me, on several occasions.  You'll have to take my word for it, but I am certain that I play better on a CRT than my LCD due to this reason.

by Particle:
You don't realize how little power computers actually pull. For example, I metered my machine one time. On average it pulls about 200W (desktop). Inside this machine:

While I would also agree here, I can note that my old Athlon 650 only had a 250W PSU and pulled less than 175W average, but the cost to operate that thing for a month in California 3 years a go was calculated around $20.  (obviously cali had some high BS rates going on)
My current machine probably pulls your 250W... most new student desktops pull around that much; we have tested them with draw meter.
We service about 40 desktops per semester.  I know of about 10 we have not serviced, among friends alone, which also draw around 250 due to their crappy hardware and other BS.

For the sake of this experiment we will say that is 50 desktops, running at 220W constantly (some are gamers, others just leave them running idle, with disabled power regulation settings.)  I know at least 4/5 of those people also have CRT, not flat-screens.
How much power does the average CRT use? About 120W for a 17"
How much power does the average LCD use? About 40W for a 17"
Math:
220*40 + 120*40 = 13600W = 13.6 kW
220*10 + 40*10 = 2600W = 2.6  kW
Total: 16.2 kW for 50 desktops.
Hours in a 30 day month: 720 hrs.

Total kWh of electricity used:
16.2 kW * 720 hrs. = 11664 kW hrs.

According to a source for 2005, the average utility charged $0.07 per kWh of electicity used.

50 computers, running constantly, uses $816.48 per month, at this  rate.

Let's say you live in the dorm for 2 semesters... and let's say a semester is 3 months long.

That would be 6 months * 816.48 = $4898.88 per 2 semesters (one school year.)

Housing at this college, a cheap double room (you have a mate) will cost:
$4,254 per year.

I don't think housing costs are going to stay lower if only 50 desktops consistantly running will cost the dorm owners more than the price of one student in a double room.

On an important side note:
Setting power settings on your display and computer can lower over all power usage down to less than 10W per hour when idle... this means, DOING NOTHING... no files transers or anything like that.
People often cite CRT's as a major power comsumer.  I think that the computers themselfes are becomming that culprit really quickly.
Example:  Lab electricity costs of one of our on campus labs quadrupled when they upgraded the PII machines to P4 machines, even though the displays became more electricity efficient.