My Core/Hybrid power usage.. Please post yours!

[jondecker76]

I've had my core up and running for about a week now. As I am testing 7.10 Beta3 I started wondering about power draw of my system. I have a kill-a-watt meter that I bought a while ago, so I thought I would do a profile on my power usage.

My core is built on an Asus m2nPV-VM (same as Fiire Station). 2GB RAM, AMD BE-2400 low wattage (45w) processor, logisys 650w 80-plus certified power supply, a 500GB SATA drive (OS and non-crutial data), and 3x 1TB RAID5 array (total of 4 sata drives between the system drive and the 3 raid drives) I also run one case fan directly off of the power supply.

My system varies between 105-108 watts all the time (this was much higher than I expected - or at least I expected it to lower while not in use)

I guess its not bad... At $0.12/kwh, it will cost somewhere between $8.00-$9.00 each month to run 24/7 (which is worth every penny - i would pay that much for a subscription-based service that offerend half of what LMCE does), but leaves a lot of room for improvement. By the time I add 3 more MD's and 3 more touchscreen orbiters, i expect the energy usage to aproximately double (15w each for for a VIA MD and a touch-screen orbiter in 3 rooms = 90 more watts) so the cost should be between $15.00 - $20.00 each month. Again, not bad, but I don't see why that number couldn't reach about $10.00 per month (with some good power save on the core and the MD's)

Anyways, just wanted to see how my power usage compares to everyone elses and maybe get some ideas on how to reduce it.

[usaf-lt-g]

Currently my core draws 50watts using similar specs as in the demo (non-hybrid). Only modification was disk space... 2 Internal SATA drives, 1 is 750GB, another is 500GB. The linux core runs of a 20gb IDE ATA drive, which is perfectly fast enough. There's a low wattage PSU in there but can't remember the specs (i'll get em later).

Also, I have 1 MD at the moment. I used a mini-ITX style, in an ultra-low profile fanless case, and draw 5watts from that (max I think has been around 9 - 10 watts).

Plan to build 2 nano-ITX style MDs for my other 2 tvs in the house.

I posted a while ago about my concerns for using ultra-low-power and smallest form factor possible. I also posted some of the specs as to what I went with if you're interested.

[eNoodle]

http://www.netzwelt.de/news/72860-projekt-htpc-die-einkaufsliste.html

This is my system, it has a power consumption of about 90 watts and is completly passive cooled and silent. I changed the soundcard from the original setup, because I needed optical output, but the rest is at it is shown in the link above.

We used this system in an earlier project for Mediaportal, but now it is doing it's job as a LinuxMCE Core/Hybrid. We also added two low-power FiireStations (1" and Set-top-box) as MD to our LinuxMCE network.

The goal for us is to describe a complete LinuxMCE setup and publish an article series on our platform, therefore we're trying to integrate as much as we can. See the Cowon Q5 (http://www.netzwelt.de/news/76687-cowon-q5w-im-test-mp3player.html) and the Razer Mako Boxes (http://www.netzwelt.de/news/76887-cesneuheit-im-test-razer-mako.html) for example. The Cowon can play all kind of music and video files, it has Wifi and Sound/S-Video Connector. This setup (Cowon+Boxes) is located in the dining room and controlled via IR from the MD in the living room. Power consumption with this setup is very, very low (and it makes a lot of fun to install the whole stuff)...

[matrex]

Its going to use more power in hybrid than in a standolone core system. cause you are using more resources to run both an md on top of a core. The more resources the more power you need. unless you have a very high end system.

[totallymaxed]

Its going to use more power in hybrid than in a standolone core system. cause you are using more resources to run both an md on top of a core. The more resources the more power you need. unless you have a very high end system.

Well I agree that logically you would think a Hybrid would use more energy than a 'standalone' (but of course there is no 'standard' config that gets you one of these)... but in practice there is only a very small (.2W in our tests) between a Hybrid and one that is not running a local orbiter. Using more efficient power supplies, low energy Hard drives & of course fanless cooling and low energy processors is where you can make big savings. An 'off the shelf' example such a Core is the ASUS Eee Box...configured as a Core and using its on board 160GB drive is consumes about 22W all up. For a small system with limited storage and expansion serving a few MD's it is acceptable.

All the best

Andrew