Short note on power consumption
Hardware, posted: 21-JUL-2008 09:27
I have always intended on keeping track of the power consumption of various iterations of the media center, and to this end I bought one of those $20 warehouse power meters a few months back. Here are some plower figures, I will eventually update the sidebar info with this.
The original media center, with 1 TV card and on-board graphics idled around 50W, and used about 60W under load (which was generally less than 50% CPU, it didn't have much of a workout with a hardware MPEG2 encoder TV card). I think it maxed around 80W.
The current iteration, with the 2 cards and the 8600GT now averages at 88W (average from 94 hours running), this is all-inclusive and incorporates restarts. The peak value is 140W, that is a startup load though, it uses about 100W playing back TV. Idles somewhere around 80W.
The machine runs 24/7 currently as it has all our shared music, plus file syncing between desktop and laptop and daily backups. Plus I don't have the time to setup complete wakeup/sleep off remote and scheduled recordings.
Hopefully I will eventually be able to swap in my 5200 X2 65W from my desktop and go back to onboard graphics w/ software decoding. This hould work as my desktop, with this CPU, can currently play back HD performing as an MP client. If this works then it will cut power back a lot, should be less than the original setup. I will come back to this topic when changes are made.
Other related posts:
Genius Remote 300 review
So what is this MythTV anyway?
The Media Center
The original media center, with 1 TV card and on-board graphics idled around 50W, and used about 60W under load (which was generally less than 50% CPU, it didn't have much of a workout with a hardware MPEG2 encoder TV card). I think it maxed around 80W.
The current iteration, with the 2 cards and the 8600GT now averages at 88W (average from 94 hours running), this is all-inclusive and incorporates restarts. The peak value is 140W, that is a startup load though, it uses about 100W playing back TV. Idles somewhere around 80W.
The machine runs 24/7 currently as it has all our shared music, plus file syncing between desktop and laptop and daily backups. Plus I don't have the time to setup complete wakeup/sleep off remote and scheduled recordings.
Hopefully I will eventually be able to swap in my 5200 X2 65W from my desktop and go back to onboard graphics w/ software decoding. This hould work as my desktop, with this CPU, can currently play back HD performing as an MP client. If this works then it will cut power back a lot, should be less than the original setup. I will come back to this topic when changes are made.
Other related posts:
Genius Remote 300 review
So what is this MythTV anyway?
The Media Center
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Comment by Wiggly, on 22-JUL-2008 10:36
Do you know what the model etc is of the 'power meter' you purchased. I have one from Jaycar which was about $48 and it gives me all sorts of options but no average, just amps, watts, peak usage and some costings (ont played with).
Just interested to know.
Cheers