Correction: The major contributing factor the lower power consumption figures is the use of picoPSU which lowers the numbers by 25W-30W compared to a standard ATX PSU. I replaced my Seasonic Super Tornado 300 which isn't exactly efficient under 50 watts with a PicoPSU and power consumption in my sy...

I picked up a Mini Ninja and 3 FanMates from NewEgg. The Ninja wouldn't fit in my HTPC - the CPU socket is too close to the PSU. Need another 1/2" of clearance. PicoPSU would also solve that problem and let me run the Mini Ninja. I did put a FanMate on the CPU fan and turned it all the way down. CPU...

After switching from a Super Tornado ATX PSU to a fanless PicoPSU, case temps went up significantly without the airflow and one of the drives in the system generated a smart error because of the temp of the drive. It generated an error at 55*C - touching the drive it was very hot. The other drive in...

I like the dual 80mm fan idea, I've got another one and cardboard is easy to cut. :) If it all works out I'll probably make a permanent solution using a piece of thin hardboard or plastic. Do you think the Mini Ninja would be sufficient for fanless cooling? I guesstimate that it has to dissipate 40-...

I can vouch for pfSense . You can run it on this ALIX embedded hardware like this: ALIX.2C3 Kit: Board + Power Supply + CF card + Red Case . This has a Geode LX800 (500MHz), 256MB ram, 512MB flash and 3 NICs. It pulls 5w from the wall when running according to my Kill-a-Watt. We've got one at work t...

I finally got tired of the Seasonic Super Tornado PSU being too noisy in my primary desktop computer and replaced it with a PicoPSU + 110w brick - wanting something fanless and as efficient as possible at low loads. The Super Tornado was bought a few years ago based on the SPCR recommendation and it...

One of these would make a nice upgrade from my Sempron 3000+ - I often find myself wishing for another core when certain CPU intensive tasks are running.

however the picoPSU + AC brick combo can be highly efficient depending on the brick, so that shows it can be done. Getting a bit OT here, but I really wish that there was more data available regarding the efficiency of 12v AC bricks - I'd like to get a picoPSU, but am worried that I'll get a brick ...

I agree the Enermax is one generation of SMPS technology ahead of this Sparkle. But from an environmental point of view, there's always some advantage in being cheap: Fewer & shorter cables, sleeves, connectors, packaging, fancy bags for cables, etc.... these factors also count, don't you think? Ex...

A PicoPSU with a wide input range would be your cheapest overall solution ($50-60) and offer very good efficiency as long as your existing brick is efficient. Just keep in mind that the PicoPSUs with the wide input range are slightly less efficient than the models which pass 12V straight through sin...

My Samsung SyncMaster 2220WM uses about the same amount of electricity as the 19" monitor it replaced, Was it a 19" CRT it replaced? how much exactly is that? It was a FujiPLUS or something like that. It used appx 30w or so, the 22" Samsung uses about the same with the brightness turned down to sim...

See if you can get away with something Via based like this Jetwa yJ7F2WE type board , it will probably cut your power consumption by a significant amount over any mainstream Intel/AMD system. You should be able to get power draw down below 20w with a picoPSU. If you can get away from running all tho...

My Samsung SyncMaster 2220WM uses about the same amount of electricity as the 19" monitor it replaced, but only once you turned the brightness down to a sane level. The default brightness setting is way too bright, the difference between the setting I have it on now and the default was like 25w! See...

NeilBlanchard wrote:Particularly, running Folding@Home during the winter/heating season would seem to have a pretty low overall cost.

Yep, since you'll be paying to heat your place, anyway. Might as well get some work done while doing it!

Shemale wrote:I think 1A=1000mA.

I know. I made a mistake in my first post. My 2nd post was an attempt to guess what jhhoffma thinks the numbers should be since he's keepng them to himself.

Actually, he's off by a factor of 100 for three of those measurements from what I can see. The .46A is the only one that makes sense to me. So you think his measurements should be this? Philips DVDR1660P : on 5V 0.46A ; on 12V 0.07A Samsung SH-202H : on 5V 0.08A ; on 12V 0.02A I actually converted ...

5V * 0.46A = 2.3w 12V * 0.007A = 0.08w Total = ~2.4w 5V * 0.008A = 0.04w 12V * 0.002A = 0.024w Total = ~0.06w He's only off by a factor of 10 with the Samsung measurement, but either way, it's significantly better than the Philips drive, power draw is just about negligible. :) Edit: These numbers ar...

Current battery, and even planned future batteries, are a terrible solution to electricity storage in a car. There will be no successful battery exchange systems despite Israel trying it on a grand scale. Please elaborate. There are batteries on the market today which have extremely fast recharge t...

Then my Motortrend magazine must be wrong cause the Honda fcx clarity hydrogen car is coming Summer 2008 and it looks pretty close to production ready Did Motortrend mention how much the FCX costs? Oh yeah, that's right, you can't actually buy the car, they are only leasing it, for a cost of $600/m...

I hate these stupid hippie arguments about how resources are getting depleted, how the earth is warming, and how the consumerism economy is the enemy. Get a life people. As one resource gets more expensive to extract, another with take its place. Such is technology and free markets. You do realize ...

When testing Linux, have a look at the tool PowerTOP to help narrow down causes of un-needed power consumption due to processes waking up too often.

Anand weighs in It’s not that useful a review in that I doubt many SPCR readers are using an X48 board with an Extreme Edition CPU, PC3-14000 RAM and a kW power supply. No kidding. Anyone who is running a system which idles close to 200w is not going to bother with something that reduces power ut...

davids wrote:Ok, I want to buy the Corsair VX450W but it has its fan facing downwards while the existing Andyson has it firing out the back of the PC. Will this be a problem, I wonder?

No, it won't be a problem.

Is your current PSU ATX form factor? If so, the Corsair will drop right in. When building a future rig, the Corsair should also work just fine.

If cost is an issue, there are other PSUs on the recommended list which are also very quiet and could bit less expensive (look at the Seasonic units).

Check out the recommended PSU list . About the quietest PSU with a fan you can get is the Corsair VX450. Fixed that for you. There are a good number of fanless PSUs which will do just fine for that type of system load if you really want quiet. The recommended PSU list as Aris suggests is a good pla...

Finally, I'd like to clarify the problem with the ATI drivers. Are the Linux chipset drivers OK ie sata disk controller, audio etc? Are the problems with video acceleration? The chipset drivers should be fine as long as you are using a recent distro/kernel. The last time I tried an ATI card in my M...

Cerb wrote:As a server, I wouldn't worry about the video drivers. The open source driver will do the trick.

He mentioned that he would occasionally use it as a frontend and possibly support dual-head. You need 3rd party drivers for that type of support whether using ATI or Nvidia at this point in time.

Linux support of the Biostar TA690G should be good as long as you use a recent distribution.

I would be slightly worried about support for the ATI video, last time I tried ATI video drivers they weren't nearly as usable as a Nvidia drivers.

What is it with RAID that makes people compare apples and oranges? Because many people do not know the difference between apples & oranges, and a helpful discussion regarding the differences can be very helpful. But in this case, the OP was very helpful in determining his criteria: 6 drive enclosur...

BTW, if you're using more than 4-5 drives in a RAID5 setup, you should seriously consider at least having a hot-spare or even better, going to a RAID6 setup.

It is very common for another drive to go bad when rebuilding the array.