by Daniel Fletcher www.ginzola.com
I have been running Ginzola.com (err, that's me) for a number of months now, and developing a number of web sites. An annoying side effect of this activity has been the need to host test sites that are all based on php/mysql somewhere convenient. Since I recently moved over to a macbook pro for pretty much everything, my home PC (a rather big Dell Dimension 9200) has become a web server, and is hence switched on 24/7. This is not a production server understand, just somewhere to to store all my files, and host an array of sites on apache2 simultaneously*. This has caused me to wonder...
This PC slightly warms the whole of the upstairs floor of my house.. How much electricity is it using? Is it worth investing (using a rational energy calculation) to convert the components to greener ones (since speed is no longer of the essence given the file/web hosting role?)
I recently purchased an energy meter, and found that the PC is drawing a staggering 130W on average at the power socket (this is average, it bounces around between 110 and 135W). You can do this too, then calculate the cost of running it 24/7....
130W x 365 days x 24hours / 1000 = 1,138KW/h
So, with electricity costing around 10p per KW/h, that's £113 per year; roughly £10 per month.
For those interested, here's the spec... (I had to get this off DELL's site with the servicetag feature!)
Pentium D 945 3.4GHz
500Gb and 250Gb Hard Drives
NVidia Geforce 7950 (I think!)
So what can be done?
Well, it's difficult to separate the dross from the gems on the web, but my feeling is that the processor is mainly to blame in this configuration for a heavy power draw. There are some excellent resources out there, that express the general opinion that the P4D 945 is a poor performer. The graphics card was a monster in its day (indeed I fitted a fanless heatsink for noise reasons!) However the power supply is also a drain on the overall power use. A break down (and this is only a guess) for the PC running in a normal state (mostly idle)...
Processor: 45W
Hard disks: 17.5W
Video: 20W
MB/Others/fans: 15W
PSU: (assuming 75% efficient, 25% energy loss), 32.5W
Total:130W
At times when the PC is running hard, all these figures jump, but this is not going to be considered here as the question is concerning the overall cost, and the PC spends the vast majority of its time in this state.
By replacing the processor, the following could be achieved:
Processor (Core2 Duo or similar):20W
Rest of PC: 45W
PSU drain : 25%
Total: 86W.
So, based on my original cost calculation, the saving of 34W equates to about £3 per month saving! This is obviously not worth losing sleep over, and writing this article has made be decide that its best to see the life of this computer out as is; however energy efficiency will definitely form part of my future PC purchasing decisions.
If I were to go to town, I could replace the Power supply with a fanless high efficiency version, the video with a low performer, the processor etc. This particular PC with a budget of £300 could hit the 60W mark relatively easily, but it would take many years for this expense to be returned; long after the computer has been replaced!
*Hosting multiple sites under windows XP is easy with apache2; using vhosts feature.. that's worth a separate blog. email me if you want me to write one! daniel@ginzola.com
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