Turn Out the Lights — and Computers

Speaking of saving energy, I was amused by an observation today with regards to my wife changing her food selection that resulted her not making a direct path to the home heater control. For over a year we have breakfast out and wifey orders cold yogurt and ice tea, virtually every day. Today she ordered an egg with hot tea (teeth hurt with cold food because of a recent sinus infection). Towards the end of her meal she was feeling on the warm side instead of the usual cold feeling. Most often I have hot oatmeal and coffee. Well, when we got home she didn't make a B line to the thermostat! Depending on what you eat can affect your energy costs. Fortunately we don't have air-conditioning and it won't matter what she eats in the summer.

The simple truth of the matter is that desktop computers are energy hogs. Look at the power supplies we are buying these days. 600 watt, 1000 watt, 1200 watts and more. Look at CPUs. Intel I7, 130 watts. AMD Phenom II, 140 watts. Video cards are no less power hungry, and how many fans does that box need to keep it cool? The last one I built had seven. The point being that a desktop machine can use more power than a refrigerator. A lot more.

In fact, a few years ago, I switched to laptops for just that reason. My T61 uses less than 35 watts, and newer machines use even less. Not to mention the sheer convenience of being able to pick it up and take it with me.

The point here is that perhaps the computer manufacturers and component builders should introduce lines of low-power machines and components. They can do it with laptops, some of which are incredibly powerful, so why not with desktops?

Good point, and a good answer from me. Thermal cycling is always a longevity issue.

It's very easy to walk away from equipment and forget to turn it off. I'm currently working on a power supply for a vacuum tube amplifier I built. I incorporated a power-saving feature into the power supply. Twelve minutes after the power supply doesn't detect an audio signal, the power supply goes into a standby mode; all the voltages are disabled to the amplifier. This was an easy-to-add feature because the supply voltages are required to be sequenced therefore each voltage can be individually controlled, on or off. My original reason to add this feature was because the power output tubes can cost several hundred dollars, and so who wants to forget to shut-off the amp when it's not making any music ... but of course, it happens. And the added benefit realized is saving power; good thing, tube amps are power hogs.

If a TV could detect when nobody is in a room, then it could do the same after a certain amount time. I suppose this is similar to a computer going into hibernation. But a computer could be provided with enough "smarts" to shut itself down completely. I once kept my computers running to reduce thermal stress, but these days I shut them down after the end of the day to save power and money. A $200 monthly electric bill will make you think of power saving methods. Bill

As I said in my previous post, this is at least part of why I switched completely to laptops. They use a fraction of the power of a desktop machine.

Saving money from power consumption is great, but every time someone tells me they turn their computer off whenever they are not using it, I always ask, "Ok, when do you do your backups, disk checks, disk cleanup, defrags, system virus checks, system malware checks and other mundane maintenance."

The answer I usually get is sorta like a deer in the headlights glazing of the eyes and a "Huh?"

The computers I work with get all of the above done at least once per week, usually during the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Hooker

I've always done my own backups, virus checks, etc. Even brought my own dedicated computer to work for CAD work; that really drives the IT guys crazy. Even working in an engineering organization, it's amazing how few engineers perform backups either through the company network or by themselves, as you probably know. When a hard drive blows it's sent out for data recovery for big bucks. If you can't get an engineer to backup a computer, then I can only imagine how the rest of the world operates. I suppose the power switches need to be removed and the computer power wiring hardwired into the outlet box. But this might not work with laptops <g>. Might take a few generations for people to follow the rules.

In a sense you may be right. But, I am sure, when you decide to keep the PCs on continuously, the PCs must be in AC room. In that case, the thermal cycling will have less effect.

On the other hand, to keep all PCs overnight, when no one is there, you will be consuming AC power also continuously. What a waste of power!

Besides, if we apply same logic to all our household gadgets (like TV)...why it should not be applied. In fact, TV has more thermal cycling. Same logic is true for all lightings, bulbs, tubes and what not. With same logic to TV and all other such gadgets, as a nation, can you imagine, how much will be power consumption?

We need to find other solutions. Use servers to preserve the data on all PC (which you should be doing) and many other ways.

I'm not applying the "same logic to all our household gadgets...". IE, I could care less about consumables like light bulbs.

The key is to preserve data storage devices, especially electro-mechanical hard drives with heads that fly micro meters above the platters, from thermal anomalies that can be disastrous. And sealed high rpm spindle bearings that prefer to remain spinning.

Someday, perhaps, solid state hard drives will be prolific, cheap and less hazardous to power cycle. Until, then, I'll leave my hard drives running, thank you. All hard drives will crash at some point in time. I'll not encourage that to be sooner rather than later.

Hooker

You are absolutely correct when it comes to hard drives ... you're best off keeping them spinning to avoid thermal cycling. After all, they are mechanical devices; and they run hot. Computer power supplies, hard drives and Rambus RDRAMS have been my personal experience with computer problems; and all toasty devices.

Televisions these days are very reliable and seem to work forever. My 1980 vintage Mitsubishi television never failed during 15 years of high use. It went into the trash working, because it was lacking channel selection technology. When transistors and ICs replaced vacuum tubes, televisions became very reliable. I would be less concerned with televisions failing because of power cycling. High volume commercial products are usually well engineered and are probably more reliable than military equipment and instrumentation equipment. Having designed equipment for both military and laboratory instrumentation equipment, I have gained a strong, positive opinion of commercial grade electronics.

Yeah, I agree. I have absolutely no problem with turning off run of the mill electronics to save power. It's when it comes to protecting the integrity of valuable data that I start jumping up and down. I've wasted far too many hours trying to recover from hard drive crashes, even with the proper back up facilities in place.

That said, I do miss the vacuum tube era. Some of my fondest memories of being a teenager were tearing apart old electronics and building neat toys like oscilloscopes, wave generators, and such. I kinda lost touch with in-depth electronics when IC's came about.

Hooker

Just taking a SWAG, I'd guess the money saved from turning ALL the PC's off in an office each day would more than pay for the few failures due to cycling on/off. If in fact there are more failures, keep spares of the parts that fail most often to prevent down time, or just have some spare PC's ready for when a failure occurs. I turn my desk PC off every day, and turn my home laptop off/on several times per day. No failure problems to report.