I've been able to get my energy consumption relatively under control , but as the summer months approach, I'm already thinking about ways to reduce the heat generated by my computers and servers.
As my dad always says, "heat kills electronics". I always reply, "that's why they have fans", but more to the point, a lot of computer houses use special air conditioners and cooling systems to make sure they don't get too hot. Needless to say, these HVAC systems use a lot of energy.
Heat reduction is a motivation for learning more about cpu throttling (especially on CPUs that do not support frequency modulation), ACPI suspend and awaken, and spinning down disks. All of these methods can keep components cooler, but they don't always work reliably, or have undesirable side-effects.
As my dad always says, "heat kills electronics". I always reply, "that's why they have fans", but more to the point, a lot of computer houses use special air conditioners and cooling systems to make sure they don't get too hot. Needless to say, these HVAC systems use a lot of energy.
Heat reduction is a motivation for learning more about cpu throttling (especially on CPUs that do not support frequency modulation), ACPI suspend and awaken, and spinning down disks. All of these methods can keep components cooler, but they don't always work reliably, or have undesirable side-effects.
http://doc.coker.com.au/environment/computer-power-use/
The main thing is to choose the correct computer. At the above URL I'm collecting the power use of machines that I have access to. Using a P3 system instead of something newer is the best way to save power. Unfortunately it's getting hard to buy P3 systems now. Celeron systems are pretty good.
For a 64bit system the newer Intel CPUs are pretty good (not nearly as good as the P3 though) but the Pentium-D sucks badly..