Andrew, Thanks for your reply.
> I can't say that I've researched this any more than you have, but the > tendency among the people I've met is to go all 12V, especially among > ham radio operators. Most ham radio equipment operates off of 12V, > anyway, and you can get 12V power supplies for PCs > (http://www.mini-box.com/DC-DC). It makes even more sense when you're > highly mobile, like [retired] RV dwellers. If you look in the right > places, you can find just about anything you want in 12V form. Nice. This is a good start. I suspected such items existed, particularly for the PC-in-your-car crowd > If you're really that concerned about saving power, just buy equipment > that doesn't need lots of power first. Atom-based PCs use something > like 50W (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856167032 > at 12V), VIA systems are around 30W, and OMAP (http://beagleboard.org/ > at 5V) systems are in the 5W range. An obvious disadvantage is in > certain areas of performance, but I haven't met many gamers that worry > terribly about cutting power consumption. :) Well, yes, I already do have a VIA processor for one server and I try to find ways to keep my power consumption down otherwise, but it just seems like cutting power supply waste is a good way to save without compromising performance. > As far as the UPS, goes, however, it's typical to just run a battery > charger to a battery and then run your equipment off the battery. > Depending on your level of expertise, you can create any variety of > control circuitry to make sure you're not charging the battery when > it's already full. Yeah... I had high school electronics, but I remember very little. I'm sure it wouldn't be /hard/ to rig something up like this, but I don't know that I'd want to trust my servers to my lack of expertise. Thanks for the tips, tim _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
