Re: [OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Charles Swiger (cs) writes:
cs You are correct that one needs to measure the voltage and use the RMS
cs value, or DC series equivalent if you like that phrase, in order to
cs figure out the power consumption accurately, but an {ammeter,
cs amp-meter, DMM} which can deal with AC will do the right thing.
[from the we don't need no stenking test equipment dept.]
When I did this kind of thing a few years ago (trying to get a measure
for things like the washing machine heating water and the kettle etc
as well as PCs) I did it by watching the electricity meter.
The one I had at the time had a big rotating disk with ticks marked on
it counting off load as well as the dials recording larger units
(can't easily see the current one to check this is a normal
feature). I turned off everything I could in the flat, then turned
various things on and counted off ticks per minute.
I assumed that the electricity company was trying to do a reasonably
good job to get as much money as possible without getting caught
cheating, and in any case I was worried about money not the
environment, so whatever they were measuring was the right metric,
even if they were wrong scientifically.
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Leaving a server on all day
I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of power? Is it true that the heat buildup in a home system (rather than a heavily fanned commercial system) will kill the drives faster and this is a good reason to turn it off during the day when I am not home? jm -- My other computer is your windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Jun 8, 2004, at 8:21 AM, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of power? Not necessarily. If you want to measure it, make sure you have a decent UPS (which I'd recommend for ANY desktop setup) and most UPSs now have a monitoring utility or tool available (or load meter on the front) that will give you an idea how much power is being used. The most I'd do is turn off the monitor...that probably uses most energy if it's not an LCD. You can get figures from the power supply of the wattage and figure out what the MOST energy use would be for your area's rate with your last electric bill. It would all depend on how many drives/fans/etc. you have running all the time, but overall I wouldn't think that one computer is that big of a drain. Is it true that the heat buildup in a home system (rather than a heavily fanned commercial system) will kill the drives faster and this is a good reason to turn it off during the day when I am not home? As long as it has all it's cooling fans working and the room doesn't get too hot, it should be okay. If you're worried you can add more cooling fans. I keep a small air conditioner in the room (it's a small room where my systems are) running for summer days. Will it kill the drives faster? Well, *using* it will shorten it's lifespan. It all depends on how valuable the data is...make backups of important data, or for me, I keep a RAID system set up (not that it's a backup...I'm protecting against drive failure as a loss of data). Or get another computer and configure a RAIC...redundant array of inexpensive computers :-) save data to multiple systems periodically. All depends on your setup and how important your data is. Personally I have a Win9x system at home that's been abused since college (old PII 350 with a TV card) and a Linux desktop from Pogo that I use as a server, with IDE Raid in it...but it's just a modified desktop system. Works like a champ so far, both are running 24/7 with the Windows machine getting rebooted once every other day or so. UNIX systems prefer not getting rebooted...they do Cron chores at night for housekeeping, and UNIX was made with being run constantly in mind. I'd advise NOT shutting down Unix systems unless there's a particular reason to do so, and configure your network/computers to try to keep data loss from failure of a component as a minimal worry; backups and software RAID may be good options. but that's just me. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of power? Is it true that the heat buildup in a home system (rather than a heavily fanned commercial system) will kill the drives faster and this is a good reason to turn it off during the day when I am not home? This is only my personal experience: I have got a PIII running all day for over 2 years now (my server): no problems and I am using just the small fan it came with. I had two AMD's (a K6 and now an Athlon): for both I had to buy bigger fans since they started doing strange things after a while. At work I have seen three IDE harddisks decease on workstations during the last four and a half years, but never a SCSI harddisk. These workstations are shut down and rebooted quite often. So *my* summary for your private server would be: - Leaving it on all day will not kill your harddisks, in the contrary: even cheap ones will live longer. - AMD processors tend to run hot, so if you have one, you should look for a good fan. Regards, Uli. jm -- My other computer is your windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] +---+ |Peter Ulrich Kruppa| | Wuppertal | | Germany | +---+ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
: So *my* summary for your private server would be: : - Leaving it on all day will not kill your harddisks, in the : contrary: even cheap ones will live longer. : - AMD processors tend to run hot, so if you have one, you should : look for a good fan. The guy who built mine installed 2 fans, plus the fan directly on the heatsink, of course. How about power usage? I'm wondering about my electric bill. ;-) jm -- My other computer is your Windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
I also have an always-on headless server running for like 3 years now without any problem. I use it for: apache, samba, vpn, postfix (the usual server apps). I think the key is to use the minimal (translate: cooler, less power hungry) components. Mine is P2-400 with 5400 rpm HDDs. A UPS would be a nice addition. The ONLY issue I have is it takes a few *days* to do portupgrade -ar ;-) maybe I should just remove all the X stuff. -cs Peter Ulrich Kruppa wrote: On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of power? Is it true that the heat buildup in a home system (rather than a heavily fanned commercial system) will kill the drives faster and this is a good reason to turn it off during the day when I am not home? This is only my personal experience: I have got a PIII running all day for over 2 years now (my server): no problems and I am using just the small fan it came with. I had two AMD's (a K6 and now an Athlon): for both I had to buy bigger fans since they started doing strange things after a while. At work I have seen three IDE harddisks decease on workstations during the last four and a half years, but never a SCSI harddisk. These workstations are shut down and rebooted quite often. So *my* summary for your private server would be: - Leaving it on all day will not kill your harddisks, in the contrary: even cheap ones will live longer. - AMD processors tend to run hot, so if you have one, you should look for a good fan. Regards, Uli. jm -- My other computer is your windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] +---+ |Peter Ulrich Kruppa| | Wuppertal | | Germany | +---+ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Chiang Seng Chang wrote: I also have an always-on headless server running for like 3 years now without any problem. I use it for: apache, samba, vpn, postfix (the usual server apps). I think the key is to use the minimal (translate: cooler, less power hungry) components. Mine is P2-400 with 5400 rpm HDDs. A UPS would be a nice addition. The ONLY issue I have is it takes a few *days* to do portupgrade -ar ;-) maybe I should just remove all the X stuff. You really should do this. All your services are configured via text files anyway. Regards, Uli. +---+ |Peter Ulrich Kruppa| | Wuppertal | | Germany | +---+ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
Well... X is not started automatically (a.k.a. no gdm/kdm)... sometimes I'd like to play with some X stuff... I know there are other solution, like build on a fast machine and install onto the slow one. I didn't bother because 1) the server is still working while the upgrade is taking it's own sweet time, and more importantly 2) I have no fast machine ;-) I put x11 into the ignore list in pkgtools.conf, but the recent perl 5.8 upgrade seems to ignore that and build everything anyway. -cs p.s. sorry have to resend this cos' toying with my postfix canonical settings... Peter Ulrich Kruppa wrote: On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Chiang Seng Chang wrote: I also have an always-on headless server running for like 3 years now without any problem. I use it for: apache, samba, vpn, postfix (the usual server apps). I think the key is to use the minimal (translate: cooler, less power hungry) components. Mine is P2-400 with 5400 rpm HDDs. A UPS would be a nice addition. The ONLY issue I have is it takes a few *days* to do portupgrade -ar ;-) maybe I should just remove all the X stuff. You really should do this. All your services are configured via text files anyway. Regards, Uli. +---+ |Peter Ulrich Kruppa| | Wuppertal | | Germany | +---+ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jonathon McKitrick (jm) writes: jm I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin jm client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of jm power? Turn the monitor off, especially if it is getting old. I have a 19inch from back when they were expensive and it eats power. -- Mail me as [EMAIL PROTECTED]_O_ | ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 05:18:07PM +0100, Richard Caley wrote: : In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jonathon McKitrick (jm) writes: : : jm I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin : jm client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of : jm power? : : Turn the monitor off, especially if it is getting old. I have a 19inch : from back when they were expensive and it eats power. Hopefully I'll get my flat screen back soon from repair. I guess those use less power, right? Also, a 1.8GHz Athlon won't use any more power than necessary during idle time, right? jm -- My other computer is your Windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
Jonathon McKitrick [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 05:18:07PM +0100, Richard Caley wrote: : In article [EMAIL PROTECTED], Jonathon McKitrick (jm) writes: : : jm I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin : jm client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of : jm power? : : Turn the monitor off, especially if it is getting old. I have a 19inch : from back when they were expensive and it eats power. Hopefully I'll get my flat screen back soon from repair. I guess those use less power, right? I remember having this conversation with someone not too long ago, and our consensus was that flat screens used just as much power as tube monitors. Don't hold me to that, though, I don't seem to remember our testing technique as being very ... uhm ... scientific. Also, a 1.8GHz Athlon won't use any more power than necessary during idle time, right? Different processors are different. Many newer CPUs will throttle their power consumption while the machine is idle, but most older ones can't do this. You'll need to research the specific CPU + motherboard to see if this is available or not, but (as far as my lousy memory serves) Athlons in the 1.8G range don't support reduced power during non-usage, and will consume just as many watts while the system is idle as while it's doing a buildworld. Please note that I am not an authority on hardware, if I'm off-base here, I wouldn't mind a correction ;) But this is how things stand to the best of my knowledge. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Jun 8, 2004, at 1:27 PM, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: Hopefully I'll get my flat screen back soon from repair. I guess those use less power, right? Also, a 1.8GHz Athlon won't use any more power than necessary during idle time, right? Yes, a flat screen typically uses about 50W; a big CRT might use 100 to 150W. AMD processors now have fairly good thermal behavior when they are idle, although it obviously helps if one can enable APCI and power management capabilities to either throttle down the CPU speed or even go into sleep mode. -- -Chuck ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 01:21:01PM +0100, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of power? Is it true that the heat buildup in a home system (rather than a heavily fanned commercial system) will kill the drives faster and this is a good reason to turn it off during the day when I am not home? Take the side off of your case, turn the open side toward the wall, with some space between it and the wall. Especially during the summer. I don't put my box on the floor, if you were wondering. I have an Athlon 1.2, a Plextor CD/RW, and multiple drives in the 7200 rpm range; and of course a gpu, and the psu, and the sound card...they all generate heat. The kicker: I'm on the top floor of my building in a treeless area. I'd rather the heat spill out the side, than have it pulled out the psu or the fan on the back. I've seen rigs that have hoses which pull the heat out of the box, and pump it into the wall. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 02:42:16PM -0400, Joe Altman wrote: : Take the side off of your case, turn the open side toward the wall, Why against the wall? So nothing damages it? : with some space between it and the wall. Especially during the summer. My setup has a fan in the back, and also one on the side. Is that close enough? : I don't put my box on the floor, if you were wondering. I have an Mine is in the CPU slot of a tiny computer desk. : Athlon 1.2, a Plextor CD/RW, and multiple drives in the 7200 rpm That reminds me: is a CD/RW a feasible data backup device? I've never used mine. : range; and of course a gpu, and the psu, and the sound card...they all : generate heat. The kicker: I'm on the top floor of my building in a : treeless area. I'd rather the heat spill out the side, than have it I feel your pain. I'm third floor in an old house with no A/C. jm -- My other computer is your windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 07:51:51PM +0100, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 02:42:16PM -0400, Joe Altman wrote: : Take the side off of your case, turn the open side toward the wall, Why against the wall? So nothing damages it? Yes; spills, flying objects, whatever. Most importantly, it's not on the floor, and securely on my desk. I deal w/ the noise by keeping the fan on my Enermax low; it has an adjustable spin rate via a knob on the back. Drives are noisy, with no way around that problem. : with some space between it and the wall. Especially during the summer. My setup has a fan in the back, and also one on the side. Is that close enough? It's one way to do it. Whether or not it's enough is up to you. : I don't put my box on the floor, if you were wondering. I have an Mine is in the CPU slot of a tiny computer desk. Well, the thing for me is to keep the side open, so the heat spills out. : Athlon 1.2, a Plextor CD/RW, and multiple drives in the 7200 rpm That reminds me: is a CD/RW a feasible data backup device? I've never used mine. For me, yes it is. Tapes are, or were, too expensive. The CD/RW I purchased was, two years ago, about the same price as current DVD/RW drives. I'd go with a DVD nowadays; pay a little more, but have Gigs of backup space rather than Megs of storage. : range; and of course a gpu, and the psu, and the sound card...they all : generate heat. The kicker: I'm on the top floor of my building in a : treeless area. I'd rather the heat spill out the side, than have it I feel your pain. I'm third floor in an old house with no A/C. No A/C? Sheesh. Oh, BTW: if it's an old house, do yourself a favor: purchase a UPS. There is a webpage somewhere that lists models of UPS units supported by FreeBSD...I forget where. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, Jun 08, 2004 at 03:05:14PM -0400, Joe Altman wrote: : Yes; spills, flying objects, whatever. Most importantly, it's not on : the floor, and securely on my desk. I deal w/ the noise by keeping the What is so bad with the floor? : That reminds me: is a CD/RW a feasible data backup device? I've never used : mine. : : For me, yes it is. Tapes are, or were, too expensive. The CD/RW I Is there a readme on this? I could never figure out how to get burncd to work with backups. : purchase a UPS. There is a webpage somewhere that lists models of UPS Good idea. jm -- My other computer is your windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[Going further OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
Hi,
What is so bad with the floor?
Ever move into a beautiful house only to find the floor *flooded* at the
first serious cloud break? ;-)
BTW - I'd make sure I'd get/have a decent computer case with a decent
PSU with enough room for some decent 80mm or larger low noise fans
rather than opening up the side panel. Perhaps an aluminum (Chieftec
Dragon, anyone?) case with some Enermax and Zalman coolers and PSU might
do the trick. I've {b,s}een told a good airflow (front to back) is king.
OT nonetheless and good luck... Nico
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Re: Leaving a server on all day
Charles Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 8, 2004, at 1:59 PM, Bill Moran wrote: Hopefully I'll get my flat screen back soon from repair. I guess those use less power, right? I remember having this conversation with someone not too long ago, and our consensus was that flat screens used just as much power as tube monitors. Don't hold me to that, though, I don't seem to remember our testing technique as being very ... uhm ... scientific. No need to guess, use an amp-meter. :-) What a crazy idea. I seem to remember plugging monitors into a UPS in an attempt to use the cheesy load meter lights to tell which was drawing more juice, when that didn't show us any difference, we tried watching the power meter outside ... trying to guess which monitor made it spin faster ... Also, a 1.8GHz Athlon won't use any more power than necessary during idle time, right? Different processors are different. Many newer CPUs will throttle their power consumption while the machine is idle, but most older ones can't do this. You'll need to research the specific CPU + motherboard to see if this is available or not, but (as far as my lousy memory serves) Athlons in the 1.8G range don't support reduced power during non-usage, and will consume just as many watts while the system is idle as while it's doing a buildworld. A 1.8GHz AMD is likely to be a Barton, or possibly a later-model Thoroughbred. The CPU should have AMD's PowerNow! capabilities if APCI is enabled, and they should also significantly reduce power consumption if the OS runs the HLT instruction in the idle loop. Ahh ... didn't know the 1.8s had that in them. I have one machine with an AMD 1800+ (1.54 MHz T'bred-B), which runs at perhaps 48 or 50 C if the system is idle. If I run something like [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a day or so, the CPU will go up to around 56 or even 57 C as a result of the load. The difference in thermal output due to load is very obvious. But is thermal output a reliable indicator of power usage? Logically, it seems like it would be, but I'd hate to assume. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Going further OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
Nico Meijer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi,
What is so bad with the floor?
Ever move into a beautiful house only to find the floor *flooded* at the
first serious cloud break? ;-)
BTW - I'd make sure I'd get/have a decent computer case with a decent
PSU with enough room for some decent 80mm or larger low noise fans
rather than opening up the side panel. Perhaps an aluminum (Chieftec
Dragon, anyone?) case with some Enermax and Zalman coolers and PSU might
do the trick. I've {b,s}een told a good airflow (front to back) is king.
I saw an article recently by a guy who had a degree in thermal dynamics or
something that was dispelling the common myths about PC cooling.
His conclusion was basically that airflow is king. You need to move air across
the heat sinks that is cooler than the heat sinks are. Sounds simple, but the
overall conclusion was that you could improve cooling without increasing noise
by ensuring that air from _outside_ the case was flowing directly over the
processor heatsink. Reason this works well is becuase the air inside the case
is usually considerably warmer than the air outside the case, and moving warm
air across the heat sink doesn't accomplish much. By drawing cool air in from
outside the case, things stay cooler.
Anyway, his suggestion was that the best thing you could do for your cooling
rig was to purchase/fab one of those little duct kits that allows the cpu fan
to pull air from outside the case. Some cases even have the duct built in (my
brother's computer does).
--
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com
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Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Jun 8, 2004, at 2:54 PM, Cordula's Web wrote: AMD processors now have fairly good thermal behavior when they are idle, although it obviously helps if one can enable APCI and power management capabilities to either throttle down the CPU speed or even go into sleep mode. What about other architectures? If you don't need x86 compat, perhaps CPU models in other arches have much lower consumption? Certainly this is true of the ARM and even the Motorola 68K, as you mention: For a box that runs mainly as router, apache, postfix, cyrus, ... even an old MC68k would do just fine (esp. if you are limited by bandwidth, not CPU cycles...). ...there are a lot of people using an embedded M68K as a low-power applicance computing device. Perhaps something like Soekris boards could be useful? Has someone used them to build a power-saving server? Sure. I've got a Soekris net4801 sitting right next to me which is running some custom network monitoring/IDS/IPS software, and the Via EPIA mini-ITX form factor is another good choice for low-power computing. The EPIAs seem to have slightly flaky ATA support, though. Anyone living in a country with exorbitant high taxes on power lurking here? People here in the US got to pay for Enron and the like, sure, especially those in CA. -- -Chuck ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [Going further OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
Bill Moran wrote:
Nico Meijer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Hi,
What is so bad with the floor?
Ever move into a beautiful house only to find the floor *flooded* at the
first serious cloud break? ;-)
BTW - I'd make sure I'd get/have a decent computer case with a decent
PSU with enough room for some decent 80mm or larger low noise fans
rather than opening up the side panel. Perhaps an aluminum (Chieftec
Dragon, anyone?) case with some Enermax and Zalman coolers and PSU might
do the trick. I've {b,s}een told a good airflow (front to back) is king.
I saw an article recently by a guy who had a degree in thermal dynamics or
something that was dispelling the common myths about PC cooling.
His conclusion was basically that airflow is king. You need to move air across
the heat sinks that is cooler than the heat sinks are. Sounds simple, but the
overall conclusion was that you could improve cooling without increasing noise
by ensuring that air from _outside_ the case was flowing directly over the
processor heatsink. Reason this works well is becuase the air inside the case
is usually considerably warmer than the air outside the case, and moving warm
air across the heat sink doesn't accomplish much. By drawing cool air in from
outside the case, things stay cooler.
Anyway, his suggestion was that the best thing you could do for your cooling
rig was to purchase/fab one of those little duct kits that allows the cpu fan
to pull air from outside the case. Some cases even have the duct built in (my
brother's computer does).
Ok, I'll chime in here. Here's what everything I ever learned about
heat transfer and fluid flow tells me:
Everything Bill is saying is correct. The best way to cool is to move
as much fluid (air is a fluid for the purpose of this discussion) as
fast as possible across whatever is hot. Of course, the fluid has to be
cooler than whatever is being cooled. A fan rotating at certain speed
is going to push a given volume of air in a given amount of time. By
leaving the case covers on and providing only a few small holes for
the air to travel through, you're going to force the air coming through
those holes to travel through the case faster.
That being said, if the case design, component placement, etc. is such
that leaving the the cover off actually allows a significantly greater
volume of air to get to the heatsink(s) in a given amount of time, then
leaving the cover off is a good thing.
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Re: Leaving a server on all day
Charles Swiger wrote: On Jun 8, 2004, at 1:59 PM, Bill Moran wrote: Hopefully I'll get my flat screen back soon from repair. I guess those use less power, right? I remember having this conversation with someone not too long ago, and our consensus was that flat screens used just as much power as tube monitors. Don't hold me to that, though, I don't seem to remember our testing technique as being very ... uhm ... scientific. No need to guess, use an amp-meter. :-) Well If it measure trueRMS then you could use it, otherwise no. Radio Shack and the like will sell something with male and female plugs that will measure both voltage and current, and give you the current power load in Watts. Smart UPSes may also have a similar capability. Yes but it will only show you the correct value if the load is a pure resistans, not if it's reactiv, as all switching psu's are. / ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Jun 8, 2004, at 4:06 PM, Bill Moran wrote: Charles Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: No need to guess, use an amp-meter. :-) What a crazy idea. I seem to remember plugging monitors into a UPS in an attempt to use the cheesy load meter lights to tell which was drawing more juice, when that didn't show us any difference, we tried watching the power meter outside ... trying to guess which monitor made it spin faster ... :-) The smart versions of UPSes (as in, APC's SmartUPS line) will often have a serial connection which not only does the deassert DTR when the battery is low thingy, but will communicate other information about the state of the UPS. That will include the power consumption of the load measured more accurately than 5 green LEDs would be able to show you. A really serious UPS, such as a PowerWare 9330, may have ethernet and SNMP support and will do things like tell you the power factor of the load, typically about 0.9 for computer stuff. But I admit, a 20kVA UPS is outside of what a normal home user would want. And the batteries are freaking heavy... :-) I have one machine with an AMD 1800+ (1.54 MHz T'bred-B), which runs at perhaps 48 or 50 C if the system is idle. If I run something like [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a day or so, the CPU will go up to around 56 or even 57 C as a result of the load. The difference in thermal output due to load is very obvious. But is thermal output a reliable indicator of power usage? Logically, it seems like it would be, but I'd hate to assume. Conservation of energy is a law, so any assumptions being made are pretty safe. When you pump 0.5 amps @ 120VAC into a 60 watt light-bulb, you end up getting about 54 watts of radiant heat and about 6 watts of visible light. A computer's CPU eats about the same amount of power, and sends a watt or so back out in terms of data signals, but most of the energy used by the processor to actually process data gets emitted as heat. -- -Chuck ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Jun 8, 2004, at 5:06 PM, Bernt. H wrote:
No need to guess, use an amp-meter. :-)
Well If it measure trueRMS then you could use it, otherwise no.
You are correct that one needs to measure the voltage and use the RMS
value, or DC series equivalent if you like that phrase, in order to
figure out the power consumption accurately, but an {ammeter,
amp-meter, DMM} which can deal with AC will do the right thing.
Radio Shack and the like will sell something with male and female
plugs that will measure both voltage and current, and give you the
current power load in Watts. Smart UPSes may also have a similar
capability.
Yes but it will only show you the correct value if the load is a pure
resistans, not if it's reactiv, as all switching psu's are.
The ratio between the actual load and a purely resistive load is known
as the power factor, and is why UPS are rated in terms of kVA rather
than in terms of the wattage of the load. For computer equipment [1],
the power factor is lagging, representing an inductive rather than
capacitive load, and the PF is typically about 0.9.
However, the electric company bills you for the power you draw from
them, they don't give you a refund for the power wasted because your
load is not purely resistive, so the notion of measuring the kVA rather
than the useful wattage is not really incorrect.
--
-Chuck
[1]: And almost everything else, too. Most things use a transformer to
convert line voltage into whatever voltage the device wants, which is
inductive, or consist of a motor, also inductive. Motors which draw a
lot of current when starting (which is most of them) tend to have a
starting capacitor to help manage the surge current and also help
adjust the power factor back towards 1.0 to improve their efficiency.
The so-called ballast in fluorescent lights serves much the same
purpose.
We thank you for tuning in to basic electronics, and return you to your
regularly scheduled FreeBSD programming. :-)
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Re: [Going further OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tuesday 08 June 2004 01:45 pm, Jason Taylor wrote: Bill Moran wrote: Nico Meijer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, sniping a lot off Everything Bill is saying is correct. The best way to cool is to move as much fluid (air is a fluid for the purpose of this discussion) as fast as possible across whatever is hot. Of course, the fluid has to be cooler than whatever is being cooled. A fan rotating at certain speed is going to push a given volume of air in a given amount of time. By leaving the case covers on and providing only a few small holes for the air to travel through, you're going to force the air coming through those holes to travel through the case faster. That being said, if the case design, component placement, etc. is such that leaving the the cover off actually allows a significantly greater volume of air to get to the heatsink(s) in a given amount of time, then leaving the cover off is a good thing. I have 2 identical machines (AMD 2400+'s) except that one has 2x120mm fans (push pull) and the other doesn't. The one that has 1x120mm fan has Sonata punched in the covers at the top of the front and back covers and that case runs 3-5oC cooler than the other case. I leave the cover off of the other one to keep things running cool. They both run setiathome 24x7 and generate equal amounts of heat. I don't like cpus running close to 50oC or higher. Kent -- Kent Stewart Richland, WA http://users.owt.com/kstewart/index.html ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
Am Dienstag, 8. Juni 2004 16:44 schrieb Peter Ulrich Kruppa: On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Jonathon McKitrick wrote: I have my desktop configured to run as a server and app server for a thin client laptop. Will running it all day without suspend mode use a lot of power? Is it true that the heat buildup in a home system (rather than a heavily fanned commercial system) will kill the drives faster and this is a good reason to turn it off during the day when I am not home? This is only my personal experience: I have got a PIII running all day for over 2 years now (my server): no problems and I am using just the small fan it came with. I had two AMD's (a K6 and now an Athlon): for both I had to buy bigger fans since they started doing strange things after a while. At work I have seen three IDE harddisks decease on workstations during the last four and a half years, but never a SCSI harddisk. These workstations are shut down and rebooted Just to brake illusions: I have seen lots of disks dieing. Mostly IDE disks because they're wide spreaded. But I also had a several server SCSI disks (Seagate and IBM) which died, and they hadn't just quit their service, they (the two different I attempted to) were classified as inrecoverable by well known and even better paid special companies like Vogon. So don't tap into the trap that SCSI disks are more reliable! quite often. So *my* summary for your private server would be: - Leaving it on all day will not kill your harddisks, in the contrary: even cheap ones will live longer. - AMD processors tend to run hot, so if you have one, you should look for a good fan. This was true up to Coppermine/Tualatin, nowadays I'd prefere any AMD. The notrhwood and even worse the prescott INTELS (p4s) are dumb radiators. My 0.02 ยค Best regards, -Harry Regards, Uli. jm -- My other computer is your windows box. ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] +---+ |Peter Ulrich Kruppa| | | Wuppertal | | Germany | +---+ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] pgp2TiFUnSiyb.pgp Description: signature
Re: [Going further OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Jason Taylor wrote: Ok, I'll chime in here. Here's what everything I ever learned about heat transfer and fluid flow tells me: Everything Bill is saying is correct. The best way to cool is to move as much fluid (air is a fluid for the purpose of this discussion) as fast as possible across whatever is hot. As a point of interest, as fast as possible isn't always correct, though it may be WRT practical case-cooling considerations. One consideration in designing race cars, especially those using stock engines, is to not overdrive the water pump at high rpms. Not because of cavitation, because you can flow water through the engine faster than is optimal for heat dissipation. Non intuitive, but true - has to do with the heat transfer across the water/metal surfaces and is otherwise over my head. ;) KeS ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [still going ... OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day
Kevin Stevens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Tue, 8 Jun 2004, Jason Taylor wrote: Ok, I'll chime in here. Here's what everything I ever learned about heat transfer and fluid flow tells me: Everything Bill is saying is correct. The best way to cool is to move as much fluid (air is a fluid for the purpose of this discussion) as fast as possible across whatever is hot. As a point of interest, as fast as possible isn't always correct, though it may be WRT practical case-cooling considerations. One consideration in designing race cars, especially those using stock engines, is to not overdrive the water pump at high rpms. Not because of cavitation, because you can flow water through the engine faster than is optimal for heat dissipation. Non intuitive, but true - has to do with the heat transfer across the water/metal surfaces and is otherwise over my head. ;) I think the original point of my post was lost. Looking back, I don't think I explained it well. The author's point (damn ... wish I had saved a link to that URL) is that temp differential is more important than air volume. The upshot being that by bringing air in from the outside of the case (which is cooler) you can run slower fans (thus have a quieter system) and have the same quality of cooling. The flip side is that if you need _more_ cooling, you can keep the same speed fans, and by using cooler air you end up with better cooling overall. -- Bill Moran Potential Technologies http://www.potentialtech.com ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
OT: The fan club (was: Re: [Going further OT] Re: Leaving a server on all day)
On 8 Jun 2004 at 13:45, Jason Taylor wrote:
Bill Moran wrote:
Nico Meijer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
BTW - I'd make sure I'd get/have a decent computer case with a decent
PSU with enough room for some decent 80mm or larger low noise fans
rather than opening up the side panel. Perhaps an aluminum (Chieftec
Dragon, anyone?) case with some Enermax and Zalman coolers and PSU might
do the trick. I've {b,s}een told a good airflow (front to back) is king.
I saw an article recently by a guy who had a degree in thermal dynamics or
something that was dispelling the common myths about PC cooling.
His conclusion was basically that airflow is king. You need to move air across
the heat sinks that is cooler than the heat sinks are. Sounds simple, but the
overall conclusion was that you could improve cooling without increasing noise
by ensuring that air from _outside_ the case was flowing directly over the
processor heatsink. Reason this works well is becuase the air inside the case
is usually considerably warmer than the air outside the case, and moving warm
air across the heat sink doesn't accomplish much. By drawing cool air in from
outside the case, things stay cooler.
Anyway, his suggestion was that the best thing you could do for your cooling
rig was to purchase/fab one of those little duct kits that allows the cpu fan
to pull air from outside the case. Some cases even have the duct built in (my
brother's computer does).
Ok, I'll chime in here. Here's what everything I ever learned about
heat transfer and fluid flow tells me:
Everything Bill is saying is correct. The best way to cool is to move
as much fluid (air is a fluid for the purpose of this discussion) as
fast as possible across whatever is hot. Of course, the fluid has to be
cooler than whatever is being cooled. A fan rotating at certain speed
is going to push a given volume of air in a given amount of time. By
leaving the case covers on and providing only a few small holes for
the air to travel through, you're going to force the air coming through
those holes to travel through the case faster.
That being said, if the case design, component placement, etc. is such
that leaving the the cover off actually allows a significantly greater
volume of air to get to the heatsink(s) in a given amount of time, then
leaving the cover off is a good thing.
Okay, no degree in thermal here, but I used to design these things for
a living (Dell, Tandem, Datapoint). Sorry I missed the start of this
thread, but I'll jump in here and see how much confusion I can
generate.
The generalities above are generally true, generally. :-)
Leaving a cover off may help or it may hurt, depending upon what's hot
in the case and how leaving the cover off affects airflow over those
items. What you're interested in is a maximum of airflow (volume more
than velocity) and a maximum of temperature delta specifically at the
hot components. (This assumes the temp of the air is lower than the
hot component. If it's warmer than the hot component your house is
probably on fire and you've got bigger problems.)
You're also interested in things like maximum surface area at the
heatsink/fluid interface, but that's a function of heatsink design, not
fan design or placement, and there are other factors influencing the
design of that interface. Obviously, if heatsink blades are crosswise
to the airflow the heatsink will be much less efficient.
If the case is really well designed, the incoming air is directed at
the hot components. Since cases are generally generic and motherboards
don't always put things in the same place, this may or may not be
achieved. This matchup issue is one of the reasons generic cases
usually don't have ducts, since a misdirected duct is worse than no
duct. If you're Dell or HP and control both the MB and the case, you
can use good, cheap ducts to allow the use of cheaper heatsinks because
you know where everything is. If the incoming cool air is not directed
at the hot components, leaving off the cover may actually help, but if
the case and motherboard are a good match leaving off the cover can
disrupt the planned flow.
For moving a lot of air with low noise, go for the largest fan you can
and run it slow. The cases I'm using these days to build workstations
are Antec Sonatas, and I mount two 120 mm fans, one in front and one in
the rear, one exhausting and one intaking (therefore in series). I
wish they had proper ducting like the Fong Kai 603 I used to use, but
our components are staying cool enough and the noise level is low. If
you prefer aluminum, the Antec Super LANboy is very similar to the
Sonata, and we have one of these for a machine we carry around quite a
bit. Aluminum is a great help for weight, but I doubt it adds much to
cooling unless you're mounting heatsinks directly to your case. Most
of the heat will leave with the
FreeBSD on Soekris Boards (Was: Re: Leaving a server on all day)
Perhaps something like Soekris boards could be useful? Has someone used them to build a power-saving server? Sure. I've got a Soekris net4801 sitting right next to me which is running some custom network monitoring/IDS/IPS software, and the Via EPIA mini-ITX form factor is another good choice for low-power computing. The EPIAs seem to have slightly flaky ATA support, though. Ah yes, there are some howtos out there how to put FreeBSD 5.2.1 on a Soekris net4801; so it obviously seems to work. Could someone with an net4801 please write an article for inclusion in the Handbook? It would be great to have everything in one place :) Thanks, -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
On Tue, 2004-06-08 at 16:06, Bill Moran wrote: Charles Swiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jun 8, 2004, at 1:59 PM, Bill Moran wrote: Hopefully I'll get my flat screen back soon from repair. I guess those use less power, right? I remember having this conversation with someone not too long ago, and our consensus was that flat screens used just as much power as tube monitors. Don't hold me to that, though, I don't seem to remember our testing technique as being very ... uhm ... scientific. No need to guess, use an amp-meter. :-) What a crazy idea. I seem to remember plugging monitors into a UPS in an attempt to use the cheesy load meter lights to tell which was drawing more juice, when that didn't show us any difference, we tried watching the power meter outside ... trying to guess which monitor made it spin faster ... Also, a 1.8GHz Athlon won't use any more power than necessary during idle time, right? Different processors are different. Many newer CPUs will throttle their power consumption while the machine is idle, but most older ones can't do this. You'll need to research the specific CPU + motherboard to see if this is available or not, but (as far as my lousy memory serves) Athlons in the 1.8G range don't support reduced power during non-usage, and will consume just as many watts while the system is idle as while it's doing a buildworld. A 1.8GHz AMD is likely to be a Barton, or possibly a later-model Thoroughbred. The CPU should have AMD's PowerNow! capabilities if APCI is enabled, and they should also significantly reduce power consumption if the OS runs the HLT instruction in the idle loop. Ahh ... didn't know the 1.8s had that in them. I have one machine with an AMD 1800+ (1.54 MHz T'bred-B), which runs at perhaps 48 or 50 C if the system is idle. If I run something like [EMAIL PROTECTED] for a day or so, the CPU will go up to around 56 or even 57 C as a result of the load. The difference in thermal output due to load is very obvious. But is thermal output a reliable indicator of power usage? Logically, it seems like it would be, but I'd hate to assume. Virtually all the power used gets converted into heat that will heat up your room. A typical workstation might use 50 watts when idle. If power is 5 cents per KW=hour, it will cost you about $2 a month. 50 watts used to heat your room won't make a lot of difference - just a bit less than a 60 watt light bulb... ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
Mike Jeays writes: A typical workstation might use 50 watts when idle. If power is 5 cents per KW=hour, it will cost you about $2 a month. 50 watts used to heat your room won't make a lot of difference - just a bit less than a 60 watt light bulb... You might be surprised. We have an office that has one computer 24x7 and two more averaging 16x7. In winter, when rest of the house is 68, the office can be as much as 10 degrees warmer Robert Huff ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Leaving a server on all day
I'm surprised no one's mentioned this yet, but one way to significantly reduce power consumption is to downclock the processor. Yes, that reduces performance, but chances are you won't even notice it unless you're running the server under a heavy load. You said your network consists of two machines (a laptop and desktop) - that is very far from a heavy load. You said you have a 1.8 GHz Athlon - if you downclocked it 50% you still probably wouldn't notice any change. I have an old machine with a 300 MHz processor, but even that is more than adequate when it's only serving web pages or mail to a single laptop. On most new motherboards, you set the clock speed in the BIOS, but on older machines it requires changing jumper settings. Obviously, doing it in BIOS is much easier. : Yes; spills, flying objects, whatever. Most importantly, it's not on : the floor, and securely on my desk. I deal w/ the noise by keeping the What is so bad with the floor? I've found that when the machine is left on the floor, it sucks in a lot of dust. And the dust coats everything and makes it run hotter. I live in a dusty place, so I periodically have to open the case and blow out the dust with an air compressor. : That reminds me: is a CD/RW a feasible data backup device? I've never used: mine. : : For me, yes it is. Tapes are, or were, too expensive. The CD/RW I Read the FreeBSD Handbook, the section on Raw Data CDs. That's the backup method I use, and it works well. It's also kind of nice that nobody else can read your CDs unless they're using FreeBSD. regards, Robert ___ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
