On 19/10/2012, at 7:47 AM, [email protected] wrote:

>> In the last few days, I've been reading studies showing that
>> average power consumption of a PC is about 12W. Which
>> is not incredibly high.
> 
> Makes me wonder how much I’m killing the planet with the 700W power
> supply in my PC.

Jeremy the size of your power supply is pretty irrelevant (to your power 
consumption, ie amount of power wasted by virtue of it being available)
What does count is *what you use*
so ... lots of disks ... old cpu (that uses lots of power) ... machine working 
hard ... GRAPHICS CARDS (fancy cards use lots of power)
and cards that do not throttle back when not being used is/are significant.

All sensible stuff. So dont have fancy graphics in your 24/7 box. Use the 
wheelie bin for old disks (you can feel - they are the one's that get hot) .

Anyone who thinks that charging their lappie off peak is not an engineer who 
understands the laws of thermodynamics:

You cant win
You can't break even
You can't get out of the system

(laptop power 10w to 50w (say), efficiency of charger (say) 70%, efficiency of 
batteries (say) 70%)

what is worse: toxic chemicals from landfill, or toxic chemicals from power 
generation using coal ...
(most fish in the USA have mercury, that is largely from coal fired electricity)

in the gaming world it is "your move"
James


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