Saving electricity with your PC: tips from the mass-downloading era
How much does a PC running 24 hours a day cost? 50 euros a year. Paying for a premium download account may work out cheaper. Strategies to cut your electricity bill.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
How to cut your PC's power consumption without giving up downloads
A user kept his PC running day and night to download files. His electricity bill was a black hole. His solution: pay 30 euros (split with a friend) for a Megaupload premium account. The PC went from 24 hours a day to less than 2. Contradictory, yes: spending money to save electricity.
The cost of leaving your PC on all day
According to 2008 estimates, a typical desktop PC uses about 50 euros worth of electricity a year if left on 24 hours a day. With current rates (and the minimum charges added by utilities), the figure could be higher. Switching to a netbook cuts consumption elevenfold, but not everyone can work on a small screen. That's where the trick comes in: paying for a fast download service can be cheaper than running the PC 12 extra hours every day.
Beyond premium services: efficient hardware
Another option is low-power hardware. The Mac Mini Core 2 Duo is cited as an example of a quiet, efficient desktop. You can also build a PC with an Atom processor and an Nvidia Ion graphics card, which handles 1080p content with a 90W external power supply. And for the handy, turning a router with OpenWrt and a USB hard drive into a download station with minimal consumption.
A 90W Atom system can download 12 GB movies in 1080p. If that's "painful", as one participant wondered, expectations would need redefining. Efficiency and quality aren't at odds, at least in the world of downloads.
Related discussions in the forum
A user kept his PC running day and night to download files. His electricity bill was a black hole. His solution: pay 30 euros (split with a friend) for a Megaupload premium account. The PC went from 24 hours a day to less than 2. Contradictory, yes: spending money to save electricity.
The cost of leaving your PC on all day
According to 2008 estimates, a typical desktop PC uses about 50 euros worth of electricity a year if left on 24 hours a day. With current rates (and the minimum charges added by utilities), the figure could be higher. Switching to a netbook cuts consumption elevenfold, but not everyone can work on a small screen. That's where the trick comes in: paying for a fast download service can be cheaper than running the PC 12 extra hours every day.
Beyond premium services: efficient hardware
Another option is low-power hardware. The Mac Mini Core 2 Duo is cited as an example of a quiet, efficient desktop. You can also build a PC with an Atom processor and an Nvidia Ion graphics card, which handles 1080p content with a 90W external power supply. And for the handy, turning a router with OpenWrt and a USB hard drive into a download station with minimal consumption.
A 90W Atom system can download 12 GB movies in 1080p. If that's "painful", as one participant wondered, expectations would need redefining. Efficiency and quality aren't at odds, at least in the world of downloads.
Related discussions in the forum
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (10 replies).
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