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Getting PC to consumer less power

All,

I have two PCs in the house running all the time. One I use as a desktop PC the other I use as Server (Windows Home Server).

I have tweaked the power settings in Windows appropriately - however looking to further reduce the power usage. Any ideas? Is there any good software that helps? Any standard approach?

Kind regards
A.

rindi

Turn them off when not needed, or at least have them go to sleep. If there is a display or other peripheral connected to the server, turn those off too when not needed.

helpfinder

you can try components which use less power like SSD or no external video card etc.
also you can merge that 2 computers into one using virtualization if it is acceptavble for your home infrastructure.
if you do not need to run your desktop or derver 24/7 consider to schedule power down and start automacitally - you can use BIOS feature (if your BIOS supports - Resume by Alarm or so called) or some 3th party application. Also Wake-on-Lan (WoL) could be the solution

Member_2_231077

Replace the CPU with a lower power one if you can, or replace the Home Server machine with a microserver - http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-things-you-should-know-about-microservers/ (HP's takes 60w idle, 72w at full tilt). You probably can't replace your desktop with a microserver, they don't have high performance graphics.

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Merete

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nobus

the best way to consume less power is using newer hardware; they consume a lot less than older ones (eg P4 systems)
you can use SSD instead of rotating disks; usb sticks instead of DVD drive (disconnect the drive then) - and use low power - or integrated video card

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Danny Child

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Danny Child

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rindi

But you'd turn the heater off when the room is warm enough (besides, when your PC's are running you often have to worry more about cooling than heating. In Winter I can generally use a very low heater setting, as the PC's tend to warm the environment up enough as long as I don't have the Windows open all the time).

Angus

ASKER

Thank you all for your replies. It has been extremely helpful. I ended up buying a meter and found out that it uses 1.6 Kwh per day - which then means per year it uses approx. 600 Kwh. The total cost for me is therefore around £70 per year. This is all for my server. I have yet to do it on my desktop.

It helped put it all into perspective. Overall I am happy with the cost of £70 and shall not be doing anything to save energy. However for the desktop I am expecting that to be much greater as it has two monitors attached to it. So most likely where I will end up putting my desktop to sleep when not using it.

Thanks all for your feedback. It all has helped so I have divided the points

Merete

Well Done amacfarl, everything back in perspective..
Glad to have helped and thank you..
Merete