<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 9 March 2011 06:07, Johan.van der Kolk <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:johan.van.der.kolk1@telenet.be">johan.van.der.kolk1@telenet.be</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">
<div class="im">On 03/09/2011 03:01 AM, Raymond Wagner wrote:<br>
> On 3/8/2011 20:28, mythtv wrote:<br>
>> The primary reason I want to reduce my power footprint right now is that<br>
>> my combined BE/FE sits below my TV and the fan is noticeably loud. My<br>
>> current HTPC case is sadly limited in system fan options and my PSU fan<br>
>> seems to ramp to 100% (loud) at 55C.<br>
> Can you just move this machine to another room? I've got my combo fe/be<br>
> in the basement under one of my TVs, and I just cut a hole in the floor<br>
> in the corner behind the TV to snake audio, video, and USB up through.<br>
><br>
>> Intel Core 2 E6600<br>
>><br>
>> Viewing content vs idle doesn't make any noticeable difference in power.<br>
>> I'm a little more surprised that recording 4 shows simultaneously only adds<br>
>> a few watts on top of the 85W baseline.<br>
> That E6600 should be dropping multiplier, and dropping the voltage to<br>
> match. Unless you're using VDPAU for all your decoding and idling all<br>
> the time anyway, there should be a noticeable difference between<br>
> playback and idle. Check /proc/cpuinfo when your system is idle, and<br>
> see what it thinks your clock speed is. It should be something well<br>
> below the stock 2.4GHz.<br>
><br>
<br>
</div>I tested that, it hardly made a difference. CPU at 900MHz, all voltages at lowest possible. maybe 5W reduction, and noticeable performance impact. (same processor)<br>
<div class="im"><br>
>> After my RAID array had a failure I replaced a 3.5" drive with a 2.5" one<br>
>> and noticed about 5W less power. So I moved everything except my 1.5TB<br>
>> drive to 2.5" disks as time and budget allowed.<br>
> A 2.5" hard drive may use less than half the power of a 3.5", however<br>
> three 1TB 2.5" drives will consume more than one 3TB 3.5" drive. Make<br>
> sure you have your system set up to allow idle spindown. An idling 3.5"<br>
> hard drive will consume 4-6W each, but ones that are parked and spun<br>
> down will be well under 1W.<br>
<br>
</div>my new BE will be:<br>
<br>
ASUS P8H67-V (need three PCI slots for tuners) @ 125 Euro (6.5W idle power)<br>
Intel I5 2400 @ 165 Euro (~20W idle power, 50W full load, they will not<br>
reach 95W TDP)<br>
4 G RAM @ 46 Euro<br>
<br>
+ 6 samsung 2TB drives in raid 5 or 6 (another 20W idle or 50W active total)<br>
<br>
+ an 80+ bronze PSU Antec Earthwatts 380 or 450. (more powerfull PSU's<br>
become inefficient under the low load, even the 80+ gold models<br>
<br>
I needed a new BE, so cost was less of an issue. Energy efficient was a<br>
requirement though.<br>
<br>
This system should be efficient, but have enough reserve to do a couple<br>
of commdetects and transcodes while recording two to three programs<br>
<font color="#888888"><br>
<br>
Johan<br>
</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br></div></div></blockquote><div>II have migrated my master backend to a Pogoplug device which is a low cost, low power NAS device running Debian. The drives are mounted into usb enclosures and plugged into the Pogoplug.<br>
<br>Mythtv installs directly onto it via apt and the debian multimedia repository. It easily runs the database and master backend,<br><br>I have a combined slave backend/frontend in the living room booting via netboot as it has the PCI tuners in, and a frontend upstairs again netbooting. Drives are mapped via NFS.<br>
<br>My power consumption when the system is idle has dropped from approx 100W to about 15W, and I estimate that the system is mostly idle for at least 8-10 hours per day.<br><br>two of the main reasons I went (besides saving money) for the pogoplug, was that I wanted mythweb availability when I am at work, or out and about (in case I need to set something to record), and that wakeonlan was a lot more reliable for me than ACPI wakeup on a single machine. I can add a torrent server, home automation (just bought a telldus tellstick) etc to the pogoplug....<br>
<br>Gaz <br></div></div><br>