[mythtv-users] HDHomeRun Vs. PCIe tuner card?

Jim Stichnoth stichnot at gmail.com
Wed Aug 12 22:25:30 UTC 2009


On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Brian Wood<beww at beww.org> wrote:
> On Wednesday 12 August 2009 15:39:28 David Rees wrote:
>> On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 2:37 PM, Raymond Wagner<raymond at wagnerrp.com> wrote:
>> >> I chose to go with a HD HomeRun.  The reason was quite simple.  Heat.
>> >> I wanted to keep heat out of my backend box that already had 5 hard
>> >> drives in it.  This also had the added benefit that the backend box
>> >> didn't need more PSU to handle a PCI card.
>> >
>> > What? Just how much power do you expect a tuner card to take?
>>
>> The (admittedly old) PVR-250s I have in my system draw about 10 watts each.
>
> The 350s drew more than that, the hardware decoder, as well as the encoder,
> added up to a significant draw.

Last night, out of curiosity, I measured the power use of my HDHR
tuner setup.  At idle, the 2 HDHRs plus a 5-port gigabit switch drew 8
watts.  Each of the 3 devices seemed to draw about the same, i.e. 2-3
watts.  When I started one recording, the power use increased by 1
watt.

If you're interested in optimizing your power use at this level, don't
forget to consider your memory.  Each SDRAM module consumes 2-3 watts
(at least for the ones I tested on an ION system).  Using one module
of twice the capacity can save 2 watts over a pair of smaller modules
(though you may lose the dual-channel performance benefit).

Jim


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