[mythtv-users] Requesting some sample kill a watt meter numbers

[Joe Hickey]

On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 1:14 PM, Mark D. Montgomery II
<techiem2 at techiem2.net> wrote:
> I'm planning to redo the power layout in my room tonight (new power strips
> to clean everything up, yay), so I'll try to remember to hook my Kill-A-Watt
> up line with my mythbox to see what it's pulling.
> One thing to consider (which I don't have solid data on, just comments) is a
> high efficiency power supply in your machine.  I've read they tend to make a
> fair bit of difference in the power  usage.  I've been putting the Antec
> earthWatts 80+ PSUs in all my builds the past year or so.


Thanks!  I'd appreciate that!

I will look into the possibility of mythshutdown, I wasn't aware you
could shut the master backend down and have it automatically set the
bios to restart.  The problem is that I do run mythweb and I'd miss
being able to go on that and schedule a recording from work, etc.

WRT rate hikes, as was mentioned -- I think we got one of those too,
but I know it's not JUST a rate hike as con edison (NYC) shows
historical usage, and we are using on average 4kwh/day more than last
winter, 2 of which is directly attributable to the myth box.  After
all the taxes and fees are tacked on the rate ends up being about
$0.24 / kwh, so this translates to roughly $175 / year.  My atom-based
FE, an acer aspire revo, uses about 20w at idle, and I can shut this
down when not in use.  If I could get the BE into that territory, it
would save me over $100/year.  Worth it to me.  I'm just trying to
gauge how many watts I'd give up if I build something with a real
processor.

I fully agree that the 80+ certified PSU's help alot and I think
that's a major contributor here as well.  The problem is it is a
micro-atx form factor, and a nonstandard one at that (MSI media live
chassis).  The original PSU died and I got a replacement, but the only
thing I could find that would physically fit inside turns out to be
MUCH louder and I suspect it's not very efficient either.  Now I
regret using non-standard components, but at the time I bought the
media live chassis it seemed pretty slick.