a slightly greener PC
Apr. 15th, 2007 04:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eorThe power supply fan in my primary computer started making noise a couple of weeks ago. This got me looking for new power supplies. Which got me started looking again at lower power consumption PC components. I'm a geek, I love to read about computer components.
In the PC world there has been little consideration for power consumption. The desire for faster has always overridden energy consciousness. Fortunately the EU is starting to force some consideration through new standards. It's only beginning, but it's a start.
At first I thought silent systems would be a good place to look for energy conservation ideas, but that isn't often the case. Silent systems tend to use water cooling, which almost always means pumps. Some of them use some impressive heatsinks for cooling without fans, but shutting the pump off is not an option. One guy did make a totally passive liquid cooling system, no pump, no fans, but he also had a case the size of a small fridge and I don't think he was cooling a current generation system.
There are a few fanless designs out there, but they are restricted to certain CPU/motherboard/graphics card combinations and usually come with a notable price tag. I can't justify spending $800 for an empty computer case.
Power Supplies: Efficiency was never even published for power supplies back in the day. Now, happily they are published and there are some suppliers who are offering better efficiency than ever. The difference in heat between a 65% efficient power supply and an 85% efficient one are huge. You pay more for the energy and you pay to get the heat out of the case.
Processors and motherboards: This is were the European push is being seen most obviously. The new AMD Athlon processors use less power in their core than the previous generation. Some motherboards are even coming with passive cooling heatpipe systems now. Both of these things are good steps.
Graphics cards: Modern graphics cards use a lot of power and produce a lot of heat. The trend in CPU power conservation hasn't caught on in graphics cards. By default these have significant fan and airflow requirements. There are some heatpipe coolers out there for them.
Cooling products: Heatpipes seem to be the answer to many cooling dilemmas, used either solo, with ducting to case fans, or with dedicated fans. Heatpipes are the latest technology in radiators, they need airflow to work though.
Cases: The emphasis on case design still seems to be pretty, portable, or small. None of these things has much to do with airflow or cooling. The exception is the $800 case I mentioned earlier with extensive built in heatpipes for every component. Let's face it, no case keeps dust out of a PC. Why do manufacturers bother to put large expanses of solid case material on the top, or any side, apart from structural members? I looked for cases with plenty of that nice honeycomb or extreme numbers of fan openings. I also look for cases as big as I can stand. Yes, that makes them hard to deal with, but unless you're powering large volumes of air through a small case the crammed together components will roast.
A sample design:
Some caveats: I'm not heavily into hardcore gaming or realtime video editing. Most of what I do, like most of what the average consumer does, doesn't use the full potential of any PC. I'm currently running an AMD XP 2500+ (1.8GHz) with 1.5 GIG of RAM and a couple of IDE hard drives, on-board video and on-board sound. I'm not trying to build a speed demon machine, just an efficient current generation machine.
I don't know yet if all the heatpipe coolers will fit together on the same motherboard, but I'm pretty sure the memory and CPU ones will play well. No, I haven't built it, but I might actually spend the money at some point.
In the PC world there has been little consideration for power consumption. The desire for faster has always overridden energy consciousness. Fortunately the EU is starting to force some consideration through new standards. It's only beginning, but it's a start.
At first I thought silent systems would be a good place to look for energy conservation ideas, but that isn't often the case. Silent systems tend to use water cooling, which almost always means pumps. Some of them use some impressive heatsinks for cooling without fans, but shutting the pump off is not an option. One guy did make a totally passive liquid cooling system, no pump, no fans, but he also had a case the size of a small fridge and I don't think he was cooling a current generation system.
There are a few fanless designs out there, but they are restricted to certain CPU/motherboard/graphics card combinations and usually come with a notable price tag. I can't justify spending $800 for an empty computer case.
Power Supplies: Efficiency was never even published for power supplies back in the day. Now, happily they are published and there are some suppliers who are offering better efficiency than ever. The difference in heat between a 65% efficient power supply and an 85% efficient one are huge. You pay more for the energy and you pay to get the heat out of the case.
Processors and motherboards: This is were the European push is being seen most obviously. The new AMD Athlon processors use less power in their core than the previous generation. Some motherboards are even coming with passive cooling heatpipe systems now. Both of these things are good steps.
Graphics cards: Modern graphics cards use a lot of power and produce a lot of heat. The trend in CPU power conservation hasn't caught on in graphics cards. By default these have significant fan and airflow requirements. There are some heatpipe coolers out there for them.
Cooling products: Heatpipes seem to be the answer to many cooling dilemmas, used either solo, with ducting to case fans, or with dedicated fans. Heatpipes are the latest technology in radiators, they need airflow to work though.
Cases: The emphasis on case design still seems to be pretty, portable, or small. None of these things has much to do with airflow or cooling. The exception is the $800 case I mentioned earlier with extensive built in heatpipes for every component. Let's face it, no case keeps dust out of a PC. Why do manufacturers bother to put large expanses of solid case material on the top, or any side, apart from structural members? I looked for cases with plenty of that nice honeycomb or extreme numbers of fan openings. I also look for cases as big as I can stand. Yes, that makes them hard to deal with, but unless you're powering large volumes of air through a small case the crammed together components will roast.
A sample design:
Some caveats: I'm not heavily into hardcore gaming or realtime video editing. Most of what I do, like most of what the average consumer does, doesn't use the full potential of any PC. I'm currently running an AMD XP 2500+ (1.8GHz) with 1.5 GIG of RAM and a couple of IDE hard drives, on-board video and on-board sound. I'm not trying to build a speed demon machine, just an efficient current generation machine.
- Thermaltake Armor VA8003BWS (big hole in top for air, big holes everywhere for fans and air, big case with plenty of room between heat causing components)
- Seasonic S12 SS-550HT (up to 85% efficiency means less heat)
- Asus M2NBP-VMCSM (not the best motherboard for cooling needs, but it's compatible with the CPU I wanted to use and the OS I'm using, has on-board video and sound each of which I may take off-board at some point)
- AMD Athlon 64 X2 Brisbane 2.5GHz (lower power consumption version of the Ath)
- 2 1-Gig Mushkin 240pin DDR2 800 Model 991527 (1.8V instead of the souped up faster memory at 2.1+v)
- Western Digital SE 320Gig 7200RPM SATA WD3200AAJS (why does WD make the quietest drives? They sell at bloody Staples!)
- Thermalright HR-01-K8 heatsink & AMD adapter (CPU heatpipes, very large radiator)
- 2 Thermalright HR-07 memory heatsinks (heatpipe radiators for RAM)
- Antazone AS-N2000 Copper Heatsink (Northbridge/Southbridge heatpipe radiator)
- 2 Scythe S-Flex SFF21E 120mm case fan (I do think I'll still need some case fans so I want quiet ones)
- Scythe fanless HDD Box (to quiet drive I have and suck heat off it)
- Sony Black 18X CD/DVD SATA drive AWG170S-B2 (because you can't have a system without CD/DVD)
- Scythe YD-8V08-BK 18 in 1 card reader/floppy (because it's just handy to have such things)
- You would, of course, couple this with an LCD, not CRT, monitor
I don't know yet if all the heatpipe coolers will fit together on the same motherboard, but I'm pretty sure the memory and CPU ones will play well. No, I haven't built it, but I might actually spend the money at some point.
