Energy Efficient Computing
I’ve been growing increasingly interested in getting more computer performance with less power consumption. And it seems that’s the direction computers are going these days, anyway. The main reason is to save money – these Phoenix summers can really crank up the electric bill! But I’ve always been a big fan of doing more with less in any aspect of life.
The big processor manufacturers – Intel and AMD – are constantly releasing chips that do more with less. The Intel Atom platform, for example, is designed with power efficiency in mind.
Lately, I’ve wanted a computer that I could leave on 24/7 without worrying about it cranking up my electric bill. This past week I built a custom Atom box. I bought a ZOTAC ION series ITX motherboard and a RaidMax 0907BP ITX case with a 300 watt PSU. Together they only cost $200. I already had a 500 GB SATA hard drive, SATA DVD-RW drive, and RAM at home, which I used to complete the machine.
The CPU is an Intel Atom 330 – a dual core with HT that only consumes 29 watts at idle! 29 watts – that’s just under half of what a standard 60 watt light bulb uses! It also gives off little heat, and the stock CPU fan seems to do an excellent job at keeping it around 46 C – well within recommended operating temps.
Everyday computing tasks, such as surfing the net, checking email, watching YouTube vids, or typing a document are a breeze. It even handles light gaming pretty well – it’s not going to give you insane FPS, but it’s adequate.
The nVidia ION chipset does an excellent job with video. Although I have not yet tested it, it has HDMI out and is capable of rendering full 1080p high definition video.
At present, I intend to use it as a media/file server and streaming machine, which it is more than capable of doing. And I have no qualms about leaving it on all the time because it sips power.
The next item on my wish list is a Mac Mini which, according to Apple’s website, only consumes 10 watts at idle! It also has a more powerful Core 2 Duo processor, which can crank through tasks more efficiently than an Atom processor, thus allowing it to idle for longer periods of time and produce a much higher performance per watt.
But if you’re on a budget like me, building a custom Intel Atom machine will only cost you around $300 to $400 – less than half what a new Mac Mini costs.
