pentium 4 desktop poser consumption

I have about $200 to spend on an upgrade.

I have a HTPC which I built, a frankenbox, using
a pcchips mobo and an old 950 athlon tbird. This
thing is on all the time, and I think is adding
to my electric bill. A lot. But I'm not sure.

If I spend the $200 I have on a Matsonic MS9377C+
Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
combo deal, and I use this guy for my htpc, would
I save myself a significant # of kwh per month,
assuming the same amount of work?

wrote:
I have about $200 to spend on an upgrade.

I have a HTPC which I built, a frankenbox, using
a pcchips mobo and an old 950 athlon tbird. This
thing is on all the time, and I think is adding
to my electric bill. A lot. But I'm not sure.

If I spend the $200 I have on a Matsonic MS9377C+
Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
combo deal, and I use this guy for my htpc, would
I save myself a significant # of kwh per month,
assuming the same amount of work?

Intel shows power consumption for some of their CPUs at:

http://www.intel.com/support/process...Specifications
The several 2.8 GHz models are either 68 or 89 W.

AMD has data on their current processors at
http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/. I don't know if yours is in
there. However, I've been kinda involved in a similar question
recently, and word on the street is AMD numbers are an upper bound
whereas Intel shows wattage that you will really see. Overall, I
believe there is widespread consensus in the tech community that AMD
has a better handle on power use than does Intel, at least on their
very high-end chips.

I would expect that agressive power-saving settings on current
motherboards would drop consumption to near zero while the thing is
just waiting for the next program to record. There's a lot of
discussion on power in HTPCs but it's all about noise during playback,
not long-term power use. (I have been researching the idea of putting
one together myself, but I haven't got past window shopping.)

On a less direct note, if you're evening wondering this kind of thing,
get yerrself a Kill-A-Watt meter (random vendor result from google:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657/).
I grant you, it'll only answer your question after the fact, but it's
hours of fun. My desktop 19" crt (a rebadged flat-crt trinitron) draws
113W when the screen is predominately bright (like Word or Excel with a
white background) but drops to 89 W with a mostly dark picture. That's
a 24W difference just depending on what picture's on the screen.

Chip C
Toronto

In article . com,
Chip C wrote:
wrote:
I have about $200 to spend on an upgrade.

I have a HTPC which I built, a frankenbox, using
a pcchips mobo and an old 950 athlon tbird. This
thing is on all the time, and I think is adding
to my electric bill. A lot. But I'm not sure.

If I spend the $200 I have on a Matsonic MS9377C+
Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
combo deal, and I use this guy for my htpc, would
I save myself a significant # of kwh per month,
assuming the same amount of work?

Intel shows power consumption for some of their CPUs at:

http://www.intel.com/support/process...Specifications
The several 2.8 GHz models are either 68 or 89 W.

AMD has data on their current processors at
http://www.amdcompare.com/us-en/desktop/. I don't know if yours is in
there. However, I've been kinda involved in a similar question
recently, and word on the street is AMD numbers are an upper bound
whereas Intel shows wattage that you will really see. Overall, I
believe there is widespread consensus in the tech community that AMD
has a better handle on power use than does Intel, at least on their
very high-end chips.

Useful if you're considering upgrading your CPU without changing your
motherboard (though I've never heard of a motherboard that can take either
AMD or Intel CPUs.) How much power goes to the rest of the motherboard?

On a less direct note, if you're evening wondering this kind of thing,
get yerrself a Kill-A-Watt meter (random vendor result from google:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657/).
I grant you, it'll only answer your question after the fact, but it's
hours of fun.

A suitably motivated entity could collect readings of many systems.

My desktop 19" crt (a rebadged flat-crt trinitron) draws
113W when the screen is predominately bright (like Word or Excel with a
white background) but drops to 89 W with a mostly dark picture. That's
a 24W difference just depending on what picture's on the screen.

I _think_ an LCD monitor is slightly the other way, as illumination is
provided by the backlight all the time, then the display transistors turn
transparent (or not) to the required degree. The lowest power state for
them, then, would be all white.

--
-eben m home.tampabay.rr.com/hactar
TAURUS: You will never find true happiness - what you gonna
do, cry about it? The stars predict tomorrow you'll wake up,
do a bunch of stuff and then go back to sleep. -- Weird Al