Green Linux Desktop?

[DnDer]

I'd like to build myself a little linux box. Something to tinker and learn with, but mostly just to get on the net, watch some youtube and leave my messengers up 24-7. Basic stuff.

But I don't need one of these hulking towers or re-purposed old machines that suck power and take up tons of space.

What kind of hardware should I look for to get a little linux box with a lightweight power-consumption profile? Is there a particular "green" hardware vendor out there the community likes? And monitors... Well, maybe my monitor doesn't have to be THAT green. I still love 19"+ widescreen dealies...

Any recommendations for low-profile, low-consumption boxes suitable to linux? And which distros do you think I should be looking at? Xubuntu, because it'll be light on hardware and resources (probably?) ?

[cenzorrll]

if you're building it yourself, pretty much anything that comes on an mini-ITX motherboard is pretty low power consumption. right now i believe the Intel Atom has the best performance per watt rating, followed very closely by the VIA Nano. both of which use very little power.

both of those processors are designed for a "green" desktop. If it is going to be a desktop, then I think the Nano is a slightly better choice, as it has better performance when under load. The atom is designed more for laptops.

Of course, I haven't researched these two since they came out, and I think the atom has a dual core version available now which may outperform the nano.

here's an article on a comaprison between the two, written in 2008

[movieman]

both of which use very little power.

The Nano is 25W, isn't it? A dual-core Atom is about 8W, and I believe the Ion chipset is much lower power than the crappy Intel chipset on the older Atom motherboards.

My Atom-330 with 2GB of RAM, 2.5TB of hard drives and a PVR card takes about 60W from the power socket, and that's with the crappy Intel chipset and a 'free' power supply.

That said, so does my AMD 5000+ system, but it goes up to 110W at full load whereas the Atom goes up to about 70W at full load.