Experiments with Electricity [Archive]

BobLand

February 28th, 2009, 11:30 PM

mtopro

February 28th, 2009, 11:34 PM

I think I will also try it to see if it makes a difference in that bill. Thanks for the tip.

Sealbhach

March 1st, 2009, 12:15 AM

So, we began to shut them off when we went to bed. Then we shut them off when we ate dinner. Now, I don't turn in on every day and my wife turns hers off when she goes out with her running club.

I've always been surprised at people who leave electrical appliances on - consuming power when they're not being used. Even the TV, I don't leave it on standby, I switch it off at the wall socket.

If you're not worried about the bill, think about the fact that you're using up resources (oil) that cannot be prelaced.

.

Firestem4

March 1st, 2009, 12:21 AM

According to a report i read a whilea go the Xbox360 and PS3 sap 15% of its normal running power when they are "shut off".

xpod

March 1st, 2009, 12:44 AM

I have always been rather obsessed with turning everything off at night but it`s nothing to do with saving power and more to do with saving life.
We once listened to our neighbours(one old lady and her 2 Grandchildren) burn to death because of dodgy electrics so it`s always in the back of my mind with 5 kids of my own now.

blastus

March 1st, 2009, 01:39 AM

A while back my wife read an article that said that computers use more electricity then most people realize. Since we both came from an IT background, leaving a computer on 24/7 was a no-brainer.

So, we began to shut them off when we went to bed. Then we shut them off when we ate dinner. Now, I don't turn in on every day and my wife turns hers off when she goes out with her running club.

On our last bill I compared what we used last year at this time to the present. We are using about 15% less then last year.

If you are concerned about your electric bill, try turning your computer off when you go to bed, unless your dogs or cats use it when you are asleep.

bobland

Have you measured how much electricity your computer is actually using? I doubt you are saving 15% off your electricity bill just by not keeping one or two computers running 24/7.

Right now mine is using 103W. When gaming it shoots up. Both my desktops are plugged into Zalman power adapters as part of a fan controller that measures wattage consumption. A large part of consumption has to with the TDP of your CPU, your video card, and the efficiency of your power supply (mine is 80+ certified.)

It is a really BAD IDEA to recommend shutting off a computer on a daily basis. Unless you have data on it that you don't care to lose, the risk of hard drive failure is much higher than if you just leaved it on. Hard drives almost always fail when a computer is turned on, not when it is running. When you turn a computer on, a surge in electricity is sent throughout all the components which increases the stress on the system.

swoll1980

March 1st, 2009, 01:44 AM

I heard that just the energy that is wasted by it turning into heat, is enough to light an office.

tom66

March 1st, 2009, 01:51 AM

It is a really BAD IDEA to recommend shutting off a computer on a daily basis. Unless you have data on it that you don't care to lose, the risk of hard drive failure is much higher than if you just leaved it on. Hard drives almost always fail when a computer is turned on, not when it is running. When you turn a computer on, a surge in electricity is sent throughout all the components which increases the stress on the system.

Uh, power supplies are regulated for a good reason; there's no 'surge of electricity' or else most CPUs would go up in smoke. Same for power adapters for cars (the myth that you shouldn't start the car with the adapter in - it'll kill whatever's plugged in the other end because of the 'surge of electricity'. Even if the regulator failed, 99.9% of the time it will fail closed, that is, it would stop conducting.) I've actually measured voltage from a power supply and discovered something different though - when switching off, just before the power supply's AC regulation capacitors drain (switching off at the back) the voltage shoots up by about .3 volts. Not much, and only for half a second (enough to increase the brightness on some LEDs), but it's probably poor regulation trying to account for the change in voltage. The power supply in question is old and cheap, so...

Oh, and just a note. If only the HDD controller (the main circuit board on the HDD) fails that can be repaired with appropriate parts. You could take it to any data recovery expert and they probably wouldn't have a problem.

RichardLinx

March 1st, 2009, 01:55 AM

You mean computers can be turned off?

blastus

March 1st, 2009, 02:23 AM

Uh, power supplies are regulated for a good reason; there's no 'surge of electricity' or else most CPUs would go up in smoke. Same for power adapters for cars (the myth that you shouldn't start the car with the adapter in - it'll kill whatever's plugged in the other end because of the 'surge of electricity'. Even if the regulator failed, 99.9% of the time it will fail closed, that is, it would stop conducting.) I've actually measured voltage from a power supply and discovered something different though - when switching off, just before the power supply's AC regulation capacitors drain (switching off at the back) the voltage shoots up by about .3 volts. Not much, and only for half a second (enough to increase the brightness on some LEDs), but it's probably poor regulation trying to account for the change in voltage. The power supply in question is old and cheap, so...

Are you saying that turning a computer on does not put ANY stress on ANY components? Does that mean I can then turn a computer on/off every five minutes continually and not shorten the life of anything but perhaps the physical switch?

Oh, and just a note. If only the HDD controller (the main circuit board on the HDD) fails that can be repaired with appropriate parts. You could take it to any data recovery expert and they probably wouldn't have a problem.

No-one themselves are going to be able to diagnose the difference between a failed controller and other failed parts inside a hard drive. Data recovery is extremely expensive (in the order of thousands of dollars) so unless you have data that is worth that much to you it is not worth it. Besides, if the data is encrypted (like mine is) they can't recover anything for you.

solitaire

March 1st, 2009, 02:28 AM

Uh, power supplies are regulated for a good reason; there's no 'surge of electricity' or else most CPUs would go up in smoke. Same for power adapters for cars (the myth that you shouldn't start the car with the adapter in - it'll kill whatever's plugged in the other end because of the 'surge of electricity'. Even if the regulator failed, 99.9% of the time it will fail closed, that is, it would stop conducting.) I've actually measured voltage from a power supply and discovered something different though - when switching off, just before the power supply's AC regulation capacitors drain (switching off at the back) the voltage shoots up by about .3 volts. Not much, and only for half a second (enough to increase the brightness on some LEDs), but it's probably poor regulation trying to account for the change in voltage. The power supply in question is old and cheap, so...

Oh, and just a note. If only the HDD controller (the main circuit board on the HDD) fails that can be repaired with appropriate parts. You could take it to any data recovery expert and they probably wouldn't have a problem.

The "turning off and on" is more to do with the thermal stress of the components than the surge of power. Going from cool to red hot in a matter of seconds then back to cool repeatedly can weaken connections and components. That's why most failures happen when powering on in modern machines.

tom66

March 1st, 2009, 02:34 AM

Temperature stresses could be a problem (components heat up rapidly when power is applied, so they could be damaged), but that's something different. I guess if you're talking about hard drives, then constantly parking and starting the disk isn't good for it. But you're not going to do that if you just switch if off every night. Right?

Why can't a HDD be recovered if it's got a bad controller and it's encrypted? Is it hardware level encryption?

rhcm123

March 1st, 2009, 02:40 AM

You mean computers can be turned off?

:lolflag:

Actually, i heard that the power adapters from laptops generate more heat energy than electrical energy (mine certaintly does).

Unforunatley, i have to leave my webserver(s) on 24/7 365, as i host bzness websites on it, and i look at the incoming logs and people are still using it at 3 AM. I don't wanna **** off the customer(s) in this economy.

However, i always turn things off. The only adapter constantly plugged in is my phone adapter, the rest are on an extension cord i can just yank out.

tom66

March 1st, 2009, 02:44 AM

rhcm123

March 1st, 2009, 02:53 AM

A suggestion, but look at your peak times and see if you can perhaps switch one server off during off-peak times so that you only consume 1/2 power during off-peak times. I don't know, you might need the other servers for multiple websites, or one might be a database server...

I do have to keep my trusty Compaq running, though. It sits in my room recording, of all things, the sky. Been running for almost 17 days now without reboot.

Why on earth are you recording the sky? :D

Anyways, there are no "off-peak times" per se, as my customers want 24/7 hosting, which i can't really cut off for enviromental concerns. (Wow i sound evil)

I do however, have the most efficent machines i could find: Laptops, which are way more power efficient than desktop servers)

blastus

March 1st, 2009, 02:55 AM

Why can't a HDD be recovered if it's got a bad controller and it's encrypted? Is it hardware level encryption?

Using dm-crypt you can recover the data as long as it is intact and you have the passphrase. You'd have to give up your passphrase otherwise they would have no way of really knowing if the data is truly intact. I say in practice it is not possible to recover such data because I doubt there are a lot of companies that offer such a service and if they did it would likely be prohibitively expensive.

tom66

March 1st, 2009, 10:29 AM

It's for timelapses. At the moment it isn't being used. I have a small black and white video camera and I'm using it as a monitor because it's got a TV card.

Swagman

March 1st, 2009, 01:23 PM

Wifey has always been paranoid about turning appliances off at bedtime. She begrudgingly leaves the fridge switched on and the vcr on standby. Everything else is killed at the wall socket.

It annoyed the heck out of me when we first got married (22 years ago) but she has a point. We have had people we know incinerated (whilst they slept) through bad electrics.

This is another reason why I have never bothered with a home server. I'd have to clamber into the loft everyday just to boot it !!

forrestcupp

March 1st, 2009, 01:53 PM

If you are concerned about your electric bill, try turning your computer off when you go to bed, unless your dogs or cats use it when you are asleep.

bobland

But if we do that, we can't brag about our up time! :D

Everyone knows that up time is more important than saving on your electric bill and saving the environment, even on a home desktop.

We don't want to feel guilty about things, so we try to come up with arguments that make it seem that it would destroy our computers if we turn them off at night. ;)

3rdalbum

March 1st, 2009, 03:40 PM

My main computer is my media server. I don't usually leave it turned on, but I tend to leave it suspended so it can come back up really quickly. Of course, this stops me from killing the power at the surge board.

Sealbhach

March 1st, 2009, 04:10 PM

But if we do that, we can't brag about our up time! :D

Everyone knows that up time is more important than saving on your electric bill and saving the environment, even on a home desktop.

Oh yeah, uptime. That's why we post screenshots in the Conky thread.:P

.

garba

March 1st, 2009, 04:37 PM

You mean computers can be turned off?

:lolflag:

BobLand

March 1st, 2009, 07:53 PM

Everyone knows that up time is more important than saving on your electric bill and saving the environment, even on a home desktop.

Once I switched to Ubuntu, my machine's up time was about 18 months. That was before we got the new computers and decided to power down regularly. Most I ever got from W2K was 4-5 months.

bobland

shadylookin

March 1st, 2009, 09:55 PM

The utility companies around here charge a reduced rate for the more you consume. So no matter if you suffer to save the environment or try and use as much fossil fuel as possible to kill everyone off your bill will be about the same. That said I usually leave my desktop on overnight because it's almost always doing some task.

Wifey has always been paranoid about turning appliances off at bedtime. She begrudgingly leaves the fridge switched on and the vcr on standby. Everything else is killed at the wall socket.

It annoyed the heck out of me when we first got married (22 years ago) but she has a point. We have had people we know incinerated (whilst they slept) through bad electrics.

This is another reason why I have never bothered with a home server. I'd have to clamber into the loft everyday just to boot it !!

that doesn't stop a rodent from getting in your walls chewing on your electrical wire and causing a fire that kills you in your sleep(just thought I'd add to your paranoia)

HermanAB

March 1st, 2009, 09:57 PM

My favourite electricity experiment uses two nails, some rip cord and a hot dog...

Ssssszzzzzzttt!!! Hot, hotdog...

Cheers,

Herman

forrestcupp

March 2nd, 2009, 03:26 PM

Once I switched to Ubuntu, my machine's up time was about 18 months. That was before we got the new computers and decided to power down regularly. Most I ever got from W2K was 4-5 months.

bobland

I have just as much up time in Vista that I do in Ubuntu.

But, honestly, if you're talking about a home computer, why in the world does up time even matter? If it's for bragging rights, big deal, my Vista can stay up just as long. Up time just for the sake of up time is totally unnecessary.

There are only 2 reasons that I leave my computer on all the time.
1. I'm too lazy to try to remember to turn it off at night.
2. I'm too lazy and impatient to wait for it to boot up in the morning.

halovivek

March 2nd, 2009, 03:52 PM

I have just as much up time in Vista that I do in Ubuntu.

But, honestly, if you're talking about a home computer, why in the world does up time even matter? If it's for bragging rights, big deal, my Vista can stay up just as long. Up time just for the sake of up time is totally unnecessary.

There are only 2 reasons that I leave my computer on all the time.
1. I'm too lazy to try to remember to turn it off at night.
2. I'm too lazy and impatient to wait for it to boot up in the morning.

I am too lazy... i use ubuntu and i dont want to reboot it again. so it is great to be in ubuntu.

mips

March 2nd, 2009, 03:56 PM

that doesn't stop a rodent from getting in your walls chewing on your electrical wire and causing a fire that kills you in your sleep(just thought I'd add to your paranoia)

If you had decent building materials & standards that would not happen.

gletob

March 2nd, 2009, 04:29 PM

You mean computers can be turned off?

I don't believe them either.

Skripka

March 2nd, 2009, 04:36 PM

If you had decent building materials & standards that would not happen.

Or didn't leave food out for said rodent in the 1st place.....

Dougie187

March 2nd, 2009, 04:39 PM

one thing you could use to save some power with your computer, assuming you are using it as a server, would be to set it up to allow wake-on-lan. And then figure out a way to remotely turn it on when you need it. That way you can have it off at home, and then just turn it on when you need to.

I don't know how difficult it is to set this up, but I would think it should be do-able.

ArtF10

March 2nd, 2009, 05:07 PM

These days, hardware devices are lasting longer than users will ever need them to.i.e. on average, they will ONLY be replaced because newer and more powerful devices are available for purchase.

Swagman

March 2nd, 2009, 06:11 PM

Or didn't leave food out for said rodent in the 1st place.....

No rodent here... I use a trackball !!

:P

jerrrys

March 2nd, 2009, 07:52 PM

how bout a new twist on the subject? my system can run 120v or 220v. will running 220v save some $$..

forrestcupp

March 2nd, 2009, 08:02 PM

how bout a new twist on the subject? my system can run 120v or 220v. will running 220v save some $$..

A computer that runs on 220? Does it have a robotic arc welder attachment or something?

rhcm123

March 2nd, 2009, 09:12 PM

A computer that runs on 220? Does it have a robotic arc welder attachment or something?

Actually, most power supplies have a switch in the back that lets you use either 120 or 240 (LEARN THE CORRECT NUMBERS!!! - Sorry, uncle's an electrician and he ingrained these things into my head). Just be sure to get a 240 volt cord otherwise you'll fry something

WatchingThePain

March 2nd, 2009, 09:30 PM

Who knows, but if your dog likes browsing at night time, maybe checking images of marrowbones, then let them have fun. When my electric was on a pay as you go meter you could see that the pc used a tiny amount and cost hardly anything to run. Why not just turn on the power saving stuff (which I tend to disable).
I wish my pc could use more power..so when I turn it on all the neighbourhood lights go out.

Vince4Amy

March 2nd, 2009, 09:35 PM

I always switch everything off from the at the wall at night or when I go out, just annoys me with things that don't have CMOS batteries where the time keeps being reset like the TV, VCR or Xbox (Come On Microsoft even my Saturn has a battery).

jerrrys

March 2nd, 2009, 10:07 PM

Actually, most power supplies have a switch in the back that lets you use either 120 or 240 (LEARN THE CORRECT NUMBERS!!! - Sorry, uncle's an electrician and he ingrained these things into my head). Just be sure to get a 240 volt cord otherwise you'll fry something

right on all accounts rhcm123...

PartisanEntity

March 2nd, 2009, 10:48 PM

Have you measured how much electricity your computer is actually using? I doubt you are saving 15% off your electricity bill just by not keeping one or two computers running 24/7.

Right now mine is using 103W. When gaming it shoots up. Both my desktops are plugged into Zalman power adapters as part of a fan controller that measures wattage consumption. A large part of consumption has to with the TDP of your CPU, your video card, and the efficiency of your power supply (mine is 80+ certified.)

It is a really BAD IDEA to recommend shutting off a computer on a daily basis. Unless you have data on it that you don't care to lose, the risk of hard drive failure is much higher than if you just leaved it on. Hard drives almost always fail when a computer is turned on, not when it is running. When you turn a computer on, a surge in electricity is sent throughout all the components which increases the stress on the system.

Can't say I relate to what you are saying.

a. That's why we make backups, so if something fails, you replace it and have your data back.

b. I have been turning all my computers on and off, nearly on a daily basis. And I have had my systems last well past 10 years each.

I don't see the nightmare scenario of turning your devices off.

Plus it makes sense not to have them consuming any amount of power when not really needed.

This has more to do with our decadent lifestyles than with saving huge amounts of energy. Although of course, if we all stuck to turning off devices when they are not needed then collectively we would make a huge difference.

We turn off cars, lights, ovens, so why not computers also?

IMO mainly because they are viewed as entertainment devices, and we all want our fix immediately. I guess the though of waiting a minute for a system to power up is a nightmare for some :)

jerrrys

March 2nd, 2009, 11:14 PM

PartisanEntity said:
"IMO mainly because they are viewed as entertainment devices, and we all want our fix immediately. I guess the though of waiting a minute for a system to power up is a nightmare for some"

whatever happen to the standby mode? got it on mine, but only because its old..

jerrrys

March 2nd, 2009, 11:23 PM

duhhh..that would be sleep...nevermind

Daveski

March 3rd, 2009, 01:24 AM

A computer that runs on 220? Does it have a robotic arc welder attachment or something?

Some of us live in countries where the only supply is 240 volts.

Grant A.

March 3rd, 2009, 01:39 AM

If you shut off your computer regularly remember to clean the fans once a week, as dust builds up over night when you shut it off.

jerrrys

March 3rd, 2009, 02:55 AM

dust wouldn't be a problem if you didn't have all those cows running around

jimi_hendrix

March 3rd, 2009, 03:20 AM

If you're not worried about the bill, think about the fact that you're using up resources (oil) that cannot be prelaced.

well if we run out of oil, the human mind will find a new resource...or it becomes more expensive than renewable means like ethenal

jerrrys

March 3rd, 2009, 05:22 AM

Some of us live in countries where the only supply is 240 volts.

because its more economical than 120..right

forrestcupp

March 3rd, 2009, 03:48 PM

Some of us live in countries where the only supply is 240 volts.

I understand that. I was just kind of joking because the guy originally said 220 not 240. In the US we use 220 for things like welders, dryers, ovens, and other things that use a lot of power.

If he would have said 240, I would have let it go.

mips

March 3rd, 2009, 05:23 PM

I understand that. I was just kind of joking because the guy originally said 220 not 240. In the US we use 220 for things like welders, dryers, ovens, and other things that use a lot of power.

If he would have said 240, I would have let it go.

Even within a country the voltage can fluctuate depending on where you are. I think over here it varies between 220V, 230V & 240V. Not really an issue as your appliances still work fine.