[ubuntu-uk] downloading slow torrents & energy consumption

[Daniel Drummond]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

alan c wrote:
> doug livesey wrote:
>> Hi -- I (sort of) noticed a while back some marketing gumph that suggested
>> that Ubuntu servers can be configured to reduce power consumption when they
>> are not under heavy load, and was wondering if something similar was
>> available (generally, I mean, not *just* for Ubuntu) for domestic use.
>> The obvious case that springs to mind is when I have a long download going &
>> want to leave my PC on overnight.
>> (Currently, I generally don't, as I feel bad about the energy I'm wasting.)
>> So would it be possible to leave a download going & in some way put the rest
>> of your computer to sleep to save on power?
>> Is there anything that does that?
> 
> I have a machine  on 24/7 gently seeding various torrents and my 
> pragmatic solution is to choose the oldest slowest machine that can 
> cope, in my case a PII 350MHz. I have not done any measurements but my 
> guess is that such a machine will consume relatively low power, 
> obviously I turn the monitor off.
This isn't necessarily the lowest power machine - a newer chip will be
more efficient, using less power for a particular speed. I've been doing
a little research into low power computers for use as a basic home
server, and many people recommend using a laptop, or a laptop processor
for minimal power usage. For example most amd turion processors run at
25/35 Watts, while the same speed desktop processors run at 65 Watts or
more.

Ensuring that you have your machine to run with a variable cpu frequency
(I think this is fairly standard in modern distro) and setting it to
powersave, or ondemand will help minimise power consumption, as will
removing any non-essential hardware (sound cards, video cards - if you
can use on board video) as well as turning off monitor(if you use one at
all on a server) will help too.

Dan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkndyc0ACgkQDLKnekIRi3aOVQCfaPP5XDUMmeHmoQ1zz8JpOVyg
tWwAnjDUoxUMH5ZgpgXSKL9oGbEN851u
=sQka
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----