[linux-dvb] Re: reduced power consumption, was Re: Re: Minimum sy stem

[Ralf Bauer <RBauer@quark.de>]

> > or record something. This would lower the standby power 
> consumption to about
> > 1-5 W which is about DM 15,- a year.
> 
> Are you sure?  My ATX computer still consumes 15W in the off 
> state. (Well

I measured it again on the weekend, it is 1.1 W. Don't forget, this is the
"Wirkleistung", the "Scheinleistung" could be more, but you don't pay for
that ;-)
If you just use an Ampere meter and calculate the power consumption, you get
the "Scheinleistung", also cheap power meters do it like this. More
expensive power meters show the correct value for the "Wirkleistung".

But you are right, other power supplies could be much worse, I was also
astonished about this small power consumption. I guess I was just lucky to
pick this case.

>  If your reduce the clock of power intensive parts (CPU, Chipset,
> graphics) and use low power components you can reduce the 
> overall power
> needs to 20-30 Watts or less (I will try it).  (A notebook with active
> display and active harddisk is running 2 hours from 10,8V, 
> 4,5Ah batteries
> -> 24W!)

I think the DVB-S card is a big factor there. Especially the tuner gets very
hot and there are also other components on the DVB-S board to supply the LNB
with power through the coax cable. I haven't measured it yet, but my guesses
are that about 10-15W will be used by each DVB-S card.

> - dont overclock your CPU -> "underclock" it, you can reduce the cpu
>   voltages too (does a 800MHz cpu running at 400MHz?)
> - use 66MHz system clock instead of 133MHz
> - don't use super power high speed 3D graphics cards (or dont use a
> graphics card at all, I think linux can run without graphic, 
> as far as 
> your bios can it)

I'm using the system without graphic card and it works fine, I just get a
couple of beeps when I boot the system.

>  - use 10MBit instead of 100MBit network cards (my 100MBit 
> hub consumes
>   10 Watts!)
> - use all currently supported power saving modes (hard disc standby)
> - use hard disc only for playing/recording (and booting) -> whole
>   root-filesystem in RAM and shut HD down the rest of the day


--- 
Info:
To unsubscribe send a mail to listar@linuxtv.org with "unsubscribe linux-dvb" as subject.