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Building a Green PC

Posted by kdawson on Tue Feb 26, 2008 05:56 AM
from the in-time-for-st.-patrick's dept.
Earth Hardware
Kermit writes "Ars Technica has put together a green DIY system building guide. The idea is to build a PC offering decent energy efficiency as well as solid performance. The 'Green Gaming Box' draws about 125W at full load (not including a monitor); the minimalist 'Extreme Green Box' uses a mini-ITX case and a VIA CPU-motherboard combo for about 30W at typical load. If you want to mix and match components, or modify your current system so that it uses less energy, there are plenty of options for swapping out individual components."
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Submission: Building a green, energy-efficient PC by Anonymous Coward
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  • Paint it green! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Or black.

  • Nothing is easier (Score:4, Funny)

    by Bin Naden (910327) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:01AM (#22556690)
    Nothing is easier than building a green PC, just take out the can of green spray paint.

  • "Green Computing" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cccc828 (740705) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:08AM (#22556706)
    As long as rain forests are stubbed for easier access to copper mines
    As long as local people are poisoned by the toxic byproducts of metal refinement
    As long as people in Africa or Eastern Europe dissable old computers without any protective clothing
    As long as children assemble computers for $1/hour in Asia

    I refuse to equal "green computing" and enviromental friendly.

    In truth it is just another catchy phrase to sell you yet a new computer. Buying a new computer does nature more harm than just keeping your old computer.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by bhima (46039) *
      I think you have confused the concepts of ethical and green. That and disable and disassemble.

      Not that I wholly disagree with your sentiments.

      • Green == production and Green power (Score:5, Insightful)

        by emj (15659) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:29AM (#22556776) Homepage Journal
        The most important part of getting a Green computer is the cost to the environment to produce the computer. Buying new computers just to get a green computer is hence very stupid. Better than try to build a green computer would be to use an old computer and go over to green electricty. If you are going to buy a slow VIA computer yo umight as well have an old computer.

        The problem with costs today is that no long term costs are included in prices, copper mines that poison areas bigger than Los Angeles have no obligation to pay for what they destroy. The mining inudstry is very very dirty, they some are situated near natural reserves, which mean we are going to have to fix everything after they have shut down.

        There are mines in Sweden that are still being cleaned up, 30 years after shutting down.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by bhima (46039) *
          My family runs a foundation which I work for part time. As part of that work I have helped construct and outfit some clinics in a few mining towns. Two that stick out in my mind are in Peru and in Namibia. Without being there, seeing it, and treating the people who live in the surrounding areas I don't think most westerners can even imagine the extent of damage mining really does.
          • Some of us westerners live in mining towns. North Americans may have toned down the strip mining, but we're not above knocking off the top of a mountain if it suits us.

            There are people around where my inlaws live that are still dying of mining-related diseases, despite living in "the west".
    • C'mon!! Any "attempt" to make the earth greener should be lauded. Personally, I have a little plant atop my monitor.

    • Re:"Green Computing" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by upside (574799) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:32AM (#22556794) Journal
      There are obviously various dimensions to "going green":
      1) Not buying. Reuse instead.
      2) Buying as little as possible.
      3) When buying, buy environmentally friendly.

      You can take a queue from data centers where power and heat are major issues. Instead of having a spinny whirly storage (or even solid state) on every PC, use NAS or SAN. If you've got to have 2nd - Nth PCs, use PXE, NFS and iSCSI for storage. Virtualization can help save power, too.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by SammyB (903607)
        It's called Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. They are not in that order to just sound nice.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by gosand (234100)
        There are obviously various dimensions to "going green":
        1) Not buying. Reuse instead.
        2) Buying as little as possible.
        3) When buying, buy environmentally friendly.

        I am sure some people here would be shocked, but I run a Duron 1.3 processor, with a Zalman fanless heatsink, and 768 MB of PC-133 memory. I run dual displays (CRTs) but they shut off after 5 minutes of inactivity. The machine is up all the time (current uptime is 70 days), so I am sure I am pulling some power. I live in AZ, and in the summer i

    • Exactly. The energy footprint is fairly easy to offset with a renewable power source. The cost of manufacturing and disposing of the thing is where the problem lies.
        • That sounds unlikely, unless you disregard the recycling at the end of the cars life.

          • No, it's true. Biggest problem is how to dispose of that rechargeable battery with all those chemicals and heavy metals in it; they're a lot nastier than your regular car battery.

            Second biggest problem is building that battery in the first place. IIRC, nickel and other ore refined using chemicals that make oven cleaner look like lemonade, then sent to Japan for manufacture into intermediate parts, then sent back to China for assembly into the actual battery, before being shipped to America. Lots of mil

            • Well, considering that Toyota already has a recycling process in place, I'm not sure how much of a problem it is for you. The question of how much pollution the car causes, to include manufacturing and emissions both, has already been looked into. The Prius is the best alternative, pollution-wise, on the road (assuming you count only production cars). Yes, the batteries are shipped, as are transmissions and other replaceable parts on regular cars.

              If you're stuck on the shipping question, be fair an

              • It uses different resources, tho. Less black gold, more earth metals.

                But, it's not like I care - I drive a Buick Roadmaster, the thing's the unholy combination of a boat and a tank, and has a V8.

                MPG doesn't matter if you don't drive much, or very far, and maintenance isn't bad.

        • This reminded me of the Prius problem mentioned on slashdot last year.


          Aren't you supposed to seek medical attention if it goes on for more than 4 hours?

    • Assuming you are talking US$ here (there are so many $ in the world), you obviously don't know what you are talking about. US$1 per hour is a very good salary there. No kidding. More common salaries for assembly workers in China are about USD3-4 per day, 10-12 hour working days. In India maybe a little higher but not much, certainly not on the countryside.
      And still many of those workers consider it good money.
      The rest of your sentiments are very reasonable though.

        • Re:"Green Computing" (Score:5, Insightful)

          by upside (574799) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:41AM (#22556820) Journal
          You're right. From the manufacturer's point of view being greener is a competitive advantage. It's up to consumers - and depending on your political views, government regulation - to make sure it's a big advantage. Don't use the "out to make money" an excuse to disregard environmental considerations and personal responsibility when making purchases. "Manufacturers of hybrid cars are just out to make money, I might as well buy an SUV". On the other hand, as an employee you can also affect the behaviour of your company. Keep asking what the company is doing to reduce waste. Phrase it so it sounds appealing - saving power and improved efficiency save costs for the company.

      • Re:"Green Computing" (Score:5, Insightful)

        by BVis (267028) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @09:35AM (#22557914)

        Using a few watts less on your gaming rig is not going to make any difference to your "carbon footprint" or your electricity bill.
        That just isn't true. The generation of electricity still releases CO2 into the atmosphere; less electricity generated = less CO2. Not to mention that your electricity bill is (generally) directly proportional to how much energy you use, so if you use less energy, your bill is lower.

        What you're saying is that if I have 20 marbles in a bag, and take two out, I still have 20 marbles in the bag. It's just not true.

        All these little steps add up over the long run. Reducing your energy consumption by 3% might not seem like a huge difference, but if millions of people do it, it makes a difference. I recently measured how much power my computer rack uses, and found that I could cut usage by 25% through a few simple steps (like making sure the CRT I sometimes use on my firewall is powered down, setting the drives in my system to spin down after a certian amount of idle time, etc.) The whole thing (three computers, two monitors, various networking bits, laser printer) consumes 300 watts at idle. That 100 watts I save from shutting off the monitor adds up to 584 kW/h each year (if it's off 16 hours each day), which in my state keeps 7,475 pounds of CO2 out of the atmosphere, and saves me $97 in electricity annually. From only shutting off a monitor!

        The shit adds up. Throwing your hands in the air because there's no one thing you can do that's a magic bullet for the energy problem is cynical and lazy.

  • If you're serious about green, go matte black (Score:5, Insightful)

    by parlyboy (603457) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:18AM (#22556734)
    Get a used Thinkpad.

    Lower energy usage. Recycled. Probably faster than the VIA. And you can beat a burglar to death with it.

    What's not to like?

    • Notes from the Thinkpad manual (Score:5, Funny)

      by GameboyRMH (1153867) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @09:06AM (#22557658)

      And you can beat a burglar to death with it.
      12-c: Using your Thinkpad as a Weapon

      Your Thinkpad can be used in self defense, should the situation arise. If your model is not equipped with a solid-state disk, or a conventional hard disk with a safety accelerometer, the computer should be put into standy or hibernation mode, or ideally powered off before use as a weapon.

      Technique

      Grasp the Thinkpad firmly with both hands at the front corners, and swing down on your target, striking with the underside and rear corners. Do not swing the Thinkpad by any cords or dongles. Advanced users may hold the unit by the front with one hand for fast melee attacks.

      After Battle

      Open the unit and ensure that all internal components are seated properly, as some may have come loose during battle. Clean any spills with a slightly damp cloth and dry immediately. If bodily fluids should find their way inside the laptop, hold it upside-down and let the fluids drain out, remove the battery and send it to the nearest Certified Repair Center.

      Refer to section 5-a on installation and removal of internal components.

      *Note that battle damage is only covered under the Extended Service Warranty.

  • I don't have a green PC (Score:4, Interesting)

    by L4t3r4lu5 (1216702) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:28AM (#22556774)
    Tagan 800w PSU, Core2Quad Q6600, NF4650SLI motherboard, 8800gtx, backlit keyboard, wireless mouse (with transformer).

    However, I DO ride a motorcycle, pumping out far less CO2 than almost any other motorised road vehicle.

    I also don't have a TV, as my PC does everything I need it to. MORE savings. It's not about a green PC, it's about reducing load on the grid. I do it by having less equipment, not greener equipment.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by heapcat (1237224)

      However, I DO ride a motorcycle, pumping out far less CO2 than almost any other motorised road vehicle.

      Not quite true. http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~siah/MiniProjects/MotorcyclePollution.html [berkeley.edu] In urban setting yes, but in rural or highway driving they pump out more CO2 pollution. About 50% more.

      Remember less gas != less CO2. Just check your lawn mower.

      • Re:I don't have a green PC (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 26 2008, @10:54AM (#22558836)
        >Remember less gas != less CO2.

        Of course it does. That's why you need to read the spreadsheet instead of just the link. They're not calculating CO2 but CO2 equivalents. Basically the motorcycles that they measured don't have catalytic converters so they put out more CO HC and NOx. These are then converted to something called "global warming potential" by multiplying them by 3, 12 and 296 respectively. Oh, and I can't get at the original article. But I can get at the second link in the spreadsheet and guess what... the number 296 is for N2O not for NOx. NOx is thought to be greenhouse neutral so the number should be zero. Plug that into the sheet et voilà. Bikes are 10% cleaner than cars. Never ever believe global warming believers at their word.
    • "I also don't have a TV, as my PC does everything I need it to."

      So you watch TV using your nuclear reactor of a computer? Yeah, that's going to help the load on the grid.
        • Bikes are no more dangerous than cars; It's the idiot in control that causes accidents.

          That is precisely GP's point. You are only a small fraction of the equation compared to the tens or hundreds of cars you drive by/with on a given day. You can be the greatest driver in the world but it only takes one idiot to knock you out for good.

          Don't get me wrong, I bicycle to work in the summer, rain or shine. I love it. But don't fool yourself, the bike is far more dangerous than the car. When two cars collide,
  • Then keep the machine you have and turn on system standby/sleep functions. It is free and will save far more power than anything Ars is hocking.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by bcrowell (177657)

      Then keep the machine you have and turn on system standby/sleep functions.
      One practical issue I've run into here is that power management support on linux is simply horrible. I've never, ever had power management work properly on any pc hardware with linux. And to be fair, I don't think it's the fault of the kernel developers or the distros. Apparently the hardware manufacturers refuse to publicly document the registers that need to be saved when their chipsets go to sleep. One thing that really does wor

  • hmm. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by apodyopsis (1048476) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @06:52AM (#22556846)
    build modular components that can be combined, recycled and handed down. the trick to being green is to mandate power efficiency and buy/recycle intelligently. for computers it maddens me that people get a top of the range high power monster to browse the net and do word processing, when their old PC would of done the job fine. MS and their ilk persuade people to upgrade by relying on things like redundant feature creep and security FUD to stop them using older versions, but in reality older versions could be relied on to do the work if security patches were updated. you do not need a quad core 2GB machine to read email, but you do need a whizzy machine to run vista and thats were MS makes their money. use that older PC as a work horse for 5 years instead of 1 and you have been five times more green. on another note with LCD screen, I was thinking the other month if anybody has every consider a LCD monitor where the backplate can be tilted down flat with a mirror surface to shine sunlight up into the back of the screen - aka a natural backlight? i ask as thats one of the major power drains on a laptop and you would not need that much sunlight to make it readable. roll on an epaper laptop with flash storage for extreme low power/long battery usage. how an "Asus EEE-Paper"?
      • It's a Hyperthreaded P-IV 2.6GHz with 2Gig RAM. 5 years old, and still going strong for everything we do on it. Of course, we don't do stuff like ripping DVDs or edit home video...

        I have a very similar level PC, and ripping DVD's and editing video works just fine.
  • I'm interested in buying energy efficient products and ecologically sound products and I am just getting to the point where I am wanting to update the server in my studio.

    After doing a bit a research I have concluded that I will hold off until the summer. I am not a big fan of VIA and I'm sure that their processors aren't capable enough for my particular needs. The new CPUs from Intel have better performance per watt (or what ever metric you chose to use) than the older ones but they haven't released the L

  • OLPC XO laptop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lobiusmoop (305328) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @07:05AM (#22556904) Homepage
    125W? For a _really_ green PC, check out the XO-1 [wikipedia.org]. It is not just physically green, it runs at 2-3W. Another upshot of this is that the battery life is 9 to 10 hours.
    • Isn't that the draw only in idle mode? That, when active, it's slightly higher?

      Still, when running I read the screen uses 2W instead of the typical notebook LCD 25-35W. And it's also readable in daylight (alas in B/W). The rest of the savings come from it being a relatively low performance CPU and the SSD harddrive.

      Why can't the 2 grand Macbook Pros have this screen? Or any notebook for that matter? I read that the OLPC leader refuses to commercialize the patents, but that seems myopic on his part -- h
  • Somehow I don't think it's going to run Crysis very well. Never mind.
  • If you really want to be green, get a Palm Pilot (or some feature rich cell phone equivalent) with a rollup keyboard. Plug it into a monitor & that's about as green as you can get.

    http://www.palminfocenter.com/view_story.asp?ID=6455 [palminfocenter.com]
    I guess it depends on what you consider a PC

  • Kermit writes (Score:4, Funny)

    by MT628496 (959515) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @07:28AM (#22556992)
    Am I the only one that chuckled at this?

  • Wattage is the new penis size (Score:3, Informative)

    by smchris (464899) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @08:13AM (#22557258)
    Not my original quote. It's true. I replaced the PS on 24/7 MythTV and DSL web server machines and my 17 hour/day desktop with 300 w 80Plus PSes. Work fine. Dropped my power bill by $10-12/month.

    I have to believe some huge corporation will catch on to this and _demand_ 80Plus for their next thousands of machines and in 10 years we'll be amazed that computers were sold without efficient power supplies.
     

  • Green Software + Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ngarrang (1023425) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @08:21AM (#22557314) Journal
    We would not need to worry about the topic of 'green' PCs if we did not have such bloated software that continues to require ever more CPU cycles per second to accomplish their task. There was a time when software was written in to be tight and memory efficient. WordPerfect for DOS comes to mind.

    Low-power PCs are a good idea, sure, but we need our software to also be efficient. The two, together, could get us a long way toward truly 'green' computing.

    And while I am ranting about bad software design...

    AC-to-DC conversion is messy and lossy. Fortunately, we do have servers that can take DC directly from a shared AC-DC power supply. This concept needs to move into the home. Why should my PC, monitor, printer and God knows what else all each have their own AC-DC power converter box? Homes could have a single large converter and then have DC-only outlets for all those appliances that need it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Stachybotris (936861)

      AC-to-DC conversion is messy and lossy. Fortunately, we do have servers that can take DC directly from a shared AC-DC power supply. This concept needs to move into the home. Why should my PC, monitor, printer and God knows what else all each have their own AC-DC power converter box? Homes could have a single large converter and then have DC-only outlets for all those appliances that need it.

      That's such an insipidly great idea (especially when you stop and consider that all of your consoles, your TV, your stereo, and pretty much every other electronic device in your house is running a rectifier of its own) that you just know it won't even be considered. From the hardware standpoint, however, it wouldn't actually be that difficult to implement - you'd just have to get a standardized power cable and outlet. Oh, wait, we have those already - we use them in racks.

      And from an economical/'green

    • There is already software that is easier on resources. How many people use Word when Abiword, or even a text editor, would do what they needed? I use OS X, and to tell the truth, Textedit and TexShop pretty much meet my actual requirements. Actually, vi and iTerm would meet them, but you get the point. But people don't use what they need--they use what they like. What they like depends on more than just need. Familiarity, convenience, vanity ("I'm a power user, so Abiword isn't enough for me!)", and

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ps236 (965675)
      Switched-mode power supplies (as found in most 'big' computing equipment like PCs, monitors, printers etc) are pretty energy efficient, and can use almost no power in 'standby' mode.

      Having one big DC supply with lots of outlets in your home is likely to be less energy efficient (because of the large voltage loss over long cable runs at high currents) than having local ones.

      That's not to say that having one SMPS per PC, with DC outlets on the back of the PC for monitor, printer etc wouldn't be a good idea -
  • This thing will go great with my 52" plasma TV! Never let it be said that I'm not environmentally conscious.

  • Quick and cheap advice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aceticon (140883) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @10:13AM (#22558314)
    Here's a couple of quick and cheap tricks for turning your existing computer greener:
    • Get one of these Intelli Panel [oneclickpower.com] or similar (there are other brands). Basically it's an "intelligent" panel where you plug your computer to a master socket and all the peripherals to the other sockets. When the computer is on, all the other sockets get power, when the computer is off, all the other sockets have no power. If you add up the trickle power consumed in standby mode by the power sources of all the peripherals (usually at least 3 - monitor, printer and loudspeakers) you will see that this thing pays itself after a while (for the typical techie setup this thing pays itself in no time)
    • Under-clock your CPU. Really! Just do the exact opposite of all those over-clocking articles: reduce the frequency (say, 10%), reduce the Voltage if possible, remove the enormous fan from the top of your CPU cooler. The power vs frequency behaviour of a CPU is non-linear - especially at the top of it's frequency range - so a small reduction in speed = a large reduction in power consumed. See http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/f/98f3fe47-dfc3-4e74-92a3-088782200fe7/TWDT05003_WinHEC05.ppt [microsoft.com] (page 13) for an example. Ditching the fan and getting a quieter machine in the process is just a pleasant side effect of this.
    • Under-clock the GPU and memory of your graphics card. (i bet that at this point most hard-core gamers out there are doubting my geek credentials). Ditch the fan if you can. Same rationale as for the CPUs.
    • If you still have a CRT monitor, get an LCD one instead. No explanation needed here IMHO


    This should be enough to save you quite some $$$ in your energy bill and polish up your green credentials.

    For a more radical approach, consider getting a notebook instead of a desktop for your next upgrade: notebooks will, by design, consume less power than desktops.
    • I had a friend who was interested in church organs. Evidently even early organs has pneumatic "switches" that would switch the airflow to multiple pipes from a single key. My friend said that if Babbage had consulted an organ builder and used pneumatic components he would have been able to build a working computer at the time. And they were very green, the air from the larger early organs came from water power, displaced by water filling an air-filled chamber. Smaller organs used "chorister powered" bellows
      • Yeah, I've seen the idea of an organ-pipe based computing machine detailed in Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon'. The fictitious machine was not exactly what we'd call low-noise, though.

    • http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html [apple.com]

      Maximum continuous power: 110W

      Actually, it's quite a bit better than than. I used a Kill-a-Watt to test my 1.25ghz G4 mini and it uses around 18 watts under normal loads (iTunes playing, Mail.app, Terminal.app, safari and Emacs open). When it goes to sleep it uses less than 3 watts. Paired with a flat panel monitor with DPMS and you've got a very low impact system.

      The newer intel units consume about twice that much power (around 35w) from what I've read but still are very efficient compared with most PCs.

      Of course, the impact from th

      • Re:Mac mini (Score:5, Interesting)

        by clare-ents (153285) on Tuesday February 26 2008, @08:04AM (#22557192) Homepage
        We colocate and run dedicated servers on Mac Minis. Electricity prices in London data centres are crippling. In a standard 2kW rack we get 55 Mac Minis - 37W each. The guys in the rack next door have 6 Dell 1950s. They look at us enviously and mumble about the cost of Windows server licences. On the other side we've got people with a HP blade server (just one!) unhappy that they haven't enough power to fill it with blades, whereas we've got 3 times as many CPU cores and a massively lower hardware cost.

        http://www.mythic-beasts.com/ [mythic-beasts.com]

    • Yes, this is the worst car analogy ever made, did you like it?

      No, because your misspelling of the trivial word brake, confusingly spelled correctly on the first usage, then never spelled correctly again, made me wonder what the hell you were getting at !

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