My ibm ps/2 model 30 has a 90W PSU, my ibm valuepoint has a 150w PSU... Those really use a lot of power for such basic systems. But as said, for the few hours a week is not really a big deal.

Let's say 250W total for the whole system, including screen and speakers, lighting around...
For 4 hours a week that makes 1kWh a week, or ~50 kWh a year.
Even at a price of 1,00 per kWh you'd only use 50,00 a year for power.

Your very energy efficient fridge users 150W and is on 6 hours a day to keep temps low. That's 0,90kWh a day, or 330kWh a year. At 1,00 per kWh that costs you 330 a year.
Then there's your router/modem at constant 15W each, some stand by stuff at some W and so on...
Not even counting laundry, cooking or dishwasher and stuff, which use a lot of power (if you've got them).

That makes the cost of your retro stuff not very much and is you want to save money that bad you may want to consider only using them once a month. Or do less laundry, lower the heating of your house when it's cold, to name some.

Oh by the way, my home server users around 6W idle, based on a Kontron industrial motherboard and Pentium G5400 CPU. For only a few € a year I can keep it on 24/7. Cost me around €300 and pays back in a few years with the current energy prices.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-08-06, 06:02:

RandomStranger wrote:

but 105W is 105W, it's still the same amount of heat, only dissipated faster and more efficiently.

Well, no. You can easily cool down Pentium 4 EE with Big Typhoon even in Prime95, all while you'll kick into thermal throttling on modern CPU with "identical" rating and aforementioned cooler, especially with AVX instructions involved.

Then either there has to be a lie somewhere regarding TDP or some heat conducting issue. I've read that modern CPUs with the same TDP are more difficult to cool because the whole thing is just much more compact and there is less surface area to get the heat out. The issue is elsewhere (for example the heat is produced in x mm³ with y mm² surface area while in in modern CPUs it's produced in ¼x mm³ and they have the same or less surface area). Seems plausible since CPUs didn't get physically bigger. A Ryzen 7 5800X has a die size of 124 mm² with 4.15 billion transistors, while a Prescott P4EE is 135 mm² with 169 million transistors while they have very similar TDP. Makes sense that cooling the "denser" CPU is more challenging and old coolers aren't prepared for that. But that doesn't change the physical fact that x unit of energy = x unit of energy. At the end of the day that's what you pay for and that's what's added to your room temperature.

RandomStranger wrote:

Then either there has to be a lie somewhere regarding TDP

Intel were lying about TDP for decades now and AMD is hardly any better with statements like 95 C is within spec.

A Ryzen 7 5800X has a die size of 124 mm² with 4.15 billion transistors

That's only CPU die without cache die.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-05, 08:44:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Umm how many of us are actually doing that ?

I have one file server and even though its a P4 its not even worth worrying about in relation to power costs .. I have so many other devices that consume more . .such as my Daily PC with its 3080ti and 10980Xe .. both of which are high power devices on their own ...and no my main PC never gets shutdown or turned off unless Windows does it for updates.

I dont worry about power usage from retro hardware, its measured in cents which doesnt impact my bill enough to matter.

If your power bill for a 24/7 P4 server is measured in cents, you're a very lucky person.

The big issue with retro stuff running 24/7 is the near complete absence of power management. Yes, that 3080Ti and 10980Xe will draw massively more at full load, but even if the PC stays on when you go to bed, it will be idling at far lower power levels, far lower indeed than that P4.

Assuming the P4 system draws 100W idle (which is realistic, a bit on the high side for Northwood, a bit on the low side for Prescott), that means 2.4kWh per day, 876kWh per year. With network operator costs and taxes factored in, where I live we pay on average EUR 0.67 per kWh. That means that P4 sitting idle all day and night would cost me EUR 587 a year - most definitely not cents.

I do have a server myself, based on a Core i3-2100 with motherboard chosen for lowest power consumption and a PicoPSU. Even with its two big 3TB HDDs, idle consumption is under 20W. That still costs me over EUR 100 per year at current electricity prices, but the difference with a P4 is very, very significant. For stuff that's on 24/7, it quite literally pays to choose the lowest power option, which will generally be low-end relatively modern equipment, not big loud & proud stuff like a P4. In fact I'd say a P4 (or a Netburst Xeon) is the single worst choice possible for this application as it's new enough to draw a lot of power, but old enough not to be able to cut that power use when idle.

But that said, I don't care about power consumption of my vintage stuff for the simple reason that almost all of it is powered off almost all the time - and my preferred era is DOS anyway, so there is no need for high-power stuff. My most-used vintage system runs a Katmai on i440BX. That still uses more at idle than my Core i3, but I don't leave it on to idle.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-06, 09:25:

[...]

I actually wonder about older LCD panels being lower power requirements, modern backlit LED panels dont use much power at all whereas old LCDs usually used CCFL or the older LED back lights that were not energy efficient.

I doubt the old 20" LCD/CCFL panels were more energy efficient than a modern LED 27/32" panel, I fully expect the modern panel to beat it in every area for efficiency.

Definitely. Can confirm that as I recently replaced my son's old (2005-era) EIZO 19" CCFL-lit IPS 1280x1024 with a 2nd hand 3-year old Dell 24" Edge-lit LED IPS 1920x1200 screen. Despite significantly bigger screen surface, its power draw is actually 20% less. Oh, and no coil whine, which was actually my main reason for the upgrade - it was driving me mad.

dionb wrote on 2022-08-06, 14:26:

If your power bill for a 24/7 P4 server is measured in cents, you're a very lucky person. […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-05, 08:44:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Umm how many of us are actually doing that ?

I have one file server and even though its a P4 its not even worth worrying about in relation to power costs .. I have so many other devices that consume more . .such as my Daily PC with its 3080ti and 10980Xe .. both of which are high power devices on their own ...and no my main PC never gets shutdown or turned off unless Windows does it for updates.

I dont worry about power usage from retro hardware, its measured in cents which doesnt impact my bill enough to matter.

If your power bill for a 24/7 P4 server is measured in cents, you're a very lucky person.

The big issue with retro stuff running 24/7 is the near complete absence of power management. Yes, that 3080Ti and 10980Xe will draw massively more at full load, but even if the PC stays on when you go to bed, it will be idling at far lower power levels, far lower indeed than that P4.

Assuming the P4 system draws 100W idle (which is realistic, a bit on the high side for Northwood, a bit on the low side for Prescott), that means 2.4kWh per day, 876kWh per year. With network operator costs and taxes factored in, where I live we pay on average EUR 0.67 per kWh. That means that P4 sitting idle all day and night would cost me EUR 587 a year - most definitely not cents.

I do have a server myself, based on a Core i3-2100 with motherboard chosen for lowest power consumption and a PicoPSU. Even with its two big 3TB HDDs, idle consumption is under 20W. That still costs me over EUR 100 per year at current electricity prices, but the difference with a P4 is very, very significant. For stuff that's on 24/7, it quite literally pays to choose the lowest power option, which will generally be low-end relatively modern equipment, not big loud & proud stuff like a P4. In fact I'd say a P4 (or a Netburst Xeon) is the single worst choice possible for this application as it's new enough to draw a lot of power, but old enough not to be able to cut that power use when idle.

But that said, I don't care about power consumption of my vintage stuff for the simple reason that almost all of it is powered off almost all the time - and my preferred era is DOS anyway, so there is no need for high-power stuff. My most-used vintage system runs a Katmai on i440BX. That still uses more at idle than my Core i3, but I don't leave it on to idle.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-06, 09:25:

[...]

I actually wonder about older LCD panels being lower power requirements, modern backlit LED panels dont use much power at all whereas old LCDs usually used CCFL or the older LED back lights that were not energy efficient.

I doubt the old 20" LCD/CCFL panels were more energy efficient than a modern LED 27/32" panel, I fully expect the modern panel to beat it in every area for efficiency.

Definitely. Can confirm that as I recently replaced my son's old (2005-era) EIZO 19" CCFL-lit IPS 1280x1024 with a 2nd hand 3-year old Dell 24" Edge-lit LED IPS 1920x1200 screen. Despite significantly bigger screen surface, its power draw is actually 20% less. Oh, and no coil whine, which was actually my main reason for the upgrade - it was driving me mad.

It's hard to appreciate how regional energy pricing is. My understanding is 10 cents per kWH is pretty good in the US. Mine has been about 13 cents, but recently shot up to 16 cents. A buddy of mine in CA pays about 40 cents. Another buddy in Idaho says he pays around 6 cents. Looks like you're paying around 67 cents? Which is 10x more than my buddy in Idaho.

So yeah, your almost 600 a year to run that server would have been less than 60 for him. Around 100ish for myself. So yeah, cents a day.

Namrok wrote on 2022-08-06, 14:49:

dionb wrote on 2022-08-06, 14:26:

If your power bill for a 24/7 P4 server is measured in cents, you're a very lucky person. […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-05, 08:44:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Umm how many of us are actually doing that ?

I have one file server and even though its a P4 its not even worth worrying about in relation to power costs .. I have so many other devices that consume more . .such as my Daily PC with its 3080ti and 10980Xe .. both of which are high power devices on their own ...and no my main PC never gets shutdown or turned off unless Windows does it for updates.

I dont worry about power usage from retro hardware, its measured in cents which doesnt impact my bill enough to matter.

If your power bill for a 24/7 P4 server is measured in cents, you're a very lucky person.

The big issue with retro stuff running 24/7 is the near complete absence of power management. Yes, that 3080Ti and 10980Xe will draw massively more at full load, but even if the PC stays on when you go to bed, it will be idling at far lower power levels, far lower indeed than that P4.

Assuming the P4 system draws 100W idle (which is realistic, a bit on the high side for Northwood, a bit on the low side for Prescott), that means 2.4kWh per day, 876kWh per year. With network operator costs and taxes factored in, where I live we pay on average EUR 0.67 per kWh. That means that P4 sitting idle all day and night would cost me EUR 587 a year - most definitely not cents.

I do have a server myself, based on a Core i3-2100 with motherboard chosen for lowest power consumption and a PicoPSU. Even with its two big 3TB HDDs, idle consumption is under 20W. That still costs me over EUR 100 per year at current electricity prices, but the difference with a P4 is very, very significant. For stuff that's on 24/7, it quite literally pays to choose the lowest power option, which will generally be low-end relatively modern equipment, not big loud & proud stuff like a P4. In fact I'd say a P4 (or a Netburst Xeon) is the single worst choice possible for this application as it's new enough to draw a lot of power, but old enough not to be able to cut that power use when idle.

But that said, I don't care about power consumption of my vintage stuff for the simple reason that almost all of it is powered off almost all the time - and my preferred era is DOS anyway, so there is no need for high-power stuff. My most-used vintage system runs a Katmai on i440BX. That still uses more at idle than my Core i3, but I don't leave it on to idle.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-06, 09:25:

[...]

I actually wonder about older LCD panels being lower power requirements, modern backlit LED panels dont use much power at all whereas old LCDs usually used CCFL or the older LED back lights that were not energy efficient.

I doubt the old 20" LCD/CCFL panels were more energy efficient than a modern LED 27/32" panel, I fully expect the modern panel to beat it in every area for efficiency.

Definitely. Can confirm that as I recently replaced my son's old (2005-era) EIZO 19" CCFL-lit IPS 1280x1024 with a 2nd hand 3-year old Dell 24" Edge-lit LED IPS 1920x1200 screen. Despite significantly bigger screen surface, its power draw is actually 20% less. Oh, and no coil whine, which was actually my main reason for the upgrade - it was driving me mad.

It's hard to appreciate how regional energy pricing is. My understanding is 10 cents per kWH is pretty good in the US. Mine has been about 13 cents, but recently shot up to 16 cents. A buddy of mine in CA pays about 40 cents. Another buddy in Idaho says he pays around 6 cents. Looks like you're paying around 67 cents? Which is 10x more than my buddy in Idaho.

So yeah, your almost 600 a year to run that server would have been less than 60 for him. Around 100ish for myself. So yeah, cents a day.

Power isnt to bad here since we have solar which offsets the power bill by a huge margin, got some 20 panels on the roof so its a substantial system.

I do forget that the EU does pay a HUGE amount for power.

If it was water we were talking about and PCs ran on it then I would care a great deal, water here is expensive, over $400 a quarter right now for a 2 person home.

dionb wrote:

The big issue with retro stuff running 24/7 is the near complete absence of power management.

Also stuff like Asus motherboards from LGA775 era which outright refuse to undervolt in idle if CPU/FSB BIOS settings tweaked even slightly.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-08-05, 10:32:

Ydee wrote on 2022-08-05, 10:05:

Akuma wrote on 2022-08-05, 07:50:

The consumption of old hardware has become less desirable, now that energy costs are increasing. I'm just curious how people are dealing with this or have any good solutions. I think we can all benefit from some good advice.

Umm, how i deal with this? I simply have no build with P4 Extreme Edition, that's it. 😀

🤣 the P4 EE isnt really that power heavy, I have modern CPUs that use more at stock clocks .. now if it was heat we were discussing then you have a point 😁

The only problem with heat was because most coolers were a steaming pile of crap back then.

These same old CPUs when used with a good modern cooler will barely get warm.

Use a newer PSU that has much cleaner power output and the whole system will run cooler and use less power.

It's not that complicated.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-08-06, 17:19:

dionb wrote:

The big issue with retro stuff running 24/7 is the near complete absence of power management.

Also stuff like Asus motherboards from LGA775 era which outright refuse to undervolt in idle if CPU/FSB BIOS settings tweaked even slightly.

That affects power draw very little.

When a CPU is at idle is is not going to draw way more power just because the voltage is higher.

The power draw is going to happen once the CPU is being used.

Namrok wrote on 2022-08-06, 14:49:

[...]

It's hard to appreciate how regional energy pricing is. My understanding is 10 cents per kWH is pretty good in the US. Mine has been about 13 cents, but recently shot up to 16 cents. A buddy of mine in CA pays about 40 cents. Another buddy in Idaho says he pays around 6 cents. Looks like you're paying around 67 cents? Which is 10x more than my buddy in Idaho.

So yeah, your almost 600 a year to run that server would have been less than 60 for him. Around 100ish for myself. So yeah, cents a day.

67c per kWh. Yep, that's a lot. Up from about 25c last year. When most power gets generated using gas and there's a war on nearby involving the region's biggest gas supplier, prices go through the roof. My electricity provider actually only uses renewable power sources, but given that electrons are electrons on the network, renewable energy prices follow the gas market as much as gas-generated electricity does. Upshot is that my shares in a local wind farm are doing very well indeed 😉

Note however that this is a total that includes (fixed) network operator costs. My actual billed amount per kWh is 35c, but there's another 87c per day for network access on top of that. Adding a couple of P4 servers would increase the relative importance of the variable component, so would actuallt reduce total cost per kWh, while still increasing my total bill.

It will be interesting to see what the coming recession does to energy prices - but it's still going to be much more expensive here regardless. Unlike water - for now. Living below sea level in a major river delta has its advantages sometimes, but we're in the middle of the driest year on record (with 2020 being previous record holder) and starting to have issues with salt water infiltration and land subsidence. There are engineering solutions available so long as the Rhine itself doesn't run dry, but they aren't cheap and I have no illusions about who will be footing the bill.

cyclone3d wrote:

When a CPU is at idle is is not going to draw way more power just because the voltage is higher.

Full idle isn't possible anyway, with plethora of background tasks, and it makes a noticeable difference during light loads.

dionb wrote on 2022-08-06, 18:27:

67c per kWh. Yep, that's a lot. Up from about 25c last year. When most power gets generated using gas and there's a war on nearb […]
Show full quote

Namrok wrote on 2022-08-06, 14:49:

[...]

It's hard to appreciate how regional energy pricing is. My understanding is 10 cents per kWH is pretty good in the US. Mine has been about 13 cents, but recently shot up to 16 cents. A buddy of mine in CA pays about 40 cents. Another buddy in Idaho says he pays around 6 cents. Looks like you're paying around 67 cents? Which is 10x more than my buddy in Idaho.

So yeah, your almost 600 a year to run that server would have been less than 60 for him. Around 100ish for myself. So yeah, cents a day.

67c per kWh. Yep, that's a lot. Up from about 25c last year. When most power gets generated using gas and there's a war on nearby involving the region's biggest gas supplier, prices go through the roof. My electricity provider actually only uses renewable power sources, but given that electrons are electrons on the network, renewable energy prices follow the gas market as much as gas-generated electricity does. Upshot is that my shares in a local wind farm are doing very well indeed 😉

Note however that this is a total that includes (fixed) network operator costs. My actual billed amount per kWh is 35c, but there's another 87c per day for network access on top of that. Adding a couple of P4 servers would increase the relative importance of the variable component, so would actuallt reduce total cost per kWh, while still increasing my total bill.

It will be interesting to see what the coming recession does to energy prices - but it's still going to be much more expensive here regardless. Unlike water - for now. Living below sea level in a majo river delta has its advantages sometimes, but we're in the middle of the driest year on record (with 2020 being previous record holder) and starting to have issues with salt water infiltration and land subsidence. There are engineering solutions available so long as the Rhine itself doesn't run dry, but they aren't cheap and I have no illusions about who will be footing the bill.

Yeah, that's rough. Stateside we've been relatively left alone energy pricewise, but with LNG export being pushed more, there will be significant globalization of the US Natural Gas prices with European Natural Gas prices. I don't think capacity will ever grow such that the markets completely merge. But the prices will be pulled towards one another by LNG.

Seeing the writing on the wall RE: Energy Prices & Interest Rates, I put a 15 kW solar array on my house at 0% interest. Loan company will pocket my federal ITC credit when I get that next year, but that's it. The system should completely negate my power bill, or close to it, and the financing is cheaper than any of my power bills have ever been, or are likely to ever be.

Just waiting on the local power company to get off their ass, come look at the system, install a net meter, and tell me I'm allowed to turn it on.

Namrok wrote on 2022-08-06, 19:32:

[...] […]
Show full quote

[...]

Yeah, that's rough. Stateside we've been relatively left alone energy pricewise, but with LNG export being pushed more, there will be significant globalization of the US Natural Gas prices with European Natural Gas prices. I don't think capacity will ever grow such that the markets completely merge. But the prices will be pulled towards one another by LNG.

Seeing the writing on the wall RE: Energy Prices & Interest Rates, I put a 15 kW solar array on my house at 0% interest. Loan company will pocket my federal ITC credit when I get that next year, but that's it. The system should completely negate my power bill, or close to it, and the financing is cheaper than any of my power bills have ever been, or are likely to ever be.

Just waiting on the local power company to get off their ass, come look at the system, install a net meter, and tell me I'm allowed to turn it on.

Sounds like you have the timing spot-on.

Here things are due to get interesting in a way that makes local storage look very attractive. Everyone generating their own electricity and not using it themselves but pumping it straight back onto the mains is playing havoc with the utilities' networks. The chosen solution is dynamic pricing - within a year or so downstream, then in 2025 when legally guaranteed supply-back rates end, in upstream too. When the sun is at its brightest, you'll get the least for what you generate. So you want to be able to store power when it's at its cheapest, instead of pumping it straight into an inverter. And once you've got a good reason to use DC, I suspect there will be a movement towards connecting low-power devices directly to DC, avoiding huge DC-AC and AC-DC conversion losses.

That is where it starts to get interesting from a computer perspective, as computers are exclusively DC devices. Servers have run at 48VDC for quite a while now so as not to have double losses when using UPS systems. I suspect that in a residential situation 24VDC is more likely, as there is already a big installed base of consumer equipment used for truckers & RVs - although cable thickness and lengths will need looking into as soon as we're talking about that RTX3090 and i9-12xxx setup instead of just a few USB chargers.

You all give some very good points. Definately many educated members here. I do have an interest in moving toward renewable energy as we develope the ability but as an engineer and having friends with PHd's in many fields including Electrical, Civil and Biology, etc have always been told to follow the money on these "new green deals". For some reason no one talks about Geo-Thermal, Hydro power or Wave energy. My Phd friends tell me to it is because those pushing Solar and Wind have $ stakes in it and most are lawyers, not engineers. In my area we have many Geo thermal possibilities but all have but shut down, not even for exploration. Enough said except that God gave us CO2 to support the plants which in turn give us Oxygen.
Like I said: follow the money, those mostly pushing for green energy faster than we can develop it have only one thing in mind (aka John Kerry, Climate czar with only Legal degree's and worth over 250 million) and that is making more money.
Sorry if I got astray. I wish I could send a bunch of LNG to Europe to help them during this war + greenie-weenie shit..
No need to del this Mods am done 😀

I don't crare as long as my shit turns on when I flick that big red switch....

The term "Carbon Footprint" was coined by British Petroleum.

The end..

MarkP wrote on 2022-08-07, 02:54:

I don't crare as long as my shit turns on when I flick that big red switch....

The term "Carbon Footprint" was coined by British Petroleum.

The end..

Next, you'll be saying that BP colluded with cattle farmers 😀

Well, carbon footprint was literally BP marketing campaign, which implied that it's your personal responsibility and that it would matter (spoiler: not really).

debs3759 wrote on 2022-08-07, 03:19:

MarkP wrote on 2022-08-07, 02:54:

I don't crare as long as my shit turns on when I flick that big red switch....

The term "Carbon Footprint" was coined by British Petroleum.

The end..

Next, you'll be saying that BP colluded with cattle farmers 😀

Naaah it was the moo cows. It's a global conspiracy thingymabob whatsit

BP did coin the term Globel Footpint. It's even on their web page. Fact is way stranger than fiction Cobba.

It does seem like old hardware plus modern psu wouldn’t be too spendy.

But solar man. I run my computers off grid on solar.

Sphere478 wrote on 2022-08-07, 08:23:

It does seem like old hardware plus modern psu wouldn’t be too spendy.

But solar man. I run my computers off grid on solar.

I love the Solar setup we have here, being Australia it works amazingly well and for the most part offsets the entire power bill, sadly that will be soon changing as the power utility is lowering feed in tariffs again. At one point they were paying us for power but the last few years the feed in tariff has been slashed and is due to be hit again, so it we will be paying more and more of the bill until the utility gets the feed in for free, might take a few years to get to that point.

The other option is to install a battery bank and have the Solar charge that and run the computers from that.