a few power measurements of PC system boxes

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

I have a cheap meter that measures power consumption of a device.  Rougly 
like this one 
<http://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/3/HouseHome/2/Electrical/ElectricalTesters/PRD~0528851P/Blue%252BPlanet%252BElectronic%252BEnergy%252BMeter.jsp?locale=en>
(I cannot see the main picture because it is Flash; without seeing it, I 
cannot say if the use of Flash is gratuitous.)

Out of curiousity, I measured four systems in my house.  Here's what I 
found.  Note: I am only measuring the system box, not the monitors.

================

Acer Revo R1600 (little single-core Atom "nettop" box)
- nVidia ION for accelerated video
- 160G notebook drive
- 2G of SODIM ram.
- running 64-bit Ubuntu 10.04
- power supply is like a notebook's: an outboard brick.
- Ubuntu 10.04

off: 3w
power on: 20-30w
login: 23w
startup FireFox: 23-27w
CPU-bound: 23-27w

================

Foxcon MiniITX dual-core Atom Box
<http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856119024>
I added 2G of RAM and a Western Digital "Green" drive (wd15eads).
Running 64-bit RHEL 6.0 beta2 refresh

off: 7w (internal power supply still powers some things)
booting: 41-48w (mostly 42w)
login screen: 38-40w
100% CPU: 40w
disk active (find / -name never): 40w
during normal usage (whatever that means): 40w

================

cheap AMD box
- ECS ECS BLACK SERIES GF8200A (V1.0) AM2+/AM3 NVIDIA GeForce 8200
  HDMI ATX AMD Motherboard 
- AMD Athlon II X2 240 Dual Core Processor ADX240OCGQBOX - 2.80GHz,
  Socket AM3, 2MB Cache, "65w"
- two Hauppauge HVR-1600 tuners
- one Adaptec VideOh! tuner
- Seagate ST31500341as 7200RPM disk drive
- Antec SP-450 power supply
- Running 64-bit MythBuntu 10.04

off: 11w
booting: 100-119w (mostly 102w)
login screen: 102w
waiting for password at start of "Software Update": 93w
100% CPU-bound (one task, not two): 124w
normal sage: 93-97w

================

HP Pavilion A6245n (Core 2 Quad 6600, intel chipset)
- 6G DDR2, 320G 7200 RPM Seagate ST3320820as drive
- Asus EAH3650 Silent Magic video card (ATI, no fan)
- running 64-bit Fedora 13

Off: bounces between 0w and 4w
booting: 120-160w (a bit less once Linux starts up)
login screen: 109-115w
after login: same
starting FireFox with a lot of saved windows and tabs:
  up to 150w, mostly 140w
idle, with screen blanked: 110-141w (more often 110w)
1 CPU-bound task: 138-163w (140w common)
as I type this: 113-165w; under 12w common
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