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

[Matthias Weingart <matthias@pentax.boerde.de>]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2001, Ralf Bauer wrote:

> router, your machine will probably do nothing 90% of the time. It should be
> pretty easy to automatically shutdown the system if it is not used to view
> 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 should by a better supply :-/, but I use a master switch). A power
supply with no load have a very poor power efficiency. And I think the
modern ATX computers and "power saving" monitors need much more power
overall than the good old AT-boards with a true power switch. 

 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!)

- 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)
 - 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

Well some points are against performance, but you have a system that is
running around the clock and have no problms with wake up, ACPI and so on,
and your system can do other things too.

        Matthias



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