Going green.

I'm quite the hippy, you know? With that in mind I've been doing some energy calculations recently. My server runs at around 45W whilst seeding some torrents and basically idling, it's usual state. So, to run this thing 24/7 for a month would cost the princely sum of £3.72. Hardly a fortune.

My desktop tends to run around 80W with just the tower running. Adding the dual 22 monitors and the speakers can increase this to 300+ if the processor is digging in but usually even that is usually scaled back to 800MHz/core and as I type this (tower, two screens and listening to music) I'm reading ~130W. Assuming an average of 100W (bearing in mind whenever I leave the room the speakers and screen go off) and 10 hours a day usage this take us to £3.10 a month. To have the desktop running 24/7 for a month would cost £7.44, a not insubstantial sum.

But hold on, currently the server is on 24/7 and the desktop for 10 hours a day, totaling £6.82/month, which is only 62p less than just having the desktop on all of the time. That difference will get smaller when you assume that a greater proportion of the desktop's uptime will be with the screens and speakers off if it became the torrent mule, not to mention the reduced strain on me managing two separate pcs.

My point? Well there isn't one really, it's just I either write this or my bioremediation essay. But I guess you could say that computers don't cost much to run and don't hurt the planet. They will however, hurt your brain if you've actually made it through this blog post. Now if you don't mind I'm off to bed and I'm turning my server off, the desktop can torrent tonight. Far out.