Putting Power Hungry PCs on a Diet

As processing power grows, our PC's get hungrier. A teched-out computer system can eat up as much as 750 watts, about as much as your average refrigerator. Even worse, 95% of the energy we use for computing is wasted for idling. If we want to get serious about energy efficiency, we're going to have to put our desktops on a diet andEcos, a sustainability-focused consulting group, says it can reduce energy usage by up to 70% beyond even Energy Star standards.

Portland, Oregon-based Ecos engineered these gains by building on low-consumption platforms, using hybrid hard drives (w/ integrated flash memory to reduce consumption), and fitting them with ultra-efficient 80 Plus power supplies. Ecos took on the project with support from the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program.

The researchers found that their PC's consumed 40-70% less electricity when compared to an Energy Star Class B computer. Over the course of a year, the Energy Star model will use 408 kWh, while theEcos systems would chalk up just 190 kWh and save the user $28 in electricity bills.

"If every U.S. business purchased computers comparable to the ultimate efficiency model,” says Ecos Policy and Research Director Chris Calwell, “it would eliminate the need for about three typical coal-fired power plants."

It's unclear whether all this tweaking puts a dent in performance. A company release says, "Most of the computers had sufficient performance to conduct the most common
business computing functions." I'm assuming this means Excel still runs A-OK, but it'd be nice to know if the system will handle the latest Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six thriller.