Re: [gentoo-user] [Very OT] - Kill-A-Watt (240V Version) to measure my Gentoo Server Power Usage

[TN]

I'm a bit late into this thread, but I built my own from a kit available 
here in Australia.
It's a design from a local magazine called Silicon Chip, and retails 
through a few places, like DSE & Altronics (www.altronics.com.au)
http://www.dse.com.au/cgi-bin/dse.storefront/44e509be0969bde4273fc0a87f9c0731/Product/View/K7217

It's an expensive kit though and you need to fo through a calibration 
setup where you put a purely resistive high load on (so that the PF=1.0, 
I used a domestic fanless heater). It's easy enough, but if you're not 
experienced it is a potentially dangerous exercise. You can buy cheaper 
killawatt type of devices, but I don't know how good they are in 
comparison this this unit I built.
Powerfactors must be taken into account and I believe some of the real 
cheap units may not be accurate with inductive/capacitive loads. Switch 
mode power supplies are also notoriously difficult to accurately measure 
- but near enough might be good enough for most people.

There's a cheap unit which I'm going to buy from Jaycar to compare to my 
kit, but this will have Australian pins on it since it's a wallbug one 
like Killawatt. The kit I built was good this way - you just bought a 
short extension lead and cut it in half to use as male & female for your 
country.
http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=MS6115&CATID=&keywords=power+meter&SPECIAL=&form=KEYWORD&ProdCodeOnly=&Keyword1=&Keyword2=&pageNumber=&priceMin=&priceMax=&SUBCATID=

As a matter of interest, I have a 2.6GHz P4 (not HT) with 3 HDD's in it, 
and the PC alone consumes around 90W while idle, with no HDD access, 2 
of the 3 drives are in standby too.
Compare this 90W to my windows box which is a P4 3.2GHz machine with a 
Radeon 9800 Pro video card - this machine consumes 170-180W idling, and 
almost 300W while playing a game (ie. CPU & GPU loaded).

Also, my TV/DVD player/amplifier/VCR combination consumes 30W when 
everything is 'off', and only 100W when it's all going. So these days I 
turn my whole setup off overnight and most of the day until I actually 
use them in the evenings.....so if my system is off for 10 hours, it 
effectively means that I've saved 300Wh, which can run my system for 3 
hours (more than I actually watch per day!) Sure, it costs cents to run, 
but in a quarterly bill you do actually see the difference, plus every 
kWh creates around 0.6kg of emissions (US average, I don't have figures 
for my own country)







Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> Hi Guys,
>
> I know this is VERY OT. I have a Gentoo Server running at Home 24/7 and
> there's a possiblity that it's really eating up my energy bill.
>
> I've seen the Kill-A-Watt
> http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/electronic/7657/ but it's a 120V US
> Version.
>
> I'm looking for a 240V Version. Would anyone here know where to get one?
>
> The Server is an old DELL PowerEdge 4300 w/ 2x350Mhz Procs and 1GB Mem
>
>
>

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