Low Energy Computing: How to save electricity

[Music] welcome to another video from explaining computers this time i'm going to discuss how we can perform computing activities using as little electricity as possible this will include identifying and migrating to low energy hardware changing power settings and upgrading the power supply in a desktop pc so let's go and explore in detail how we can all reduce our electricity bills today computers come in a wide range of guises including desktop pcs laptops tablets and smartphones as well as single board computers like the raspberry pi typically people select a device based on cost ergonomics mobility and convenience but as electricity prices continue to rise there are going to be more occasions where a computer is chosen based on its power consumption lots of things determine how much electricity a computer uses with major factors including the power of its processor or cpu the power of its graphics processor or gpu the size of its display its display brightness setting its power supply efficiency the computer's type of storage as hard drives use more power than an ssd and the specific task being performed to provide some specific examples let's take this power meter and measure the energy consumption of six very different computers first we have the ryzen 3 2 200 gpc that i built on the channel a few years ago and which has eight gigabytes of ram a single ssd and at the end of its construction was fitted with a gtx 1050 ti graphics card here if we look at the power meter we see that the pc consumes up to 153 watts at load with power use and falling to around 40 watts at idle which will also be fairly representative of light processing activities such as reading email or basic web browsing these figures exclude the attached 24-inch monitor which draws 16 watts of power when set at 50 brightness so the total system energy use is 169 watts at maximum load and 56 watts at idle secondly let's measure my most recent test rig which has an i5 10 400 cpu 16 gigabytes of ram a single ssd and currently uses intel onboard graphics here excluding the monitor the power draw at load maxes out at about 67 watts and falls to an energy consumption of no more than 13 watts at idle so using the same 24 inch screen as previously we're looking at 83 watts at load and 29 watts at idle note that this pc was recently upgraded with a highly efficient power supply to which i'll return later in the video as these two examples show different traditional pcs can use very different quantities of electricity and many desktop systems will use far more power than the computers we've measured here but let's now turn to a small form factor desktop and specifically this odyssey x86 j4105 this has a quad-core celeron processor eight gigabytes of ram a single ssd and uses on-board intel graphics excluding the monitor the energy consumption at load is a very steady 10 watts with this falling to no more than 5 watts at idle so adding the previous monitor the total system figures are 26 watts and 21 watts respectively next we'll test my laptop which has an i5 7200u cpu eight gigabytes of ram and a single ssd with its display brightness set to 50 percent when fully charged and running from its power adapter so the battery isn't charging the electricity consumption is no more than 34 watts at load and falls back to no more than about 15 watts at idle fifthly i thought i'd try to give some indication of the energy use of an android or ios tablet or smartphone although this is hard to achieve in comparative terms not least as we may struggle to define the idle state so let's just note that this gemini android pda with a six inch display set at fifty percent brightness draws no more than five watts for its main adapter when fully charged and the device is active with the screen in use and this 5 watt figure is probably fairly representative of many smartphones when they're running less demanding applications finally we'll turn to a single board computer and specifically this 4 gigabyte raspberry pi 4. here at load the energy consumption is a steady 5 watts falling to no more than 3 watts at idle although once again we need to add a monitor so again sticking with the same 24 inch model we used previously we get a total system energy consumption of 21 watts at load and 19 watts at idle so there we are six computer systems that use very different amounts of electricity and yet all of them can be used for browsing the web media playback and checking email and social channels or to present things in another fashion what we've shown is that a desktop pc with a graphics card will generally use the most electricity followed by a desktop with internal graphics an android or ios tablet is then usually the most energy efficient with a single board computer and a laptop sitting in the middle however the relative position of these last two devices very much depends on what they're being used for with a laptop generally consuming more electricity at a high processing load whilst using lower power hardware will reduce electricity consumption in most cases it's not economic to purchase a new computer to reduce your energy bill however even if you don't have lower power devices that you can use some of the time it may still be possible to save power by altering settings for example when working on a laptop in windows if you click on the battery icon you can select the power modes better battery or battery saver this will make your computer run longer on the same charge so reducing electricity consumption per hour of use one of the main things these settings will do is to reduce stream brightness so rather than changing the power mode you can save electricity by reducing display brightness using the controls on the keyboard when using a desktop pc reducing monitor brightness is also an effective means of saving electricity and indeed if we look at the power meter connected to the 24 inch monitor we'll be using earlier as i increase screen brightness from 50 the effect is quite dramatic with power use rising from 16 watts to 23 watts as we hit the top of the scale when purchasing a new monitor look for one with an energy star certification which indicates that on average it will use about seven percent less energy than a non-certified model and be aware that larger screens use significantly more power so for example a 32-inch lcd monitor will use about 50 more electricity than a 24 inch back with pc power settings all operating systems offer the option to turn off the screen and to put the computer into a suspended or sleep mode after set periods so check what values you have set if you often leave your computer running but not in use personally on the desktop pc i never use the monitor setting as i always turn off the screen at the wall socket when leaving my desk as this saves even more power the reason is that all desktop pcs monitors printers and chargers can become vampire devices or in other words if you don't turn them off at the wall outlet they will constantly draw mains electricity for example like many desktop pcs even my i5 rig with its 80 plus gold power supply draws about 1 watt of electricity when powered down but not switched off at the mains many monitors and printers use a similar amount of power in standby mode with the average laptop tablet or phone charger using about half a watt when plugged in but not in use so many people can reduce their electricity consumption by several watts per hour and probably by at least half a kilowatt a week just by switching off hardware at the mains socket the electricity consumption of any electronic device depends in part on the efficiency of the power supply that transforms its mains input to a lower voltage as you may recall in a recent video on building a quieter pc i upgraded the power supply in this i5 system from this older model to a far more efficient corsair rmx this has an 80 plus gold rating with 80 plus meaning that the power supply is at least 80 percent efficient at all loads as we can see in this table several different 80 plus ratings exist with the gold rank indicating that the power supply will be at least 87 efficient at all loads or in other words for every 100 watts of power it draws from the wall socket an 80 plus gold power supply will deliver at least 87 watts to power the computer with no more than 13 watts wasted as heat as i detailed in the recent video changing a pc's power supply is not that difficult but can deliver impressive results here specifically electricity consumption at load was reduced from a maximum of 74 watts down to no more than 67 and at idle from around 20 watts to no more than 13. if you want to lower your computing electricity consumption it's therefore worth checking a desktop pc's power supply specification and considering a replacement if the pc is left running for long periods and does not have at least an 80 plus bronze rating today in most countries electricity prices are high and will continue to rise now admittedly the amount of electrical power used by most people's computers is relatively small compared to what they use for things like heating and cooking but all savings are certainly worth considering and in that context i hope you found the information presented here to be useful but now that's it for another video if you've enjoyed what you've seen here please press that like button if you haven't subscribed please subscribe and i hope to talk to you again very soon [Music] you

Channel: ExplainingComputers

Views: 45,618

Keywords: low power computing, computing energy saving, computer, computing, energy saving, Christopher Barnatt, Barnat, 80 Plus, 80 plus power supply, efficient power supply

Id: rGUnsiivqeU

Length: 12min 35sec (755 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2022