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From an environmental efficiency perspective I cannot recommend. The power consumption of old server chips, even in idle, is pretty big compared to modern, more
by ChuckNorris89 4y ago
From an environmental efficiency perspective I cannot recommend. The power consumption of old server chips, even in idle, is pretty big compared to modern, more efficient 10-7nm desktop chips.
If your energy bills are a rounding error in your monthly budget then go ahead, but then you can actually afford modern and more efficient chips.
And then there's the extra heat and noise you'll have to deal with.
- ekianjo 4y agoErm, reusing is more effective than building a new computer from scratch. New chips are not environmentally friendly to make, use large amount of pure water, etc... related article from a few years ago about the Z400: https://boilingsteam.com/gaming-on-a-cheap-xeon-the-hp-z400-workstation/ https://boilingsteam.com/gaming-on-a-cheap-xeon-the-hp-z400-...
- iasay 4y agoNot when you’re paying the electricity bill it’s not. My old workstation cost me a 14” MacBook Pro in power in 5 years. Plus you can get new in box Lenovo mini PCs with 11th gen i5 in for less than the price of a second hand Xeon desktop that’s actually usable now. They pull average 30 watts.
- iforgotpassword 4y agoOp specifically said environmental perspective, so it doesn't matter whether you pay 5ct or 90ct per kWh.
- iasay 4y agoIt does however depend on how much coal you shovel into it. The point is you can’t go “the environment” and throw half the concerns out of the window. It’s way more nuanced than that.
- iforgotpassword 4y agoThat however is a fair point. I would be genuinely interested in the actual numbers. Gut feeling tells me buying a new computer has to be much much worse than running a ten year old machine even on coal, since a lot of these components come from all across the world, get produced in countries some of which have lax to no regulation regarding pollution, use of toxic substances, and so on. The hard thing is probably trying to break this down to one individual computer being made.
- naniwaduni 4y agoIt absolutely matters if those kWh are backed by environmental damage. Also if you can spend that money elsewhere to reduce environmental damage.
- hexo 4y agoOK, let's calculate! Old PC amortized to 130W constantnly, 24/7, @ 20c per kWh = 0.624$ per day, that is 227.76 per year. New workstation today is like ~4000$. So that means you'd have to run it more than 17 years at that price of electricity to be on par with price of new computer, not counting electricity for new PC. I've actually was able to turn off all heaters during winter and heat my house using computers only! I'd say, "higher" TDP of older CPU was really an advantage here. And, let's be real, new high performance CPUs arent low-TDP either (270W for new AMDs), or GPUs (350W range for high end gaming card). So, I'd really say it's environmentally friendlier to use waste heat as house heating than using "space heaters" only. (I really do have to heat using electricity, as I don't have gas nor any other source.)
- iasay 4y agoWhere does your 20c/kWh come from? In summer what to you do with that excess heat? Far more nuanced than trite calculations chosen to back up your conclusion. Also you’re rebasing the argument on a new $4000 spend when you can spend $400 on a mini PC with the same performance as an old Xeon as suggested.
- hexo 4y ago20(euro)cents used to be average price in my country. I actually have much lower price (about one third of that) because I don't have other energy source. It does not really matter where that price came from, as it can nicely serve as reference point and you can easily scale it according to your price of electricity. Also, $400 mini PC have performance nowhere near workstation, since RAM only costs more, not even thinking about gaming GPU or price of decent SSDs and HDDs. What did I do with excess heat? Opened window and turned off POWER8 energy hog.
- iasay 4y ago$400 mini PC gets you an i5-11500T with NVME SSD that will take 128Gb of RAM. Some of them even pop up with NVidia T400 in them. New with Lenovo warranty on eBay. The i5-11500T has better single and multi thread performance. Sure you won’t get an RTX in it but that’s a 1% case really when we’re talking software engineering. That’s a hell of a lot better value proposition than a 5+ year old Xeon which is what we’re seeing suggested here.
- scns 4y agoMy plan was upgrading my i5 4460 and get the best bang for my buck. Was eyeing an i7 4790K which would have cost 140€. Got a workstation with a xeon equivalent to the 4770, with a quadro K2200, an intel dc ssd (RSP new ~400$, a 2TB HD and 32GB RAM for 180€ instead.
- stigz 4y agoIt's not about you, bud. Speaking at a global level it is more efficient.
- iasay 4y agoShow me the calculation.
- dtgriscom 4y agoCitation? There's a cost to generating/transmitting energy, there's a cost to building/shipping new computers. Any idea which is "worse" for the environment (for some definition of "worse")? I'm not being snippy; I honestly don't know. Personally, if I need a solution that's good for a number of years, I'd go for a new, efficient computer rather than reuse an old toaster.
- johnfernow 4y agoNo figures for a Xeon machine in particular, but some other figures for a general idea (from The Carbon Footprint of Everything by Mike Berners-Lee, 2020 second edition, page 140): Manufacturing a computer: * 326 kg CO2e: 13-inch MacBook Pro, 128GB storage * 475 kg CO2e: 15-inch Dell Precision 5530, 256GB storage * 620 kg CO2e: 16-inch MacBook Pro, 1TB storage Using it: * 4g CO2e per hour on 13-inch MacBook Pro * 6g CO2e per hour on 16-inch MacBook Pro * 20g CO2e per hour on average-efficient laptop * 98g CO2e per hour on desktop computer with screen * 130g CO2e per hour on gaming PC with screen The figures for using it are based on the US grid's typical mix of coal, renewables, nuclear, etc. In places with a greener grid, such as the UK, the figures are different (there's a different edition of the book for the US and UK version, and possibly other regions as well.) So we don't have figures for the emissions for a Xeon machine, either in manufacturing or usage. And these figures are estimates, of course, not precise measurements. But they help us to get a good picture of the scale of the impact. Let's assume that you use your computer 12 hours a day, 365 days a year. On a standard gaming PC with a screen, that'd be 569400g CO2e per year, or 569kg. The big question then is how much more inefficient is a Xeon machine than a standard gaming PC. If the Xeon machine emits 1.33x more than a standard gaming PC, that'd put its yearly usage emissions at 757kg CO2e, so if you used your machine for 5 years, than the difference in emissions would be 940kg CO2e between the Xeon and standard gaming PC, which would probably be enough to justify buying a new machine. But if it's only 1.1x more inefficient, than that difference would be 285 kg, not nearly enough to justify a new machine (and probably still the case even if you use the machine for 10 years.) Ultimately, I'm not sure that we have the information necessary to definitively answer this, but all other things being equal, I'm skeptical that the CPU alone will make an enormous difference in power draw in day to day usage. A newer CPU will be more efficient when at 100% usage, but does it draw significantly less power when at idle? I don't know. But if anyone else has found any information that could help, I'd love to check it out. That said, there are plenty of second-hand machines that are more efficient than a Xeon machine. Once there are no second-hand efficient machines left, it'd be worthwhile to dig in deep on the emissions of old Xeon machines versus newer more efficient machines, but right now you can just buy used and refurbished efficient machines, so I'd probably just recommend that.
- Wowfunhappy 4y agoIn a world where we had a reasonable tax on carbon, environmental friendliness and individual economic rationality would be one and the same. But we don't live in that world. So they are not.
- beachy 4y agoIf ever there was a glove perfectly fitted for the invisible hand of the market, it's saving our planet by taxing carbon. Yet here we remain, whining about why it can never work.
- AtlasBarfed 4y agoOne would think economics would have been onboard with environmentalism a lot longer ago, but economics as a culture/institution is very much aligned with the ultra-rich. Economics, the leadership and prominent members of its social network, were all too willing to rubberstamp the whims of the "elites", future of the human race be damned. Economics the "science" is a lot like the police "union", the only acceptable union to the right because it keeps them in place, while economics the "science" is acceptable because it justifies their position and wealth.
- wiseowise 4y agoThey’re going to be made regardless of whether you buy them or not.
- Something1234 4y agoYou're not wrong if your only calculation is my power usage rather than the roundtrip of making the new chips and the new computer. There's a reason it's reduce, reuse and recycle. Reduce the amount of junk. Reuse existing junk. If neither work, then dispose of.
- iasay 4y agoAt some point there’s an energy efficiency trade off which needs to be considered. It’s way more complicated and depends on where you get your energy from and the efficiency of the device. Using something until it dies is not always the best outcome.
- raverbashing 4y agoI would also not recommend because of overall support For example, does these support AVX? Newer software might require it, even if it works fine for 99% of the stuff you do elsewhere If you want to get used stuff then get some 2/3 yr old laptop.
- api 4y agoI've never seen anything that actually requires AVX. SSE yes, but virtually all 64-bit x64 chips have SSE.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nix23 4y agoStar citicen needs avx...z600 sadface here
- Felger 4y agoAVX is supported since 1st gen Xeon E3 (Sandy Bridge), launched Q2 '11.
- raverbashing 4y agoThat's interesting, because I've seen some software complaining on older machines, but it might have been about AVX2
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoReduce > Reuse > Recycle
- 35mm 4y agoAlso they tend to be quite loud
- api 4y agoIf you have unusually expensive energy then this is correct. Globally though this neglects embodied energy. A new machine with all new chips takes a ton of energy to produce. It's usually most efficient to reuse old stuff as long as it's useful rather than pitching it as e-waste and buying new. Also keep in mind that a desktop can usually be put to sleep or turned off when not in use. Doesn't need to run 24/7.
- pdpi 4y agoEven if you don't care about the environmental side, power consumption is still very important. When I'm playing games, the temperature at my desk is 2-3 degrees higher than the other end of the room, and the fans get pretty damn loud. I'm actively trying to figure out how to at least keep my current performance while getting that heat under control.
- bowsamic 4y ago> Even if you don't care about the environmental side Why wouldn’t you?
- wizofaus 4y agoIs there an IT equivalent of coal rolling?
- iasay 4y agoI think this entire thread is about doing that. My MacBook I’m typing this on is sitting here at 9.2W (battery full, running off mains).
- 2III7 4y agoRunning all cores on turbo even when idle.
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoCrypto mining.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- elteto 4y agoYes, programming in dynamic languages like Python.
- pdpi 4y agoI thought that was a more polite than saying "even if you're a selfish asshole, there's still a reason to do it out of pure self-interest".
- icegreentea2 4y agoComparing system idle across large generations is somewhat tricky, but we can pull some ballpark comparisons. A ~2013 workstation Xeon has a system idle of ~75W (https://www.anandtech.com/show/7852/intel-xeon-e52697-v2-and-xeon-e52687w-v2-review-12-and-8-cores/2 https://www.anandtech.com/show/7852/intel-xeon-e52697-v2-and...). This should be similar to the HP system from the start of the linked article. Modern system idles sit in the ~50W range (https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900k-alder-lake-12th-gen/20.html https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900k-alde...). Yeah, I know the components aren't matched... but that's what you get hunting for data. 25W isn't nothing, but it's not gigantic either. It's hard to get precise figures about the embodied energy of consumer electronics, but we have a range of 2000-6000MJ (https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Embodied_energy https://energyeducation.ca/encyclopedia/Embodied_energy). At 2000MJ, the payoff time for 25W of idle saving is quite large - on the order of 900 days. That's a lot of time to play with to try to design a hardware refresh approach to minimize total energy expenditure over your lifespan. And obviously from a $$$ standpoint, even taking some of the higher energy costs (~50cents/kWH), the cost delta over an entire year is pretty modest - $110 over a year. Once again, not insignificant, but given the discount factors involved (you can possibly get a $400 dollar used machine instead of a $1000 new), still quite possibly worth while. Obviously all of these are modified by what your actual system loading is, what your hardware refresh cycles look like, and local cost of electricity.
- 60Vhipx7b4JL 4y agoA Dell T110-II with a quad core xeon and 4x4GB RAM and and a 3.5" HDD idles around 21W. It really depends on the systems.
- Felger 4y agoHad almost the same setup and saw about 32W idle on mine. T110 II with Xeon E3 1220, 4 Gb RAM ECC, 1x 128 GB SATA SSD + 1x 6 To HDD IronWolf on a PERC H200 PCIe card. With a WD 10 GB external HDD, the UPS gives me a 50W load.
- jeffbee 4y agoPeople fail to grasp that a thing drawing power at idle is the memory, which doesn't have a useful idle state. It must be refreshed constantly. 16GB is pretty reasonable. 8GB would be more efficient if you can get away with it. If you lard up a workstation with tons of RAM you don't need, you pay for it on your power bill.
- bojangleslover 4y agoWho cares? Compared to heating and A/C (in the US and Japan), 10 Xeons probably aren't even a drop in the bucket.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoa refrigerator, ironing clothes, heating or AC consume at least 3-5 times as much (assuming they are latest generations, which usually are not, and the CPU is running full throttle all the time, which is not usually the case). I don't think that a Xeon is a real threat in the context of environmental damages. Switching to newer CPUs would save a few kWs per year, the difference is negligible in the grand scheme of things.
- maccard 4y agoMy fridge uses practically no energy for 23.5 hours a day, and for those 30 minutes it's active, it's a heat pump which tends to be incredibly efficient. Many parts of the world (huge parts of Europe for example) don't need or have AC, and for 9 months of the year I don't need heating in my home - despite living in a 130 year old stone building in Scotland. Short of the 3kw electric kettle I have, my workstation is the single most energy intense appliance in my house, and it's used for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 47 weeks a year.
- peoplefromibiza 4y agoon average a modern refrigerator consumes about 2kw/day most of them are 10 years old and are on 24 hours a day, everyday. and in many parts of the western World they use very big, very power hungry ones, coupled with an external freezer, for long term storage. > Many parts of the world (huge parts of Europe for example) I'm in Europe, in many parts of Europe we do need AC. Ice age has not returned... yet it's 30 degrees right now here, at 2 am. And I'm a thousand kms north from truly hot parts of my country. It was 31 degrees in Berlin today, and July has just started. > Short of the 3kw electric kettle I have, my workstation is the single most energy intense appliance Your workstation consumes around less than 1Kw/day (even a ten years ago CPU is less than 100 watts/hour idle, which is most of the job it usually does), 1kw it's one hour of ironing, less than an hour with the AC on (a small one, I hear in US they suck up to 3.5 kW/h, average houses are bigger) or of a washing machine (cold water) and 40 minutes of a dryer (a low power program. they can go up to more than 2kw/hour for home appliances and up to 6kw for industrial ones). on average 40-50% of the energy budget for a data center is spent on cooling. and they are very efficient at doing it at scale. maybe, just maybe, if energy efficiency is so important, we could start by reducing useless waste: crypto mining or videogames that need a 350 watts GPU to run.