4 ms·

Erm, 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, et

Erm, 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 ago
Not 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 ago
  Op specifically said environmental perspective, so it doesn't matter whether you pay 5ct or 90ct per kWh.
  - iasay 4y ago
    It 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 ago
      That 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 ago
    It absolutely matters if those kWh are backed by environmental damage. Also if you can spend that money elsewhere to reduce environmental damage.
- hexo 4y ago
  OK, 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 ago
    Where 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 ago
      20(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
        $400 mini PC gets you an i5-11500T with NVME SSD that will take 128Gb of RAM. Some of them even pop up with NVidia T400 in them. New with Lenovo warranty on eBay. The i5-11500T has better single and multi thread performance. Sure you won’t get an RTX in it but that’s a 1% case really when we’re talking software engineering. That’s a hell of a lot better value proposition than a 5+ year old Xeon which is what we’re seeing suggested here.
- scns 4y ago
  My plan was upgrading my i5 4460 and get the best bang for my buck. Was eyeing an i7 4790K which would have cost 140€. Got a workstation with a xeon equivalent to the 4770, with a quadro K2200, an intel dc ssd (RSP new ~400$, a 2TB HD and 32GB RAM for 180€ instead.
- stigz 4y ago
  It's not about you, bud. Speaking at a global level it is more efficient.
  - iasay 4y ago
    Show me the calculation.
dtgriscom 4y ago
Citation? 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 ago
  No 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 ago
In 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 ago
  If 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 ago
  One 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 ago
They’re going to be made regardless of whether you buy them or not.

iasay 4y ago

Not 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 ago
Op specifically said environmental perspective, so it doesn't matter whether you pay 5ct or 90ct per kWh.
- iasay 4y ago
  It 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 ago
    That 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 ago
  It absolutely matters if those kWh are backed by environmental damage. Also if you can spend that money elsewhere to reduce environmental damage.
hexo 4y ago
OK, 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 ago
  Where 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 ago
    20(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
      $400 mini PC gets you an i5-11500T with NVME SSD that will take 128Gb of RAM. Some of them even pop up with NVidia T400 in them. New with Lenovo warranty on eBay. The i5-11500T has better single and multi thread performance. Sure you won’t get an RTX in it but that’s a 1% case really when we’re talking software engineering. That’s a hell of a lot better value proposition than a 5+ year old Xeon which is what we’re seeing suggested here.
scns 4y ago
My plan was upgrading my i5 4460 and get the best bang for my buck. Was eyeing an i7 4790K which would have cost 140€. Got a workstation with a xeon equivalent to the 4770, with a quadro K2200, an intel dc ssd (RSP new ~400$, a 2TB HD and 32GB RAM for 180€ instead.
stigz 4y ago
It's not about you, bud. Speaking at a global level it is more efficient.
- iasay 4y ago
  Show me the calculation.

dtgriscom 4y ago

Citation? 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 ago
No 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 ago

In 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 ago
If 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 ago
One 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 ago

They’re going to be made regardless of whether you buy them or not.