5 ms·
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$.
by hexo 4y ago
OK, let's calculate! Old PC amortized to 130W constantnly, 24/7, @ 20c per kWh = 0.624$ 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 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.
- hexo 4y agoJust that 128GB DDR4 is more than 550usd in my country. GPU with 2GB of VRAM is not much today, my 4k desktop consumes 1.6G vram and i'm not even running any game.
- iasay 4y agoFits in your $4000 workstation budget :)
- hexo 4y agoAlso, have you seen high-end laptop prices? Dell XPS is easily 3k+$.
- iasay 4y agoYeah I have a fully loaded XPS 5500 and a 14” MBP
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoWe have them at work, XPS are overpriced garbage machines that just look and cost premium. Do avoid. Midrange machines <1000€ from Lenovo and HP make great workhorses at a fraction of the price.
- iasay 4y agoAs an owner of one I completely agree with this.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago>my 4k desktop consumes 1.6G vram and i'm not even running any game What desktop is that? I ran Windows 11 desktop with youtube and bluray rips fine even while allocating only 512MB of VRAM, though the more you allocate it the more it will use, to cache and speed up various frequently used apps, but even with 512MB it still worked fine.
- loeg 4y agoYour $4000 figure is way too high for something comparable with the ancient workstation. Try $800. And 130W might be low.
- znpy 4y agoI thought the same. We’re not comparing old workstations to new workstations, we’re comparing old workstations to current day desktop computers. An average build is more likely in the range of $1250 +/- 250$
- maccard 4y ago130w is definitely low. My Xeon workstation is closer to 250w.
- ac29 4y agoIt runs at 250W 24/7?
- metadat 4y ago170w to 300w for an older (2010-2015 era) dual-processor Xeon idling is what I've measured at my house across numerous Supermicro builds. 2018 and newer server chips may have better low-power idle mode support.
- metadat 4y agoI want to add that I do thoroughly enjoy and appreciate my trusty old 2U Supermicro dualie from 2014-era Xeon parts. Even if it does idle at 170w, the build was less than $2k, it has 50 cores, 384GB ram, tons of storage.. 1 year uptime, so sick! Has not let me down yet! Even if the mobo croaks, it's easy to source a cost-effective replacement from fleabay.
- maccard 4y agoWelli turn it off out of working hours but it idles at 250w yeah. Peak power draw is much higher.
- TimPC 4y agoIf your computers produce so much heat that they heat your house during winter you should also factor in the extra AC costs in summer.
- hexo 4y agoIt's not "that much heat", it's that good insulation. Also, I don't really need or want AC, I love hot weather.
- schwartzworld 4y agoCan't speak for OP, but if you leave your windows open in the summer, waste heat would be a non-issue