[nycbug-talk] Power Consumption (was: FreeBSD on Dell PowerEdge 1900)

[Jesse Callaway]

On 10/18/07, Isaac Levy <ike at lesmuug.org> wrote:
> Hi Alex, All,
>
> Good info about Xeon power consumption, thanks!  But,
>
> On Oct 18, 2007, at 1:20 AM, Alex Pilosov wrote:
> > On Wed, 17 Oct 2007, Isaac Levy wrote:
> >> These Xeon's eat power something fierce, so they're bloody all
> >> over the
> >> place, fire sale style...  (especially servers).
> > wrong, that applied to Nocona xeons only. the woodcrests aren't bad.
> >
> > nocona were terrible - from 125 to 180W consumption per CPU,
> > woodcrest are
> > ~65 to 120.
> >
> > woodcrest = same as core2duo, which is fairly decent as far as power
> > consumption
>
> Does anyone know much about where to look regarding power consumption
> for various CPU's?  I'm all thumbs with this stuff, and power is
> becoming a huge problem- (at the datacenter, and heck- even at
> home...)  Specifically:
>
> - What specs, in general, does a person look at for power
> consumption- when buying new hardware?
>
> - Are harddrives generally the same in power consumption?
>
> - Has anyone online created a big matrix of various processor/etc
> specs, with regard to power consumption?
>
> Thanks in advance for any thoughts or URLS...
>
> Rocket-
> .ike
>

Just like lightbulbs and toasters, you look for the wattage of a CPU.
Look on the Intel or AMD website for enough whitepapers to rival the
Navy. I know Intel has these matrices you're looking for online. Disks
don't tend to be rated in watts, I guess because they are more jumpy
in terms of power consumption than CPU's traditionally (changing) are.
Side note, you can get really cool power strips for rackmount that
have the current you are drawing updated on a little readout. They get
fancier, but it's sufficient for making some handmade graphs. "Hey
sorry to bother you this late, but could you tell me what the number
says on some equipment in my cabinet?" This will give you gross
statistics with a loss of sig figs, but it's something to go on.

-jesse