Power Consumtion (just got a new toy, a Kill-a-Watt)

[plonk420]

i'd happily exchange some solar heat from .. wherever you are! it was ~2F/-17F, here, and of all times it could happen, the heat broke :0 not even my small farm of computers could help noticeably... :S

also, added another PSU. odd findings...

[vaughan]

Computer room reached 41C last night and one of the computers decided to burnout - acrid electrical smell. Forced me to turn off every PC at the power switch and then switch back on one at a time until I found the culprit. A Shuttle SD37P2v2 with an Intel Q6600 cpu.

I was worried the smoke alarm would get triggered and "she who must be obeyed" would launch a tirade.

Bah-humbug - greenhouse gases, more like brownhouse

What global warming

[AMDave]

Ooh. That sucks.
I have been running at 37 to 40 ambient lately with a 13 inch box fan sitting in the open doorway of the study for the last month.
The logs show it has peaked to 41 and 42 briefly while at work.
Your event is making me think another strategy is in order.
This house is hot by design. We know that.
Maybe I can arrange to move some CPUs to a better location for a few weeks to pass the summer peak.
I guess I need to start some schmoozing this weekend ;)

[plonk420]

added Athlon II 630... 52 watts idle at Ubuntu desktop! (not sure if windows desktop in Power Saver/Balanced might save even more!)

edit: dang, i thought i dropped it to 110-112 watts after using casefan on 5V rail instead of 12V. it's back up to 116, though.

[plonk420]

added Zacate (E-350) ASUS E35M1-M PRO!

my god, it's quiet. O_O

notes:

can stream (edit:) SOME (realtime) decrypted blu-rays over a network

in MPC-HC:

~40% cpu usage with vc-1: Harry Potter 4
~20% cpu usage with h.264: MirrorMask (however, it would occasionally skip. seems like an app buffering issue?)

ONLY WITH iTMS* encodes can it do a 720p to 1080p bicubic scaling in ffdshow (superior to hardware scaling) with no hitches (tested with Castle)
"high profile level 4.1 h.264" (commonly "x264" mkv with ac3/dts) 720p to 1080p it struggles with bicubic scaling

sadly, Sinc scaling is hopelessly unusable

720p60 worked perfectly, sans scaling

edit:

xbmc could play sd xvid, sd h.264, 720p24/25/60, 1080p24 high profile level 4.1 h.264, wmv9 (from gametrailers)
xbmc couldn't play 1080p60 h.264

*iTunes Music Store

[Tamaster]

Thanks for the info. I've been looking at building an ITX based PVR using one of the new APUs from AMD.
(gotta find an extra input into the HT setup though).

I've a Sony BR player that it'll probably replace and I need Blu-Ray capability as well.

[plonk420]

it seems XBMC (in Win7) can play the unencrypted h.264 Mirrormask M2TS (1920x1080 on a 1440x900 monitor) on the E-350

edit: whereas it couldn't even play the M2TS straight from the (5400 rpm 2.5") HDD in MPC-HC. i need to try an official blu-ray app ... but i'm not the most motivated to move my only BD-ROM drive from one case to another... :S

[Jason1478963]

Interesting info guys.... I have been trying to find a decent PC based dvr and am currently using a windows vista laptop with mediacenter. I am still looking for a better setup as well.

[plonk420]

i wouldn't have minded a 25% cpu processing power increase at Radeon HD6250 speeds :S

[plonk420]

i got it to 29 watts, even with a Lenovo wireless mini keyboard plugged in (but without my new Diamond USB soundcard plugged in)! woot!

it probably can be gotten well under 29 watts even with a 3rd party soundcard with an SSD and probably 1.25v DDR3L ... a picoPSU might help a lot, too!