[ale] screen saver eats 15 - 30 watts

[Richard Bronosky]

You can also answer that question (in most cases) by removing Windows. ;-)

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy S3 using the Swype software keyboard.
--Richard Bronosky
On Apr 2, 2013 12:15 PM, "Ron Frazier (ALE)" <
atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:

> **
> I never have liked the blank screen concept, since it's harder to tell if
> the machine is still running or is locked up or something.  But, it might
> save another few watts as you said.
>
> Ron
>
> On 4/2/2013 11:39 AM, Scott Bragg wrote:
>
> You might try the 'blank screen' screen saver and see if it drops it even
> more.   Anything you do with the system that produces animations is going
> to use more power than just blanking the screen and displaying nothing.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 11:20 AM, Ron Frazier (ALE) <
> atllinuxenthinfo at techstarship.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I've been monitoring my desktop computer that I mentioned in the litecoin
>> thread.  I have a great little device attached to the power cord called a
>> kill-a-watt ez, which you can buy at Home Depot.  This device tabulates
>> both instantaneous power consumption (every second) and long term power
>> consumption over a period of time, as well as cost to operate whatever is
>> plugged into it.
>>
>> At any given time, the numbers vary quite a bit, but you can get a sense
>> of the average.
>>
>> When I came in, this morning, I noticed the numbers were higher than they
>> typically were in its steady state mode.  I did some testing and found that
>> the screen saver was consuming 15 - 30 W.  I should note that there is 100
>> W difference in power consumption between idling my CPU and maxing it out.
>>  So, the screen saver is apparently taxing the cpu and gpu a bit.
>>
>> At $ .097 / kwh, it costs $ 7 / mo to run a 100 W (or .1 KW) load for 24
>> hours / day for 30 days.
>>
>> So, just running the screen saver is potentially costing me $ 2 / mo.
>>  It's not going to break the bank, but there's no point in wasting that
>> energy and money.  My monitors are LCD's, which are not susceptible to
>> burn-in.  So, I don't care what the screen saver it doing.  It's more of a
>> lock screen.
>>
>> The screen saver I was using is mystify (windows).  It puts fancy curvy
>> geometric lines on the screen which continually move and change.  It looks
>> cool.  I changed it to a slowly moving line of text which shows the
>> computer name.  This text is a solid color, and I turned off the
>> "reflections" effect, which requires lots of 3d graphics computations.
>>
>> My power consumption now actually drops by a couple of W when the screen
>> saver is on.
>>
>> So, if you have a fancy smancy 3d screen saver running on a big computer,
>> or several big computers, maybe with multiple monitors, you might want to
>> look at how much power it's consuming.
>>
>> Just thought I'd pass this along.  Hope it's helpful.
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>>
>> Sent from my Android Acer A500 tablet with bluetooth keyboard and K-9
>> Mail.
>> Please excuse my potential brevity if I'm typing on the touch screen.
>>
>> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
>> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
>> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very
>> quickly.)
>>
>> Ron Frazier
>> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
>> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>>
>>
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>
>
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>
> --
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new email messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT techstarship.com
>
>
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