Tweaking the work computer to save energy

[Daox]

So, I took my killawatt to work today to see what could be done about saving a little power.

I've already done some things and wanted to know how much they were saving. Unfortunately, there isn't a ton you can do to lower power consumption and new power saving technologies for computers are still being developed and refined. This limited me to only two things, dim the monitor and activate Intel SpeedStep. If you guys have any other ideas feel free to mention them.

I fired up the computer without SpeedStep and took my readings. At idle it was using 210W. So, I enabled SpeedStep and watched the power consumption go down slowly. Unfortunately, this didn't bring it down nearly as far as I had hoped. It would at most dip down to 204W. I was quite disappointed in this as I've read reviews that MUCH more power has been saved with this technology. But, it differs from processor speed to processor speed as to how far the CPU will slow itself down.

Next it was the monitor's turn. At 100% brightness which is way too bright, and the montior was drawing 44W. I dialed it down to 30% which looks way better and it dropped the consumption down to 32W. So, I got a 12W savings there.

All in all I'll be saving 18 watts or roughly 6.5%. This savings over 8.5 hours a day for approximately 37 weeks a year nets me a grand total of 39.6 kWh saved a year. Not much, but if the well over 100 computers in this office all did it we could save around 3,960 kWh a year which doesn't sound as shabby.