[Asterisk-Users] ultra-cheap asterisk box

[Walt Reed]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 12:25:15PM +1100, woody+asterisk at solutionsfirst.com.au said:
> <snip>
> 
> > What I'm finding is that the PCs are so cheap that the cost of
> > electric power to run them is now a large part of the cost.
> > (assume 0.20/kwh times 200W times 365 days = $350.  So you
> > pay for the PC again every year in electric power to run it.
> > Worse.  In an office with airconditioning _all_ of that PC's
> > 200W goes to heat and your A/C unit will use about 220W of
> > power to remove that 200W of heat.)
> > and at a small office they will not have a server room so noise
> > from the fan is an issue.
> 
> Are you sure the computer uses all the Power all the time?
> I would have thought that 200W was the peak, not the average.
> 
> I guess the only way to measure it is to watch your home's power meter after
> you've turned off everything else :-)

Or get yourself a hand-held multi-meter and take a load reading. My 1U
dual-pIII server with a couple SCSI drives uses 47 watts. My notebook is
24W, and desktop runs 39.

If you have a smart UPS, you can use the management tool to see how much
load you draw.