Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years • Hacker News Board

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#41

Post by electromagnetic » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:14 PM UTC

jdbeast00 wrote: post #23

auto sleep your computer after x minutes of idle. done.

There are many things beside auto-sleep that can save you power, in fact an LCD monitor consumes as much power as an idling Mac Mini (roughly 20W each). Simply setting your monitor to auto-off when not in use can save you vast amounts of energy, your typical LCD monitor consumes no energy while turned off by the computer. A CRT (for those who still use them) save phenominally when turned off, dropping from ~70W-80W down to ~2W of consumption, essentially meaning that leaving a CRT turned off but connected to power is less harmful to the environment than working an extra hour at it. These are all energy-star monitor figures too. Screen size and backlight also varies energy consumption, some 20"+ LCD monitors can easily hit 100W, while Dell's current line hit only 20W.

My core duo laptop with a 17" screen only consumes a max of 90W with a CCFL, a Mac Mini consumes up to 110W with an additional 20W for a display. So I'm still not sold on Mac Mini's as environmentally friendly desktops, as there are better solutions out there, namely my old laptop still beats the Mini in efficiency terms.

I'd also add that anyone using SSD should have a very short time (maybe 10 minutes) between sleep activating and hibernate activating. The fast start up times allowed by an SSD can maximize power savings while minimizing inconvenience, which is arguably going to be the best way to aid the fight against global warming.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#42

Post by gaius » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:15 PM UTC

staunch wrote: post #33

Periodic wrote: post #11

A few people are debating the numbers, but I think there's a much more important message here. Consumers rarely factor in the total cost of ownership (TCO) of a computer, and only look at the retail price. I used to think this way, particularly because I didn't have much money, so I needed to buy the cheapest computer I could at a given time, resulting in paying more over the lifetime of the computer (which might not…

Saving on power in the datacenter is one of the worst ways to try to save money, in my experience. It varies greatly, but $10 million dollars worth of servers, network gear, and storage might cost $25k/mo in power. Shaving 5% or 10% off that bill is practically meaningless. You can save a lot more money in other ways. Obviously at massive scale (think Google) it's a different story, but for the average small-medium c…

Saving on power in the datacenter is one of the worst ways to try to save money, in my experience.

You know what's a worse way to save money? Running out of power/cooling/floor loading and having nowhere to go...

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#43

Post by bjelkeman-again » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:16 PM UTC

bemmu wrote: post #29

Where is the wasted energy lost to? If it is lost to heat and you have electric heating in your house, would that lead to a correspondingly lowered heating bill?

Yes, but you really don't want to heat your house or your hot water with straight electric radiators or water heaters. Use a heat pump. A heat pump will give you a 30-40% lower electricity bill.

I have a heat pump which takes heat from the ground (two boreholes) and for every 1kWh of electricity I put into it I get 2.5-3 kWh equivalent of heating in my house. This is essentially stored solar heat in the ground which I use the heat pump to transfer into my house. The electricity comes from regional hydropower. With electricity usage for heating without the heatpump of roughly 50,000 kWh and an electric price of about 15 US cent for the kWh, this knocks off a significant piece of the electricity bill, down to about 18,000 kWh and gives lower environmental impact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_pump#Ground_source_heat_pu...

Also, reversely, if you are in a warm climate your aircon will have to take all that extra heat from your computer and push it out of the house, with a corresponding loss in efficiency.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#44

Post by electromagnetic » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 9:36 PM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #35

tibbon wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the Mini's power supply max rating, or its average power draw? I'm guessing the mini has a bit of extra power for USB devices and when the processors really kick it up. Would be fairly easy to test... where's my multimeter..

That is the max. it actually slurps about 35W under load edit: and then you need a display of some kind ;)

Your energy-star rated 20"+ screen (with an LCD backlight) typically consumes 20W when on and 0W when powered off by the computer.

So I believe the Mini would consume, on average under use, about 55W, which is a rather commendable figure for an official desktop and not a nettop. Adding peripherals will obviously effect this, a portable hard drive can pull up to 18W (maxing out the USB power supply). I'd definitely say opting for a bigger HDD on purchase is better than getting an external drive.

I do have a question for Mac Aficionado's, is the OS X Server akin to Windows Server 2008 or the Ultimate editions of windows? I was wondering if the Mini 1TB with OS X Server is as usable and accessible to a new user as any standard OS X (I'm rarely a Mac user, but my next purchase is likely to be Mac, so I definitely don't want to get my ass bitten by either losing out or screwing myself over by lack of knowledge when making a purchase).

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#45

Post by zandorg » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 10:11 PM UTC

pmjordan wrote: post #28

pistoriusp wrote: post #25

Would love to know what his KWH consumption is per month. His electricity bill is 1/2 mine. Is electricity generally cheap in North America?

I can tell you that in Europe, €0.20-0.25/kWh (about US$ 0.30-0.37, ZAR 2.20-2.80) is typical for residential customers.

I'm not sure, but NPower in the UK appears to be 8 pence (about 12 cents). That does seem low!

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#46

Post by staunch » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 10:19 PM UTC

swernli wrote: post #36

staunch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saving on power in the datacenter is one of the worst ways to try to save money, in my experience. It varies greatly, but $10 million dollars worth of servers, network gear, and storage might cost $25k/mo in power. Shaving 5% or 10% off that bill is practically meaningless. You can save a lot more money in other ways. Obviously at massive scale (think Google) it's a different story, but for the average small-medium c…

While I agree that for those numbers, 5% to 10% savings isn't worth the effort, this isn't a good reason to dismiss saving by reducing data center power. Nissan recently starting rolling out virtualization solutions for some of their datacenters, resulting in 34% energy savings. For the kind of numbers you list, that would end up being over $100k of savings a year.

I found the press release you were referencing: http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/server_virtuali...

It proves exactly my point: That focusing on power usage is backwards. You should worry about other stuff, like using less servers.

The guy that worries about using less servers can consolidate 159 servers to 28. He saves $5 million dollars and $10k/mo. The guy that worries about power usage itself just buys 159 slightly less power hungry servers. He saves $2k/mo.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#47

Post by riobard » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 10:32 PM UTC

aaronblohowiak wrote: post #34

erikstarck wrote: post #10

Side benefit of low power: low noise. That's actually the first thing I check when buying a new computer. How silent is it?

beagle board + ssd = really silent.

remember to check the LCD monitor for high frequency noise, too. recently i came across several samsung monitors with this issue :|

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#48

Post by tedunangst » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 10:37 PM UTC

byoung2 wrote: post #2

He might have saved even more electricity had he gotten a laptop with the same specs as the mini. My Dell Inspiron 1525 has a 65W power supply, vs the similarly-equipped Mac Mini's 110W, and that 65W includes the screen. Adding an LCD to the Mac Mini adds another 30-50W.

They don't make laptops with 42" screens, which is what he has attached to the mini.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#49

Post by tedunangst » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 10:42 PM UTC

jws wrote: post #13

Rule of thumb: for each watt your always on device consumes, you will pay $1/year in electricity. (at $0.12/kwHr, common US price) You folks in Silicon Valley are paying 50% more than that for your electricity, so adjust accordingly. His savings are high, $233/year which says to me he saved 150 watts, which seems a touch on the high side, but if his Pavilion did not sleep well (common in PCs) and his Mini does it wou…

An always on torrent server, as described in the article, doesn't sleep.

Re: Mac Mini Pays for Itself After 2 Years

#50

Post by aidenn0 » Mon, Oct 26, 2009, 11:02 PM UTC

I have a similar experience.

I got used to having a linux server on 24/7 when I was in college (no electricity bill in the dorms).

I moved to California when I graduated, and was spending over $40/month on electricity. I borrowed a friends kill-a-watt and measured my server at 180W-220W depending on the load!

I put together a machine based around the Via C7 and measured it as using 18W at the outlet. The whole thing cost a bit over $300. Also, no fan, which is nice as the server is now in my living room. As soon as SSDs get cheap enough, I'll have a no-moving-parts server.