Re: Suggestions for a SheevaPlug replacement
+++ David Given [2011-03-26 18:35 +0000]:
> On 26/03/11 17:07, Phil Endecott wrote:
> [...]
> > David, if you want to be "realistic", you'll find that in almost all cases small
> > size, ARM, and even low performance are things that you should expect to pay a
> > premium for. For fun you can try to factor in the reduction in your electricity
> > bill, but normally the small x86 (i.e. Atom) box will still be cheaper.
>
> Well, the R3700 consumes (they say) about 25W when running, which is
> about 20W more than the SheevaPlug --- so over a year, the R3700
> consumes about 200 kWh compared to the SheevaPlug's 40. I pay about 10p
> per kWh, so this means that the relative running costs are 20 pounds vs 4...
_per year_, so if you use it for say 3 years that justifies an extra
50 quid. The longer you use it the more you save :-). And 10p/kWh is
very cheap. I'm paying 14p/kWh (flat rate), and power is not going to
get cheaper. (And actually it would be 22 quid all year @10p). At
14p/kWh you can spend an extra 74 quid over 3 years.
Of course in practice disk power consumption matters here (my slug is
2W, the disk 10W), and sleep mode/power save behaviour is much more
important than the headline power consumption when getting an annual
energy use figure. Wall-warts too (where applicable). On some devices
the wall wart uses more than the arm box attached to it.
Personally I just couldn't bring myself to have a 24/7 server that
used 25W+disk, no matter how cheap it is, because I know how
unecessary that is, and I think energy consumption matters.
Just pay the money for the cool stuff :-) You know you want to. :-)
Wookey
--
Principal hats: Linaro, Emdebian, Wookware, Balloonboard, ARM
http://wookware.org/
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