[Todd Madson]

My friend Paul has a nifty device called the Power Angel.

It's an LCD voltage meter that plugs into a power outlet and then you can plug any
device into it and it will tell you neat statistics on how much power that device
consumes.

Right now with the PowerMac G5 2.5 with 2.5 gb ram and stock drive at idle with
nap enabled draws 186 watts.

With NAP disallowed in CHUD tools, an amazing statistic emerges - we're now at
267 watts initially and then 261 at idle.

When the machine was booting it was drawing as high as 360 watts at points during
the boot process. Unreal.

Conversely, my PowerMac G4 400 AGP with three 80 gig drives, Adaptec 2930 SCSI
interface, Radeon 8500 was running about 80 watts.

Just thought some of you frugal power consumers might want to know this.

[osxisfun]

i'm a little confused. if we want the lowest power we should download and install nap/chud or the opposite?

[OogaBooga]

Leave the settings how they are.

Todd, was your processor set to Highest, Reduced, or Automatic? And did you have both processors enabled in CHUD?

[EFFENDI]

286W at full load is nothing. My Athlon-based PC is sucking about 450W.

[osxisfun]

Ok. thanks I will not download and install CHUD. the noise does not bother me. (like it used to.)


450w!

Whoah. Hey EFFEENDI, the San Onefre power plant called, they want you to use less power

[mousehouse]

Haha, my 1GHz Powerbook has a 65W-rated power brick. Seems highly unlikely that it draws more than that! A Mini is even more power-efficient

[EFFENDI]

I hardly use it that much... less than 10 hours a week.

Still saving for my G5 PowerMac......

[RevEvs]

No wonder my bills are so huge! I have a G5 running 24/7

[Todd Madson]

Interestingly, my CPUs are always set at highest.

There was NO difference between using the dual CPUs or bringing it down to one
in the power draw. At all.

More statistics:
My Athlon 2400 system overclocked to 2.2 ghz with one 10 gig and one 60 gig ide
drive, DVD-ROM and CD-RW drives booted around 145 watts and went down to
about 117 watts (ECS USA KCS75A mobo). Not bad at all.

G4/400 AGP Radeon 8500 three Maxtor 80 gig drives with Adaptec 2930: 80 watts
steady at desktop no programs running.

IBM 600E Laptop about 35 watts steady at desktop.

Anonymous Celeron 600 mhz machine with 10 gig IDE drive and half a gig of PC133:
an amazing 17 watts.

An Asante' Friendlynet 8-port portable switch with a 5 volt input from an AC adapter
was barely readable, it might peak at 1 or 2 watts, really low consumption.

24-port Intel 10/100 switch a friend got at a garage sale was drawing 60-65 watts!

24 port 10/100 switch from the same sale that I got was pulling 16 watts steady.

More G5 stuff:
The G5 stays on 24/7 and I run it with Seti @ Home too. Much better performance
with nap disabled, processors on highest and such but the power draw is higher.

But with nap enabled the machine was around 175-185 watts as far as draw goes.
Disable it and it pops up nearly 100 watts or sometimes just a bit over.

But even with running two instances of Seti @ home the machine never actually
hits over 300 watts unless the booting process is occurring.

The Power Angel is a slick device. Found out the George Foreman grill draws about
940-950 (!) watts and I'm sure a hair dryer would send it thru the ceiling.

It can measure a max of 1200 watts.

I will be buying one (search on the web for "Power Angel", one of the tech
review websites did a neat review on it). I've seen them for around $27 on
the net.