I have just got my old Pentium 3 computer set up again, and I was planning on just sitting it in the back of my cupboard with an extension cable running through the door and leaving it on 24/7 to download torrents and contribute to BOINC projects.. And I was wondering if the power usage would build up over time, rendering it expensive to run. It only has a 200W power supply, so I know for a fact that it can't use more than that, but because BOINC tasks keep it very busy at all times, it could easily use, all day long, as many watts as my good computer does at idle.
Here's a few specs for it: 200W PSU and Pentium III (as already mentioned), one 20GB 5400rpm hard drive, 128MB of 357MHz RDRAM (haven't even heard of it before), two optical drives and a floppy drive but I disconnected them from the PSU, and an old graphics card with 8MB of memory and without any kind of cooling design, so I assume it bareley uses anything. And finally it runs Windows XP Professional, but I have stripped it down a lot - no unnessecary processes, startup programs, lowest possible screen resoloution, 16-bit color, and I have activated XP's "Advanced Power Management" feature. By the way, I couldnt find anywhere that says how many watts a P3 processor is.
So yeah any estimates as to how many watts this thing is really using, and how expensive or inexpensive it is to run 24/7, and if you have any recommendations as to how to make it even more power saving, let us know
And sorry if this post has a bit too much useless information, I just wanted to include everything I know in the original post.
Here's a few specs for it: 200W PSU and Pentium III (as already mentioned), one 20GB 5400rpm hard drive, 128MB of 357MHz RDRAM (haven't even heard of it before), two optical drives and a floppy drive but I disconnected them from the PSU, and an old graphics card with 8MB of memory and without any kind of cooling design, so I assume it bareley uses anything. And finally it runs Windows XP Professional, but I have stripped it down a lot - no unnessecary processes, startup programs, lowest possible screen resoloution, 16-bit color, and I have activated XP's "Advanced Power Management" feature. By the way, I couldnt find anywhere that says how many watts a P3 processor is.
So yeah any estimates as to how many watts this thing is really using, and how expensive or inexpensive it is to run 24/7, and if you have any recommendations as to how to make it even more power saving, let us know
And sorry if this post has a bit too much useless information, I just wanted to include everything I know in the original post.