low power linux PC?

[Drew Van Zandt]

Transformer-based "wall-wart" efficiency: Typically 23 - 28 %
Switching "wall-wart" efficiency: Typically 80 - 90%

For a device that will be on 24/7, a switching supply pays for itself in
less than a year in New England.

--DTVZ

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 11:14 AM, Alex Hewitt <hewitt_tech at comcast.net>
wrote:

>
> On Mon, 2008-04-07 at 09:37 -0400, Jon 'maddog' Hall wrote:
> > There are a few "notebook drive" enclosures on the market that work off
> > the power of the USB port with a 2.5 inch disk inside.  You have to be
> > careful in the selection of the 2.5 inch drives that you put in the
> > enclosures to have very low power requirements, but you can find 160 GB
> > drives that do work.
> >
> > Then some of the "tiny-PC" boxes previously mentioned can drive several
> > of these drives, providing a "server" that can run at very low power,
> > albeit with drives external to the main system box (and the system box
> > might also have its own internal drive).  You may want to test one or
> > two external enclosure/drive/"tiny-pc" combinations, as you are dealing
> > with fairly close tolerances here.
> >
> > I should also mention that if the enclosure/disk combinations need a bit
> > more power most have an axillary power input to "get it over the hump",
> > which could be supplied by one power dongle of suitable power output
> > providing the power to all the units at once.  You might want to look at
> > the efficiency of these power dongles, however, as some might waste more
> > power than they provide.
> >
> > md
>
> As an aside, I noticed that most of the low cost network hardware
> vendors provide power cubes that are very simple transformer/AC bridge
> designs or alternatively switched type supplies. The switched types are
> generally much smaller and more efficient. I have one Netgear VPN router
> that came with a 12 volt power cube of the former type that must weigh
> close to a pound. Later models came with a switched variant that may
> have weighed 3 or 4 ozs. The switched supply also generates less heat.
>
> -Alex
>
>
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