Most energy efficient (home) setup

Wed Feb 22 21:13:47 UTC 2012

After reading a number of threads where people list their huge and 
wasteful, but undoubtedly fun (and sometimes necessary?), home setups 
complete with dedicated rooms and aircos I felt inclined to ask who has 
attempted to make a really energy efficient setup?

This may be an interesting read, it uses a plugcomputer:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/11/diy_zero_energy_home_server/page2.html

Admittedly I don't have a need for a full blown home lab since I am not 
a network engineer, I'm more of a sysadmin/network admin/programmer kind 
of person... So I can make do with a somewhat minimal set up. But I *do* 
have tunneled IPv6 from home ;-)

In my current apartment in addition to an el cheapo DSL modem that 
probably wastes about 10 watts and a "sometimes on" PC workstation I 
used to have an always on thinkpad (early 2000s model) as my main 
desktop system and an always on G4 system (pegasos2 in case you care) 
acting as a mail/web/ssh server. The thinkpad was a refurbished model 
and it was quite stable, up to 500 days of uptime during its last years. 
But the hardware slowly disintegrated and when the gfx card died I 
retired it.

Right now my always on server is a VIA artigo 1100 pico-itx system 
(replacing the G4 system) and my "router/firewall/modem" is still the el 
cheapo DSL modem (which runs busybox by the way). I have an upgraded 
workstation that's "sometimes on", it has a mini itx form factor (AMD 
phenom2 CPU). I use debian on all systems.

I haven't measured it but I think if the set up would use 30 watts 
continuously (only taking the always on systems into account) it'd be a 
lot. Of course it'll spike when I fire up the workstation.

It's not extremely energy efficient but compared to some setups I read 
about it is. The next step would be to migrate to a plugcomputer or 
something similar (http://plugcomputer.org/).

Any suggestions and ideas appreciated of course. :-)

Thanks,
Jeroen

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