The first computers took up whole rooms. It was all about size and people thought we would have computers as big as office floors by now. After that, it was about cramming as much speed into as small of a device as possible. As you can see, tech trends change over time. Now that we have reduced PCs into a PDA the size of a hand, what’s next? It is no longer the trend to get the hottest hardware. It’s all about the coolest and more energy efficiency.
What does it mean to be “green”? There is green-colored computer hardware, but it isn’t what we’re talking about. Green means it’s energy efficient and runs cooler and quieter than other products. I’m sure you’ve heard of at least some types of green products.
Some of the most well-known and anticipated green machines are cars. With the price of oil and the environmental impact of cars, green cars hope to clean up the air and save the oil. But you don’t have to spend so much money on a new car to be green.
There are lots of other devices that you can use to help you play a part in saving the earth. Many appliances are Energy Star efficient. I have switched the light bulbs in my house over to more energy efficient ones. I’m saving money on electricity and they weren’t any more expensive than your traditional light bulbs.
As technology has evolved, we’ve come out with better and more efficient technologies. This article will talk about the green possibilities in the technology sector for all of us.
Power Supplies
I’ll start with computer power supplies. This is what takes the power from the outlet and turns it into power for the computer to use. If you can remember back to your grade school days and physics classes, you’ll recall that whenever you convert power, you lose some in the process. Computers can’t break the laws of physics; thus, power supplies are inefficient and lose power every second they are on.
Power supplies are rated all the way up to 1200 watts, so we are talking serious amounts of electricity being used. Until recently, there really weren’t any standards for efficiency. But now, a new standard called 80 PLUS certification has been introduced. This certification means that a PSU has to be at least 80% energy efficient or better while handling 20%, 50%, and 100% load. The going price for 80 PLUS certified PSUs tend to be a little higher than the non-certified counterpart, but they are still reasonably priced. Running your computer for a couple of years on the new PSU will recoup some, if not all, of the additional costs.
CPU
AMD has also been really pushing their energy efficient CPU in the last year or two. Early last year, Intel introduced their Core 2 Duo line up, which not only has a cooler-running CPU compared to the Pentium D’s, but they’re also a lot quicker. AMD shifted a great deal of their marketing campaign toward being more green. I’m not sure if it was due to the change in consumer interest, or the fact that they didn’t have the fastest hardware. Either way, they wanted to have the greenest products.
The Brisbane core brought the total heat output down to 65 watts, which is pretty cool for a CPU. Some interesting information I managed to gather was that both Intel and AMD are going greener from an all-around production standpoint. Specifically, their production plants are going greener. Intel has recently built a $3 billion dollar lab that is revolutionary as far as emissions are concerned.
Due to the nature of CPU design and the die shrinkage, each generation should consume less power per core than its predecessor. There are some exceptions, such as the Prescott core, but in general, at least for a while, we’ll see greener and greener CPUs.
Monitors
I’m guessing that many people have LCD monitors attached to their computer, especially in a business environment. If not, you probably have one of those desk killing CRT monitors. If it’s not Energy Star certified, then a brand new LCD might end up saving your company money.
Energy Star compliant monitors save a person over $115 throughout the life of a monitor on average. I’m guessing this will dramatically increase if you are in an office environment and are on the computer eight hours a day. There are some CRT monitors that are Energy Star certified, but for the most part, all LCD monitors are Energy Star compliant. That should make shopping for a new monitor easier.
If LCD monitors aren’t green enough for you, look for OLED monitors to be coming out later this year. Sony showed off some OLED TVs this year at CES. These are not only going to consume less power, but will also have flexibility.
Green Overclockers?
Overclockers do not know the meaning of energy efficient. When we throw two volts into a CPU and 2.5 volts into the memory, we hardly expect to be anywhere near energy efficient. Heck, the people at Energy Star probably cry when they see the power we drain simply from running our computers.
Well, they may have a reason to dry their teary eyes. Asus is promoting some energy saving technology that will be in their next round of motherboards. They are calling this new technology the ASUS EPU, Energy Processing Unit. Here is a little excerpt from ASUS’s website about this new technology:
The ASUS EPU utilizes innovative technology to digitally monitor and tune the CPU power supply with improved VR responses in heavy or light loadings. It automatically provides power for higher performance or improves efficiency by 50% when the PC is running low intensity applications. Working together with AI Gear 3+, this can help you attain the best possible power efficiency and energy savings up to 80.23% to help save the environment
It should be interesting to see this technology at work and see how well it does in the real world. Another interesting note is that on ASUS’s site, they say that the EPU helps grow 17,285,833 trees for the earth. So somehow saving energy on your motherboard will transform into over 17 million trees. I’m still trying to figure out how they can get away with saying this, but I’m sure some people in their marketing and legal departments teamed up and figured out a way an EPU can grow trees.
What you can do
There are a few things you can do to cut down on your electric bill without running out and buying all new electronics. The biggest thing you can do will come from your computer. Keeping your computer on and running it in normal mode with the monitor on is probably the worst thing you can do to save power. If you aren’t using the computer, you can turn off the monitor without losing data. When you need it, turn on the power and the screen will appear exactly as you left it.
As far as your PC is concerned, all modern computers support sleep or hibernation mode. This leaves the PC somewhere between being on and shut down. You can wake it up by simply hitting the power button again. If you are part of a network and fear missing network updates, don’t worry because most computers support Wake on LAN, which will make the computer wake up when the network wants it to.
The biggest myth in terms of saving energy is using the screen saver. The screen saver does NOT save energy. The screen saver was meant to save the screen from monitor burn-in, hence, the name.
Conclusion
I hope this article has made you more conscious of the rapid growth of “green” technology. Over the past year or two, a lot of manufacturers have begun producing more energy efficient products. Many different parts of the computer are becoming more green instead of more powerful.
Even overclockers will be able to do their part to help the cause, and we typically use enough power for two or three computers. Even if you can’t get new hardware that is energy efficient right now, you can still do a lot to save power while using your computer.
The future looks to be even greener in all aspects of energy consumption — from cars to planes, all the way down to batteries. Anything we can do now to help lessen the demand for oil and fossil fuels is a benefit for everyone.
Share and Enjoy:
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
