Eeebox power consumption: an ecological and money saving perspective
July 18, 2008 – 2:03 pmThe world being hit by global warming, economic recession, and high oil price, an ecological way of life has never been more necessary.
We will try in this article to sum up how energy and money can be saved with modern computer solutions.
Intel unveiled in June the new Atom CPU platform, widely adopted in netbooks (like the eee pc 901, the MSI Wind, the Acer Aspire One) and little desktop machines like the Asus eeebox.
The Intel Atom has many advantages: low retail price, very low power consumption, and decent performance. The Atom processor has a C6 Sleep mode, that also powers down the caches and the core clock.
We calculated how much different computers, for different uses, do affect your electricity bill, on a yearly basis. We took the average price of electricity in the USA, $0.1024 per kWh, although prices do vary from state to state.
Computer electricity average cost per year in the U.S.A.
| Model | Average Office use | Intensive Office Use | Always on |
| Asus Eeebox | $5.98 | $6.14 | $11.57 |
| Multimedia desktop PC | $35.67 | $39.14 | $87.64 |
| Celeron M Laptop | $6.89 | $7.35 | $13.90 |
Chart view
As you can see, an eeebox would consume, on average, $6.14 of electricity per year. If you need an always on computer, working as a home server for example, the Eeebox would significantly reduce the computer part of your electricity bill, up to eight times! Anandtech.com measured that the Eeebox’ Diamondville Atom needs 1.2W when powered off, idle and load power are very close, 14.5W and 19W respectively.
If you are using an old CRT monitor, you should plan to replace it. LCD panels does consume three times less electricity.
We can only salute the return of processors that don’t need an active cooling. Such an approach is certainly not for gamers, but computers made for an office and internet use will be more quiet, affordable, and energy efficient.
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