[thechat] Re: hardware issue - motherboard dies on power down after lengthy on period

[Seb]

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>1. Do most of you leave your machines on all the time? I am always worried
>that the damn thing is going to catch fire the moment I leave the house.
>This paranoia is, I feel, justified because I built it myself, and have no
>faith in my own abilities. I have never heard of such a thing happening,
>anybody got any horror stories they would like to share?

My machines are on 24/7, and I've never had any problems with them. The
only real problem I've had was with an old P3 BX2 motherboard that failed
after 2 years of being on all the time except for moving house. Fortunately
it failed the day after I bought my new Athlon XP system, so it was quickly
replaced.

>2. When I am not using it, my machine runs SETI. What is the likely power
>comsumption from leaving it doing this for days on end. I have heard that it
>is best to leave flourescent lights on because they comsume the equivalent
>of 8 hours juice every time they are switched on. Would it be a similar
>scenario with computers?

What CPU?

My Athlon XP 1700+ runs at 64W, factor in another 20W or so for the
mainboard, memory, and drives, takes me up to 85W. So, it's about the same
power consumption as running an electric light.

Of course, when the monitor is on and I'm running games, then it can go as
high as 200W or more.

All good reasons to ensure you have a decent 330W power supply in your
machine. :)

Powering up your PC will probably take the power supply to 70 or 80% of its
max rated power consumption during boot. The power saving modes in most
modern PCs are pretty good, so when you're not doing anything that accesses
peripherals, they power down fairly shortly. If all you're doing is running
SETI all day, then look at the power consumption of your CPU plus a bit
more for when drives spin up, etc.

Seb.


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