[SOLVED] Disabling cores->save energy?

^ Yeah that's about the only thing you can do that won't cost too much. Further:

Look into greener cooling systems as well, water cooling and silent systems.

SSD's make a huge difference, as does slower HDD's (5400 RPM instead of 7200 RPM).

Less RAM chips (1 x 2GB uses less power than 2 x 1GB) can be considered.

The GPU is one of the most power-hungry systems on the board also, but yours is fairly weak. You can look into passive cooling if it's bothering you though (passive cooling basically means no fan on the heat sink).

Dropping cores won't really help, as it's the purpose of the server to have many to keep up with tasks.

Just enable speedstep and let windows do the power management. After all thats why you chose it as the OS to run your hardware

amdfangirl has it right. Find the lowest vcore you can use while being stable. If you don't need the processing power, underclock the CPU to a point where you feel comfortable with its processing power. Turning off cores in that CPU won't make much difference as they will still be receiving power. There isn't really any power gating in that chip.

I would take a look at a new PSU, but if you have a SFF case finding a new one might be hard. I'd also look at a new GPU. Might not draw a lot, but XT means it draws more then it should.

Of course!

/egotrip off

Erm. doesn't your Optiplex 755 come with an onboard gpu? Just remove the Radeon and use the onboard.

As for changing the PSU, O doubt you would be able to fit a not Dell PSU in there.

thanks for the replies everyone!

ok so i got that disabling cores was a useless idea as for the other ideas...

-i already am underclocked to 1.6ghz, but i probably could go lower? how far do you think i could/should go?

-use 1x2gb ram vs 2x1gb ram wont work too well for me, as my mobo is dual channel

-i use the radeon to send video to my tv, so pulling that out and using onboard isnt really an option

-current psu is stock 275watt HE and yea im not sure if i cant get an upgrade for that fyi, specs are here: http://www.dell.com/downloads/glob [...] hspecs.pdf (pg 28)

i will look into a different cooling system though thanks again

You can use single channel ram on a dual channel motherboard. It won't hurt anything and you won't notice the difference in speed. It also will only save you like 1W, which equates to $1.37/year savings in NY state with our high electricity costs.

As for a more efficient PSU, you can switch it out and just make a frankenPC, but I don't know how much benefit you'll get. You say yours is the 275HE, which Dell claims is 80% efficient minimum. Upgrading to a 90% efficient PSU will probably save you ~$18/year (with NY prices). So a $80 PSU will take ~4.5 years to pay for itself.

The easiest way to save money is to setup the computer to automatically shut off every night and wake up every morning. I tried that with my server but it had shutdown issues (Gigabyte board with an Atom D525 running Ubuntu 10.04 server). You can even support Wake-on-lan in case you need it earlier than normal.

Also, disable everything you aren't using in BIOS. It won't save much, but might as well disable everything.

Check out - http://www.lesswatts.org/projects/powertop/ - for more ideas, tools, and tips.

Use integrated if possible tho.

just go into the bios. The optiplex got different power saving features. Allow the OS to power down the UART. Disable the the pci slot if you dont need it. Enable speedstep and enable low power savings mode. All optiplex machines got that features. Also inspect the mobo for bulgy caps as Dell boards got a habit of having weak caps. Thx king_smp for that one as he told me that and found four on the optiplex I got here