Got myself some energy monitoring Zigbee plugs and made an interesting discovery
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How is it possible that it draws 100W at idle? What is it even doing?
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I bought two “Eightree” brand Zigbee-compatible plugs to see how they fare.
Did you need a Zigbee hub to get them working? I was gifted an Eighttree Zigbee plug with energy monitoring, but it seems to require using a hardware hub
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A lot of people aren't even aware of the concern. That's why I bring it up.
Paying an electrician to add a breaker is much cheaper than replacing the PC. Tho that's up to OC if they want to pursue that. I'm just putting the info out there for them to consider.
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And why the old "ice boxes" are top load only. And why most boat fridges/freezers are top-load, because energy is scares/finite when disconnected from power.
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It will help some, and will also help temps, but AMD hardware does well with undervolting, especially the 5800X3D. I undervolt mine, and read the consensus that - 30 across all cores should be achievable for anyone, unless they're really, really unlucky. My 6800 XT I also only run @ 92% Voltage, and it runs cooler and faster now, too.
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Is your upright the one with all the little compartments? That one looked to me like the most efficient upright design I've ever seen.
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I had a similar revelation. Home assistant has a WOL component, so you can set that up for easy starts. I've had mixed success with mechanisms to get HA to sleep the computer, though.
Ideally I want the machine to be sleeping I'd I'm not using it.
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How, if it's not exposed to the internet? Burglars?
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Do you really trust your consumer grade router and firewall on the desktop?
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A fridge can create a fairly low overall temp, but with something like a PC generating a ton of heat inside, it can't keep up. The fridge just can't move the heat fast enough and becomes an insulated box trapping the heat instead.
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Against random internet noise? Yes, absolutely
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Hard drives, especially spinning discs, and RAM are probably the biggest factor at idle.
I dropped my servers' idle draw from 220w to 180w by dropping it's RAM and replacing some older drives. -
What about something more spooky?
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Both are full so it reduces the amount of cold air that can escape when you open them.
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OK but what if you have a lava lamp that is synced to the moods of a sarcastic and greedy AI?
Security is about to get really weird. It used to be the Internet of Things we had to worry about, but now we have Things of Internet.
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Yep, it's awesome. We got it for $300 to supplement the smaller chest freezer, and it's been an absolute godsend.
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Yeah, anything Zigbee needs a hub of some sort that interfaces with the server. Zigbee is a mesh-lioe network of its own - it doesn't use wifi or Bluetooth or anything.
I bought Nabu Casa's Connect ZBT-1 dongle; it's like $35 and plugs directly into the HA server. Super simple to configure as well, since HAOS detects it automatically. Plus, the smart plugs act as routers, so as long as the devices can see each other all the way to the dongle on the server, you shouldn't need anything else.
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Yeah... I know.
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Is your GPU reducing the VRAM frequency when it's idle?
If the vertical timing is different between the monitors, the VRAM will have to run at maximum speed all the time and that can add 20 watts or more to your idle power consumption.
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The PC was drawing ~90W. All solid state, no spinning rust. Lots of fans though, since it's air-cooled. Not entirely sure what was causing the draw, but it's definitely something I want to investigate at some point.
