I got my hands on that Blue Planet Electronic power meter I mentioned last week on Twitter. I initially wanted to pick it up to measure how much power (if any) I would be saving if I switched my PlayStation 3 to the APS-231 power supply. But after those damn Chinese Ebay shops sent me a poor excuse for a used power supply, I held off until earlier this week when I decided to start this Home Server Project thing. After encountering some snags, I actually got Amahi working which meant I could do some power consumption measurements.
And here are the results at idle:
Testing Methodology
Measurements were taken shortly after boot up of the system. I waited until the system was completely idle and waited for the power reading to stabilize at a number for more than 10 seconds.
Comments
I actually measured the Shuttle ST20G5 first. I actually thought it was wrong and proceeded to test the PlayStation 3 which I used as a baseline thanks to “professional” measurements. It turns out that my measurements were in line. So what does this all mean?
- The launch PlayStation 3 consumes a disgusting amount of power at idle. Even more than my 2010 PC which was most shocking to me. I should probably pick up a PlayStation 3 Slim sooner rather than later, but I think I’ll wait for the inevitable GPU & CPU in the same package revision.
- The Shuttle ST20G5 is actually ideal for a home server. I’ll probably throw in 2 TB worth of space in there.
- I thought power meters were supposed to help me save money, not find excuses to spend more money.
One Response
The TC
Wow…no wonder my power bill is so high! okay so my plan for the ps3 is as follows: Buy a slim when the ps Move comes out in the Move bundle and sell my “launch ps3″… I plan to tote the backwards compatibility as a selling feature for more duckets.