So, I got the little XBox loaded with drives again like it was before Vista, except with an AMD 6000 X2. This isn’t really what I want. I want a little game box with 200-300 gig, not 1.5T. The computer part is loud, hot, and power hungry. There are many times I don’t want it on and could just work off the MacBook. But the MacBook doesn’t have the space and I don’t feel like clutter the main drive of any computer.
What I want is an ultra low power PC with lots of drives that spend 99% of their time spun down. And since I’ve been reading Tom’s Hardware about the German Solar PC, it would be very cool to supplement or run it off a solar panel. The constraint in that article was a computer with regular horsepower. I want always on, or perhaps scheduled on times; a storage appliance. It would be extremely rare to run all drives at once, 10/100 network would be fine, file transfer speed will always be less than disk transfer time or CPU.
There are 3 spare computers running around here, but none of them interest me for this. They are standard mid range boards. That’s way too much horsepower.
Looking…
Update:
The big numbers look like this:
Computer (Idle, Load) (W)
PSU(5, 15)
CPU(10, 15)
RAM(6, 6)
HD(0, 120-240)
USB(0, 6)
——————–
Idle 21, Load 282
Full load will never happen unless all the drives are on at the same time and consuming max power. The computer should run off memory, flash card, or USB stick. The hard drives should power off after 5 minutes or so. The computer would be on 24/7. The hard drives would come on, one or two at a time. I decided that the computer would use 40 Watts. That leaves 1 hard drive running 11 hr, 2 running 6 hr, and 3 running 4 hr.
Double the Idle power should be a good starting figure. There’s plenty of error. I don’t know the power requirements of a hard drive controller card and power consumption numbers are not something that is usually listed. Hard drive power requirements vary widely. The computer could consume more or less power very easily. This computer might not be used for days. It would just idle that whole time.
So, what kind of solar setup would support this? I looked at the numbers in the Tom’s Hardware article and figured them for this computer. There’s a shit load of assumptions in here and they smell just as sweet. Here we go.
The computer should run 12 hr on battery. 12hr X 40W gets us 480 Whr.
Computers are 12V just like cars, 480 W/hr / 12 V gets us 40 a Amp hr battery
To charge the battery we need solar cells of about 90 W and some kind of charger.
What does this cost? These are quick and dirty numbers. If the discharge rate is too high more battery or more panel must be added.
Solar Setup
Battery $180
Panel $600 ~7′ X 3′
Charge Controller $60
————————-
Total $840
Computer
PSU $90
CPU $200
RAM $50
USB $25
————-
Total $365
Grand Total Estimate $1205
Yeah, I’ll get right on that. heh