Low Power PC Questions

I may be wrong, I hope I am, and I see the description of that one does say “standalone” so it may not be one of the very similarly packaged, and described, limited functionality devices. Caveat emptor as always :smiley:

Hi, got a reply from Asus today saying,

[i][b] Thank you for contacting ASUS Technical Support.
In answer to your questions,

  1. Can it run 24/7 with out over heating.

The Official statement is that NO electronic equipment should be left on 24/7, this however, is in an “ideal world” setup, as long as there is adequate ventilation to the machine, and checked periodically, and depending on settings for power usage, then there should be no problems with your machine running for that length of time.

  1. It will be connected to a UPS, so can the bios be altered to allow the pc to be turned on when the power is restored after power cut (the UPS has its own software to shut down the PC etc.)

BIOS settings allow the machine to be restarted when power is restored.
[/b][/i]

so I could be getting one of there’s http://www.uk.insight.com/en-gb/productinfo/desktop-pcs/0002095052-00000001

teal.

I have a ASUS Eeepc:

CPU N280
1.55GHz
1.99 GB ram

Running since June 2010, no over heating problems. Although its in my basement which is cool.

I have it reboot once a day.

I believe its battery lasted about 6-7 hours on extended power failure, this only happened once. Everything shutdown nicely.

Its WinXp, and on my list to upgrade next year.

Its Wx only machine. I belive its a bit underpowered, as I have added several programs and a cam.

VVP, WeatherDisplay, Weatherlink, WxSim and Weather Messenger.

IMHO it depends how much computing power you need, not heat per say. For me, I’m looking at upgrade to notebook, for a bit more power.

Happy New Year!

Ed

I’ve been using a Jetway JBC231C98-52WD for almost 2 years now and I’m very happy with the greatly reduced power usage from the IBM ThinkCentre that I was previously using. I’m running WD and WxSim only no webcams. Watt meter shows it drawing between 12 - 16 watts. Dual core Atom processor D525 @ 1.8 ghz with 2 gb of ram.

Cheers

:smiley:

MikeyM

Well I ordered one of these. http://i.ebayimg.com/t/ASUS-EB1503-B038E-EeeBox-PC-Black-Windows-7-Home-Premium-D2550-500GB-4GB-/00/s/NDAwWDQwMA==/z/YIwAAOxySy9SOvJx/$(KGrHqJHJFMFIlFYWr1YBSOvJ)oFj!~~60_12.JPG comes with wireless key board & mouse, should get some time next week, it uses only 31 watts @ 100% cpu loading, that’s a lot better than the 200/250 watts that I use at the moment. Just one question, when I move WD from old PC to new PC will I have to install weatherlink, or just move WD over etc. I have read the FAQ. about moving WD to a new PC, but it is not mentioned in the post.

teal.

I’ve just ordered a Chinese computer. The base price is about EUR 100 ($140). The consumption is 20 W max. The attached file gives the full spec and the options I have added (not included in the base price). I await the proforma with the full price including options and transport. As it has a COM1 port, no conversion to USB will be necessary for the Vantage Pro2 data logger.

When I get it in my hot, grubby, little mitts, I’ll put it into service and report here on how it performs with WD, WDL, WXSIM and a few other items. We live in interesting times!

Happy New Year to you all!


JFTC290.xls (53.5 KB)

Looks good!

No, you wouldn’t need to install weatherlink. I’m assuming you have a USB logger, in that case you may have to download the latest Silabs driver if the one included with W7 isn’t the latest.

Hi Niko, thanks for info, I’m hoping that because it so small the wife won’t see it (I mean the new PC :lol:), I mite have to hide behind the printer & she will never know I got it.

many thanks.

teal.

Anyone who wants to buy direct like Devil may find Aliexpress.com interesting. (That’s a search for Intel Atom mini PC’s, there are others too.)

Hi, I see my link in above post is not working I try again
teal.

Attached is the Proforma Invoice for the complete 20 W system that I’ve ordered, with the various options I wanted. With transport (DHL, not EMS), it comes to USD 218, a tad under EUR 160. I’ll have to pay about EUR 30 for VAT plus a few EURs for duty, totalling under EUR 200.

There are no low-power micro-PCs imported here, that I could find. The cheapest laptop/netbook at the largest retailer, who is also the cheapest, sells for EUR 349, so this is a lot more and a phone call elicited that its power supply/charger was rated at 55 W.

I do, however have a problem: O/S. I hope to persuade MS to allow me to use an XP Pro on it, that I no longer use. This will be adequate for weather apps. A new W7 Home Premium would cost me EUR 155, as near as dammit as much as the base price of the computer.

Hopefully, it should arrive in 7-10 days. I’ll keep y’all updated on how the transfer goes.


Hi Devil, that looks good, good price as well, still waiting on mine to turn up.

teal.

My wx-puter is a home-built, with Gigabyte 1007U motherborad/CPU and 4 GB RAM. The wattometer says 34 watt (+ 5 watts for the Boltek PCI). Price i payd when bought it from Germany was around 120

IIRC XP may need some tweaking to make the most of a dual core CPU.

If I remember OK, SP3 can do it. The old 'puter that packed up showed four threads with a dual core and HT.

OK, that should do it. My memory is too long (and I hated XP) :lol:

Seems a shame to be putting that old dog on your nice shiny new hardware though :frowning:

Quite frankly, I think that XP SP3 was the best Windows that came out of Redmond! Since then, we have had Vista (least said…!), 7 which I have on 3 computers (2 x Pro, 1 x Ult), which is just an inconsiderate bloatware, swallowing up more than half the computer’s computing capacity. As for Win 8, I tried it on a new computer; MS returned my money!

What I really miss is MS-DOS 5.2 (version 6 was the start of MS’s downhill run, for me!). I was quite happy to have a lean and mean OS. Remember Bill Gates’ stating that 640 kb RAM was enough for any computer? That was when a 10 Mb HDD was thought to be enormous and 4.7 MHz was super-fast!

We’ll have to agree to disagree on 95% of that, the 5% being Win 8 :lol:

Hi all, well it arrived (Eee box 1503) the move went well & is setup & working well, its using 33 watts & goes to 35 watts when making the hourly video, total loading with monitor is 53 watts, that’s a better than 250 watts the old one was using, about 5x less. I think I may have to look for a low power monitor now.

teal.

Mine seems to be stuck in Hong Kong, if DHL tracking is working. I HATE DHL! Nothing ever goes right with them for me and they don’t even deliver here. It always means a 50 km trip to pick items up, even when it’s prepaid door-to-door. In this country, UPS is the only one that works correctly, other than the postal EMS.

I’ve been informed that they have put in a different CPU which has reduced the peak power consumption to 17-18 W.

As for monitor, I’ve acquired a 15" one which has a 1 W consumption when switched off. I intend keeoing it switched off when I don’t actually need to look at it! I see no need to have it running 24/7.