Profiling the Power Usage of a Desktop PC

Posted Dec 18, 2008 15:35 UTC (Thu) by deleteme (guest, #49633)
In reply to: Profiling the Power Usage of a Desktop PC by shapr
Parent article: Profiling the Power Usage of a Desktop PC

Be careful some LCD monitors will hate to be power switched.

Profiling the Power Usage of a Desktop PC

Posted Dec 18, 2008 17:30 UTC (Thu) by cook (subscriber, #4) [Link] (2 responses)

>Be careful some LCD monitors will hate to be power switched.
Please elaborate, is this an issue with the video mode?

There are a lot of urban legends regarding power usage.
In a previous job, I was in charge of repairing CRT monitors.
I discovered that shutting off all of the monitors after hours
made them last *much* longer, they would also stay brighter and more focused.
The myth was that the temperature cycling would hurt the circuitry,
I found that constant baking was a much worse problem. At 100+ Watts
each and 30 or so monitors, the power savings was significant.
Reducing the air conditioning load also saves a huge amount of power.

Profiling the Power Usage of a Desktop PC

Posted Dec 21, 2008 2:15 UTC (Sun) by deleteme (guest, #49633) [Link]

Well I should say I've only experienced this with two LCDs, my HP LP2466 tended to flicker alot when I powered it up it ~2 times a day... It is very good in all other ways except that. Also I had problems with a Viewsonic back in 1999, where the Backlighting would mess up, half the screen would be black,if I shut it off to often (This might just be bad connections to the backlight)

Profiling the Power Usage of a Desktop PC

Posted Dec 30, 2008 15:08 UTC (Tue) by timl (guest, #33836) [Link]

Well, I know my Iiyama E435S dislikes it. It's the reason I could get it for free: it was "broken", and I was to put it in the bin.

The thing is that this model apparently has a design defect: when taken completely off power for a while, it will often lose some settings regarding colour calibration. A standard auto-setup won't help, a trip into the service mode menu is in order to reset the contents of the eeprom.

The kicker is that these settings only influence the analog input, so it's no concern for me: I use a DVI link :)

And yes, while switching devices on and off is in general a heavy burden for them (there's a reason incandescent lights usually fail when being switched on!), it often doesn't outweigh the wear and tear of being left on continuously in my experience.