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Atomic Ant Power Consumption
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Author:  mihanson [ Sat Mar 07, 2009 11:46 pm ]
Post subject:  Atomic Ant Power Consumption
Anyone taken power consumption measurements (i.e. with Kill-A-Watt) at idle and load (w/VDPAU) on an Atomic Ant or Atomic Ant clone?
Author:  graysky [ Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:48 am ]
Post subject: 
Sorry man, I ordered all the parts to build an Atomic Ant, but my MB was DOA :( I got cold feet and built a front end out of an older Athlon XP based system I put together out of parts from here and there. I have measured power consumption on it and related systems w/ my Kill-a-watt.

Power consumption on this FE system (w/ and wo/ VDPAU) as well as some advice on cooling an 8400GS.
Power consumption on my MBE w/ and wo/ athcool running.
Author:  ceenvee703 [ Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:39 am ]
Post subject: 
I have an Atomic Ant minus DVD drive (see other messages), also minus video card for now. So this is with onboard video, Intel graphics driver, no VDPAU yet (will install video card at the same time as DVD drive).

Also note this is using Ubuntu 8.10 (it's what I could install via USB thumb drive since no DVD drive) with Mythbuntu stuff installed. One plus of using Ubuntu is getting to use Boxee.

Kill-A-Watt reading at Ubuntu desktop: 34 watts
Kill-A-Watt reading at MythTV main menu: 36 watts
Kill-A-Watt reading while playing 1080i material: 41 watts

If you want me to do different tests, let me know.
Author:  mihanson [ Sun Mar 08, 2009 4:46 pm ]
Post subject: 
ceenvee703 wrote:
Kill-A-Watt reading at Ubuntu desktop: 34 watts
Kill-A-Watt reading at MythTV main menu: 36 watts
Kill-A-Watt reading while playing 1080i material: 41 watts

If you want me to do different tests, let me know.


That's great. Thank you. I'd love to know when you get the video card installed and running VDPAU. I'm trying to decide what I'd like to do with a possible AA-like box. I'm interested in going with a picoPSU from mini-box.com, but I'm not sure how much ummmph to go with.
Author:  davilla [ Sun Mar 08, 2009 10:45 pm ]
Post subject: 
under 50W with nvidia 8400GS 512vram playing 1080p h.264 content.

The PicoPSU-90 will be fine, make sure that you get the one with a 12V-ATX cable if you have a D945GCLF2.
Author:  mihanson [ Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:58 pm ]
Post subject: 
davilla wrote:
under 50W with nvidia 8400GS 512vram playing 1080p h.264 content.

The PicoPSU-90 will be fine, make sure that you get the one with a 12V-ATX cable if you have a D945GCLF2.


Great info, thank you.
Author:  ceenvee703 [ Thu Mar 12, 2009 4:36 pm ]
Post subject: 
Just installed the video card and got VDPAU working under Ubuntu. My numbers agree with davilla: 45W at MythTV main menu, 48-50W while playing back 1080i MPEG2 with VDPAU.
Author:  uteck [ Tue Apr 21, 2009 8:12 pm ]
Post subject: 
I have the AtomicAnt, and the one thing that I have noticed is that it still gets rather hot. The Atom 330 cpu does not have SpeedStep support in the kernel yet, so it runs at full speed even when idle.
I am thinking of turning of HyperThreading to see if that cools it down a bit.
Author:  graysky [ Wed Apr 22, 2009 3:58 pm ]
Post subject: 
uteck wrote:
The Atom 330 cpu does not have SpeedStep support in the kernel yet, so it runs at full speed even when idle.


Is that true (I'm not saying you're wrong)? What happens if you modprobe acpi-cpufreq? Also, I think most of the heat problem might be due to the very compact case/insufficient air flow which is a problem with most micro/nano cases. I am interested in the output of that modprobe command though if you get a chance.
Author:  uteck [ Wed Apr 22, 2009 5:50 pm ]
Post subject: 
graysky wrote:
I am interested in the output of that modprobe command though if you get a chance.

FATAL: Error inserting acpi_cpufreq (/lib/modules/2.6.28-LinHES/kernel/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/cpufreq/acpi-cpufreq.ko): No such device

I enabled the normal Arch repos and installed a new version cpufreqd on the off change that might help. but it did not.
Author:  graysky [ Wed Apr 22, 2009 6:14 pm ]
Post subject: 
That message means that particular kernel module isn't right for your hardware.
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