Power consumption

[eldano]

I want to know what you think about the power consumption of my HDA.
It uses in idle about 56watts. Do you think that is high or good for a HDA?

I have the following main components in my HDA

AMD Athlon(tm) Dual Core Processor 4850e (1 GHz) (cool 'n quiet)
Asus M4A78-HTPC
/dev/sda WDC WD5000AADS (caviar green)
/dev/sdb WDC WD5000AAKS (caviar blue)
/dev/sdc SAMSUNG HD204UI (ecogreen)
Be Quiet! Pure Power L7 350W
Antec Performance One Mini P180

Until now I don't really use any processing power. Just for downloading and storage.
Should it be a good idea to invest in lower power consumption equipment like a intel atom or something like that?

I interested in what you think.

Cheers Dan.

[moredruid]

let's add it up:
your CPU has a TDP of 45W, but underclocked it's around 20W
WD caviar green 2.18W idle, 4.13W write so 3W on average
WD caviar blue around 8.5W on average
Samsung ecogreen, no hard figures found, estimate 4W on average
account for chipset/cpu fan/case fan, maybe another 20W

the latest Intel Atom ranks 10W (@640MHz, it's less than your 1GHz but should perform about the same), maybe a little less on the chipset as well (say 15W instead of 20W) and you would invest in new hardware for around 200 I guess. Let's say you gain 15W in power efficiency.
So you would gain 15W*24*365=131.4KW/h a year
Let's say the cost per KW/h is 20 cents (in NL it's around 22 cents): you would save around 26.30 a year so you would need about 7.75 years to get your ROI if the hardware costs you 200.

It's safe to say: keep your current stuff until it breaks and then invest in new hardware. If you really want low power you should opt for a plug computer (ARM processor, 7W max for cpu+mainboard+ethernet but without disks).