[Info-vax] Office Friendly Kit for rx2620

[glen herrmannsfeldt]

JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> wrote:

> Note that power consumption won't change with the "office friendly" kit.
> So the unit would still dissipate the same amount of BTUs. (but perhaps
> less air movement but air will exit at higher temperature).

> The power supplies have their own fans inside. So pulling one out does
> reduce fan noise, but those are not the big noise producers.

> Since motherboard power consumption will remain the same, the one
> remaining power supply will get hotter since it will handle all the load.

One might hope that the power decreases.  CMOS naturally uses power
proportional to the switch rate of the transistors.  Usually when
the CPU isn't doing much, it takes less power.  

> If I look at my Xserve, the firmware controls fan speed and fan 
> speed is dictated by various temperature sensors on the motherboard.

> If you change fans to have less CFM and tolerate higher output
> temperature, then perhaps the firmware needsto be updated to reflect
> that. (assuming that the IA64 box has variable fan speed controls).

And assuming the same power dissipation.

> In the case of x86, it has variable power consumption based on CPU load.
> Not sure if that IA64 thing has that level of sophistication. The Alpha
> doesn't.

Well, newer processors actually turn off the clock on blocks that
aren't being used.  That makes for much better power savings.
But usually, even without that, there will be some power decrease.
You might not notice so much from heat, though.  The disk might
not change much, for example.

-- glen