27.3W quadcore: Sandy bridge power usage and the effect of an efficient PSU

My computer did not have enough RAM, but i did not want to buy "expensive" DDR2, so i bought a new board for DDR3 :-))

I found no useful numbers about the power usage of a system without GFX card and furthermore probably more people are interested in the effect of a "80 Plus Gold" PSU.

For comparison i measured with an older PSU, that most likely was claimed to be efficient 5 years ago.

The following components were connected:
Intel DZ68DB (default config, only UEFI was activated)
Intel i5-2500K with intel stock cooler
8GB RAM
2TB HD (WD20EARS) (uses about 4W)
120mm fan @600rpm
DVD drive
1 monitor connected (when 2 screens are connected the power usage goes up by 4W)
Software: Ubuntu 11.04 everything default, no power saving tricks

5 years old PSU: Sharkoon SHA480-9A
standby 2W
gnome desktop idle 35.5W
mprime 1 thread    65.5W
mprime 2 threads   82.0W
mprime 3 threads   96.9W
mprime 4 threads  111.0W

new PSU: Fortron Aurum 400W
standby 0.5W
gnome desktop idle 27.3W
mprime 1 thread    52.6W
mprime 2 threads   67.7W
mprime 3 threads   82.1W
mprime 4 threads   95.0W

The SHA480-9A PSU was used with a AMD Athlon64 with 2*2Ghz and a passive ATI X600 GFX before and the IDLE power usage was 74.5W.

Power measurements were done at the 230V outlet.

ASUS S1 (S1-AT5NM10E) bluetooth with Ubuntu 11.04 (i386)

Just in case somebody else is struggling to get this working, the easiest way is to create a /etc/modprobe.d/btusb.conf with the following:
install btusb modprobe ath3k; /bin/echo "13d3 3304" >> /sys/bus/drivers/ath3k/new_id; modprobe --ignore-install btusb

This will load the ath3k module before btusb is loaded and tell the module to search also for devices with the id "13d3 3304".

Ubuntu 11.04 power usage

After the reports about power consumption regressions with Ubuntu 11.04 I had to measure it myself.

The hardware is a Laptop from 2007:

Dell Latitude D830 T7300 (2*2Ghz), 4GB RAM, 120 GB Intel SSD

I booted different versions of Ubuntu from CD to the GNOME desktop and let the system settle down, meaning that i waited until the CD drive stopped spinning and the CPU fan was off. With the display brightness set to low it was possible to measure the following numbers on the 230V outlet:

Ubuntu 8.04    21.3W

Ubuntu 10.04   21.1W

Ubuntu 10.10   21.1W

Ubuntu 11.04   22.8W

So there is indeed a slight regression.

The power usage stayed in the 11.04 case the same even when I killed gdm (and with it X and GNOME).

The display is btw. really a power hog, for 8.04 i measured 27.1W with display to max brightness and 15.3 with the display off.

Diagram editor for GNU/Linux

After a long time I got the idea to start a blog again to post about technical problems, their solutions and other stuff so that i don't forget it myself.
(years ago i had wordpress on my server, but killed it because i did not want to care for security updates all the time)

Recently i was searching for a diagram editor (or software that allowed the same results and) reviewed multiple different ones.

What i wanted was a tool to paint something like that and the lines between the shapes should stick to the shapes when i move them around:

I know of course Dia, Inkscape and Kivio and tried them again, but i was not really thrilled.
In the end i found yEd, a free(as in beer) java program that is perfect for the task to create diagrams.
It has powerful features to layout graphs automatically, though i don't need this.
But it also can route the paths between the shapes automatically and helps with snap lines to organize shapes nicely.

It's IMO a great tool and worth a try:

http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_about.html

The website also has some examples.
When I understand it correctly then yEd is basically a showcase to demonstrate the features of yworks java library.