I regularly come across interesting stuff when I surf the web. When searching for a high-performance but low-power NAS fileserver, these links help a lot.

It's good to see that power effiency and performance do go hand in hand with today's modern processors and hardware, and the move from mechanical drives to Solid State Drives is another example. Industry still has a lot of work to do, but it seems something is set in motion that pleases me.


List of energy efficient hardware
This translated Japanese page lists a lot of systems with hardware specs and their power consumption. If you're looking for an energy efficient and environmentally friendly PC, this should prove an interesting link. Note that AMD dualcore has a very low idle power usage, and that ATi/AMD chipsets usually are more efficient than nVidia or Intel.


Mtron SSD's tested with Areca RAID controller
One of the biggest advancements in computer technology that will affect home users in 2008, will probably be the introduction of affordable Solid State Drives, or SSD's. These drives are designed to replace the slow mechanical hard drive in today's computers. The mechanical design of current drives physically limits speed and by a significant degree. Many of the slow operation or temporary non-responsiveness can be blamed on the slow hard drive.

Now, in 2008, flash technology has advanced to a point where it is capable of competing against conventional hard drive technology. Throughput rates of over 100MB/s are now the standard for SSD and their price is falling every month.

But just how good does storage scale, when is I/O performance so high that it is no longer a significant bottleneck in a system? Check out the review of Next Level Hardware and see how 9 Mtron Pro SSD's are competing against the Western Digital Raptor featuring 10.000rpm rotational speed.


Energy efficient (80%+) power supplies tested
Here is a useful link when you're looking for a power supply with high efficiency at various load levels (20%, 50% and 100% of rated DC output). Each model is tested and has a PDF test report. Look at the NXP ones which achieve 90% efficiency also at low loads, this would make an excellent power supply for my new quadcore low-power NAS fileserver.

Efficient power supplies have several advantages, they dissipate less heat because less electricity is converted (wasted) into heat. That means lower operating temperature, less cooling needed, more silent operation, energy cost reduction plus you help conserve the environment. Reason enough to get one!