Downloading at night

[tare_42]

Is there any way to make my computer use less energy or slow it all down at night while i'm downloading torrents?

[redMonster]

I never download at night, but turning off the monitor would be a natural thing to do at night.

[drtoker]

well speeds are controlled through your torrent client, they can go as slow as you want them to...

Power is determined by your power supply. the lower the wattage the less power it uses, but that also means less power for all your devices in your computer.
Dont use a 600w power supply when a 400 will do if your concerned about this sort of thing.

[hawkburn]

well speeds are controlled through your torrent client, they can go as slow as you want them to...

Power is determined by your power supply. the lower the wattage the less power it uses, but that also means less power for all your devices in your computer.
Dont use a 600w power supply when a 400 will do if your concerned about this sort of thing.

Power supplies (at least modern ones) are built to only use the power that they need. Thus, a 600w power supply would only use the 400w it actually needs (plus a small additional amount, depending on the efficiency rating.)

Since you are only downloading torrents at night, I assume your CPU will be idle. This will naturally pull less power, but the biggest power suckers at this point will still be your graphics card (even if its not being used) as well as those hard drives that are continually spinning due to the BT traffic.

[tare_42]

Then can i slow down or turn off my graphics card and hard drive?

[moneoa]

you can disable the video card if you know what your doing "IF"
ummm you cannot turn off the harddrive as what do you think the
data is doing if it's not being saved to the HDD

the only way to turn off your hdd is to turn off your computer

[tare_42]

I heard somewhere that you could turn the hard drive on some kind of system where it turns on and off periodically so you could still be downloading but save energy.

[drtoker]

be carefull with that though, I went through 2 hard drives while using the "turn off hard disk after X" feature in xp. The drives kept clicking on and off randomly (even while I was dling and doing stuff to that specific drive) and then eventually they just crashed (2 drives on seperate occasions)

Everything is fine now that its turned off (new drives), but I highly recommend leaving your hard drives ON always when your computer is on.

[tare_42]

o.k. thanks for the help

[DwarfBaby]

be carefull with that though, I went through 2 hard drives while using the "turn off hard disk after X" feature in xp. The drives kept clicking on and off randomly (even while I was dling and doing stuff to that specific drive) and then eventually they just crashed (2 drives on seperate occasions)

Everything is fine now that its turned off (new drives), but I highly recommend leaving your hard drives ON always when your computer is on.

Agreed, this is a very bad option for HD lifespan.

AMD has good Power saving options for most of its 64 bit processors and newer X2's. You can probably save up to 40 watts simply by using this feature. This is more then you'd ever save using HD Sleep or shutdown option, especially since bittorent needs HD access constantly.

[antivirus6613]

Yea, im using vista and i thought that it would increase the lifespan of my hdds to turn them off but in the end they died quicker. I usually turn off my screen and my mouse has a fan so turn that off and my speakers. I leave my case open because of overheating issues.

[fangoria]

The best thing to do in terms of perma downloading using the least amount of power is buying yourself a laptop. Most laptops auto turn off HD's when not in use which are specially made to accomodate that. Overall laptops are designed from the start to save power since it often will rely solely on battery. Some laptops don't even heat up much which means the fan is off most of the times making them quiet. Also if you replace the HD with a flash ram drive, that will save even more power and make it even faster and quieter. Overall, you end up using only a fraction of the power you normally need for a desktop.

[JoeUser]

I've been wondering about this as well. On a dual core machine would it be any help to turn off one of the cores?

[Cheesy_member]

damn, stuck with an old athlon XP here, and ive got my pc on 24/7 usually

[zoryx]

Ok,,,in vista...
all u need in Personalize>>Screen saver>>change power setting>>change plane setting>>>CHANGE ADVANCED POWER SETTING
u can save aloot of power from there