The term for this “vampire load” the power being consumed across a given network that’s doing literally nothing.
Those little LEDs are a tiny amount, but when they number in the millions, that shit adds up. People have calculated the cost in terms of tonnes of CO2.
Are you telling me I unknowingly did a comic on something called “vampire load” without any according pun and thus robbed myself an opportunity to do some Dracula joke about sleep mode and ramming a piece of wood through something to finally get it to really turn off? Damn.
Do a sequel/follow up
I wonder how much electricity gamer RGB lights on everything consumes? I turn mine off but I’m sure most don’t
A single diode is around .05w, so to leave one on for a year would use a whopping 438w. So a strip with a dozen would use around 5kw. Where I live that would cost you about 40c for the year at 8 cents per KWH.
That seems pretty significant to me if you multiply it by however many lights they put in to give it a rainbow effect, then multiplied by every gamer device from RAM to mouse, then multiplied by however many people have these products… I couldn’t find anything reputable online doing any kind of analysis though. Seems hard to calculate
It’s complicated.
For reference, a human using a pedal generator can do the work of about .1kwh. So bike for 4 hours and it’ll power that diode for the year.
But how many are off of solar? Where it’s entirely moot in the end? Yes, the power could be used elsewhere, hence the complicated. But if I’ve got balcony solar, and have excess, what’s wrong with that?
I built my current machine RGB’d out… it was a bit of a nightmare to assemble with all the extra wiring, but it was marvelous when I first turned it on. I spent some time customizing the lights and it looked so pretty. About a week later, I had most of the lights turned off most of the time… then one fan’s lights went wonky, so it just stayed dark always. Then my AIO had an issue… I replaced it with black air cooler, took out all my RGB fans, and replaced them with better, quieter black fans. The whole machine is blacked out now and super quiet. It was a learning experience for me.
I bought a somewhat fancier tea kettle on sale a while ago and the whole day, you can hear it making some noise when you get your head close. I’m guessing, it’s a form of coil whine.
And yeah, that just irritates me so much. It doesn’t need to do anything at all, unless I press a button on it, so why is it whining?
Wait you guys don’t stop your home server!?
why would I?
No
No, I often watch TV when I’m gone. I’ve got a couple public sites on there as well
Turn the breaker off
Why are all those lights scattered on the wall?
I think it’s a dark room, can just see them from that spot. Tv, charger, microwave, etc
Where blue lights?
I cover those blinding little bastards with black electrical tape, then use a pin to poke a tiny hole in it. Still brighter than green or red but significantly reduced.
