mrth Posted April 26, 2015 Share Posted April 26, 2015 Hi guys, Need your brains for a sec, I'm looking to buy a big powerful computer to replace my old one, but I will only need to use that power and the electricity it drains when gaming or editing music/videos. I don't need it for web-browsing and watching youtube. With the interest of saving electricity for the 85% of the time my PC is on I want to hook up a Raspberry pi and a KMV switch to it. That way I can boot the raspberry pi up for browsing and watching 720P vids, save a bit of leccy and then if I fancy a game fire up the beast. I used to have a tablet for "browsing", but got rid because I just ended up either using my phone for a quick google or fire up the computer anyway. So this seems like the best thing for me. one issue I know there will be a file I'll need or something I will want save locally. I don't want to fire up the PC and network to the local HDD. Is there away of connecting 2 PC's to the same drive via a cable. The Banana Pro (the Chinese knock off PI) has a SATA port, so may get that. Any thoughts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zedders Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 The best you could do is get a USB powered HDD caddy, unless you want to get a network drive unit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alchresearch Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 Do you have a router? If so then maybe a NAS box could do the job. Some routers have this feature built in so you can plug in a cheaper USB external hard drive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 NAS drive as people have suggested. Many modern routers support just plugging in a USB drive and provide basic NAS functionality themselves. That said, I'd question the basic premise. A modern PC will not use the high powered graphics card unless it's needed and a modern CPU will shut down parts of itself if not needed, so will the PC really be drawing significantly more power than a raspberry pi? ---------- Post added 27-04-2015 at 11:46 ---------- http://powersupplycalculator.net/ This site calculates an idle draw for my PC (high end gaming PC) of 83 watts. Including the screen. A Pi is significantly less power of course, but the difference is still like having a single light in the house turned on, and running the kettle for about 5 minutes would power the difference for about 2 hrs! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anywebsite Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 (edited) The newest Raspberry Pi can't possibly use more than 10 watts at full load with stuff plugged into the USB ports. The older model uses a maximum of 5W. If your PC is idle then you should turn it off. Single (compact fluorescent) lights are usually between 8 & 20 watts. Edited April 27, 2015 by anywebsite Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrth Posted April 27, 2015 Author Share Posted April 27, 2015 Thansk Guys, Yes NAS is a way to go! If My router is already on all the time makes sence to Plug a USB drive into it and use that as a file server. It was midnight when I posted so wasn't thinking strait. Cyclone, your talking sence, It may seem redundent, but I also want the fall over machine of a second PC I could use in a pinch. I plan to intergrate the PI in a spare HDD bay and mod the KNV swith to have the switch buttons on the frount of the tower. Basically like duel booting, but booting to a seprate device. Thanks again for the Ideas Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cyclone Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 The newest Raspberry Pi can't possibly use more than 10 watts at full load with stuff plugged into the USB ports. The older model uses a maximum of 5W. If your PC is idle then you should turn it off. Single (compact fluorescent) lights are usually between 8 & 20 watts. If you're browsing the web then your PC is basically idle. A halogen spotlight is most likely 50 watts, and a kettle or vacuum is probably 2000 watts. The amount of power to be saved is trivial, which was my point. ---------- Post added 27-04-2015 at 14:36 ---------- Thansk Guys, Yes NAS is a way to go! If My router is already on all the time makes sence to Plug a USB drive into it and use that as a file server. It was midnight when I posted so wasn't thinking strait. Cyclone, your talking sence, It may seem redundent, but I also want the fall over machine of a second PC I could use in a pinch. I plan to intergrate the PI in a spare HDD bay and mod the KNV swith to have the switch buttons on the frount of the tower. Basically like duel booting, but booting to a seprate device. Thanks again for the Ideas Sounds cool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexAtkin Posted April 27, 2015 Share Posted April 27, 2015 (edited) Even the latest Pi 2 is REALLY slow for browsing the web compared to the cheapest PC. Heck, the top-end smartphones are only slightly faster than the slowest PCs. http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/2536540/2549739 Its really not a good choice for saving electricity as the time wasted due to its slow speed will more than offset it. If its all about electricity, a cheap laptop/Chromebook/2in1 should be more favourable. My PC monitor alone uses more than my Asus T100. (which is what is compared to the Pi 2 in the bechmark link above) Edited April 27, 2015 by AlexAtkin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
anywebsite Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 So, a PC at only 10x the price & power consumption is twice as fast (for some meaningless benchmarks, others it loses on) as a £30 hobbiest board, who'd have thought it. I've no idea how you found out the Pi 2 is slow for web browsing from that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Obelix Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 The Pi is OK assuming you are not using large datasets that wont fit in memory or need a lot of IO. Step outside what it does well and it suddenly becomes very very bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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