Carbon Zero Computing: Wooden PC
June 18, 2007 | 13:43
The Telegraph reports today about how PC World is to produce a wood and aluminium PC that's apparently "Carbon Zero".
It claims that, "The retailer will remove the PC's fans - which use up most of the power - and use an aluminium casing that has large ventilation slats that allow the heat to escape and uses fewer materials."
Wow! We've been looking at the wrong things all along! So it's not the hot 130W Quad Core CPUs or 200W graphics cards! It's those 1-3W PC fans that are guzzling all our juice! It seems that no one has informed PC World that fanless PSUs and case designs have been around for ages, and we've been looking at aluminium cases Lian Li and Cooler Master made since the site was launched back in 2001.
Nick Falzone is apparently ahead of his time with Sangaku and Yuuguo and so is Doug Klassen, among many others on our own forums and across the net.
It gets better as it goes on to say, "The keyboard and screen will be encased in wood - either ash or beech. Most PCs are made from steel and reinforced plastic.". No one's suggested that some plastics are easier to recycle? Where are the forests used to make these parts and are they from reputable renewable sources? Or even that extracting Aluminium is a massively power intensive process that uses a lot more electricity, and therefore carbon, than processing Steel. We can only assume PC World is using recycled aluminium exclusively which uses far less energy.
PC World finally hits the nail in the "Roffle coffin", when it says that it can save people's power usage by some "85 percent" dropping the cost of an annual electricity bill from £40 down to just £12. Regardless of the fact the machine alone will set you back nearly £600. So in electrical savings alone you'd only have to use the PC for just over 21 and a half years to make a profit.
PC World will also buy carbon credits from the third world, offsetting the final carbon count of the PC to bring it down to zero.
I suppose PC Worlds ingenuity should be rewarded, but it's just left us at BitHQ laughing our socks off at the implications of PC power usage they've implied. If you really want to save energy, recommend a notebook with a VIA processor, perhaps? And also encourage people to walk or cycle to its stores.
Don't get us wrong, we don't like to waste energy and therefore money as much as the next person, but we're focused on the real goal of getting the component companies to make more efficient products rather that just taking out a few fans from a system. Next time Ms. Patterson (from the photograph on The Telegraph website), talk to a community who knows first, yea?
If you're still able to see through your tears of laughter, let us know what you think in the forums.
Many thanks to reader, Risky, for pointing this gem out to us.
It claims that, "The retailer will remove the PC's fans - which use up most of the power - and use an aluminium casing that has large ventilation slats that allow the heat to escape and uses fewer materials."
Wow! We've been looking at the wrong things all along! So it's not the hot 130W Quad Core CPUs or 200W graphics cards! It's those 1-3W PC fans that are guzzling all our juice! It seems that no one has informed PC World that fanless PSUs and case designs have been around for ages, and we've been looking at aluminium cases Lian Li and Cooler Master made since the site was launched back in 2001.
Nick Falzone is apparently ahead of his time with Sangaku and Yuuguo and so is Doug Klassen, among many others on our own forums and across the net.
It gets better as it goes on to say, "The keyboard and screen will be encased in wood - either ash or beech. Most PCs are made from steel and reinforced plastic.". No one's suggested that some plastics are easier to recycle? Where are the forests used to make these parts and are they from reputable renewable sources? Or even that extracting Aluminium is a massively power intensive process that uses a lot more electricity, and therefore carbon, than processing Steel. We can only assume PC World is using recycled aluminium exclusively which uses far less energy.
PC World finally hits the nail in the "Roffle coffin", when it says that it can save people's power usage by some "85 percent" dropping the cost of an annual electricity bill from £40 down to just £12. Regardless of the fact the machine alone will set you back nearly £600. So in electrical savings alone you'd only have to use the PC for just over 21 and a half years to make a profit.
PC World will also buy carbon credits from the third world, offsetting the final carbon count of the PC to bring it down to zero.
I suppose PC Worlds ingenuity should be rewarded, but it's just left us at BitHQ laughing our socks off at the implications of PC power usage they've implied. If you really want to save energy, recommend a notebook with a VIA processor, perhaps? And also encourage people to walk or cycle to its stores.
Don't get us wrong, we don't like to waste energy and therefore money as much as the next person, but we're focused on the real goal of getting the component companies to make more efficient products rather that just taking out a few fans from a system. Next time Ms. Patterson (from the photograph on The Telegraph website), talk to a community who knows first, yea?
If you're still able to see through your tears of laughter, let us know what you think in the forums.
Many thanks to reader, Risky, for pointing this gem out to us.
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