ECOS is a consulting firm that tasked themselves with the goal of creating a new PC that could yield a 284kWh reduction in energy usage. They accomplished this goal with funding from PIER, AMD, VIA, and Intel.
PIER is California’s Public Interest Energy Research group; AMD, VIA, and Intel are obviously the chip makers with the ability to help ECOS accomplish this goal. Basically they used all of the top of the line energy efficient components they could find with little to no regard for cost, just energy efficiency including Hybrid Hard Drives and properly sized 80 PLUS power supplies to keep power usage down.
By the time everything was said and done their most energy efficient computer used a mere 19 watts when on, but in idle mode running Windows XP. They also found that the hardware for such a machine would only cost roughly $40 more than Energy STAR machines and that could be recouped in as little as 2 years from just the savings on the power bill for a given company, but it would also reduce green house gasses and lower energy usage. They even went so far as to say that if all businesses in the US were to adopt these types of computers they could single-handedly eliminate about 3 average coal-burning power plants, I think we just need to look to the Zerg for better power options.
[via ECOS Consulting]