Beresford Mk6/4 Power Usage

[Gazjam]

Looking at saving on the old leccy bills, up till now Ive been leaving my kit on standby at night, might change that soon.

Wondering about the Dac though, does it use much Juice?


Ta.

[StanleyB]

The DAC draws under 100mA at 12V in standby. That is about 1.2W.

Stan

[Gazjam]

Thats great Stan, what about when its powered on? How much then?

Just wondering if its worth leaving the Dac on..any sound qlty vs power use issues?

ta.

[Peter Stockwell]

If you want to save on Electricity bills turn off the fridge and the heating. Your kit is marginal.

[StanleyB]

Thats great Stan, what about when its powered on? How much then?

Just wondering if its worth leaving the Dac on..any sound qlty vs power use issues?

ta.

Let's just say that leaving it in standby or leaving it on is about the same as far as power consumption is concerned. The DAC has a special circuitry in the Virtual DC power circuit I developed that mimics the old heating cupboard of many decades ago. So cutting the mains to the DAC will then require a good 15 minutes of warm up in the summer. Takes a lot longer in the winter in a cold room.

[Gazjam]

Thanks Stan,
just the info I was looking for.

Gary.

[Gazjam]

If you want to save on Electricity bills turn off the fridge and the heating. Your kit is marginal.

I'll turn off my Grannie's Iron Lung whilst I'm at it?

[nat8808]

Look at the power ratings on everything you use and start cutting down on use of all the high power ones first.

Some boring maths:

A kettle uses about 1200W which means it uses 1200 Joules of energy a second. Say it takes 1 minute to boil the exact amount of water you need for something but you put in too much and now the kettle stays on for 2 minutes and the water you don't use goes cold again (the energy wasted). The energy wasted here is 1200(joules per second) x 60(seconds) = 72000 Joules of energy.

The 7510 uses 1.2 Joules per second. From what was wasted heating up the water you didn't use (in just one minute!), you could have powered the 7510 for 72000 / 1.2 seconds = 60000s = 16 hours and 40 minutes! Now work this out for leaving the oven on for just one minute too long, which is ~2500W...

So there you go! This applies to leaving your tea to go cold and then re-heating it in the microwave...

Of course, I've now idea how much money you'd actually save but in terms of saving the world it's good step and must take note myself.

Wire your gran's iron lung up to a dynamo and bike a let the family take turns. In fact, why not wire the Beresford up to the dynamo and get fit while listening?

[Gazjam]

That one made me laugh

...and remember my High School Physics days too.

I'm currently trying to replace my Squeezebox (thru my BDac) server with something a bit cheaper to run. On the case though, have specced a PC that runs 45Watts MAX so problem solved.

At the moment the SB is running off a quad core 3D modelling / Photoshop monster - (The gFX card alone uses 200Watts - or is that Joules /sec ) so looking at power ratings n stuff is very much in my mind. I tend to download a lot too so I can leave it running overnight often.

I think basically ANYTHING that heats up anything costs the most in Electricity terms.

I worried more about leaving my kit on than I should have methinks....

[StanleyB]

Have a look at the INOI HD media drive that is on the Maplin website. I use that as my 'transport' these days It connects via a digital coax to the DAC and comes with a remote control to select tracks. It can even control the volume digitally! But you'll need a little LCD screen.
For downloading I use an old 1GHz laptop. I put in a bigger drive. Power consumption of the laptop is less than 60W.

STan