Manufacturers are making more and more new estuffs. So it is becoming simpler to buy even used estuff. Every few years folks are throwing away good stuffs and in my experience locally even the very poor don't take them. Personally, I have all the IT stuffs that I need for my lifetime pretty much.

At this rate of waste, our society itself will collapse as per Jared Diamond and others who have studied collapse of past societies. Dr. Jared Diamond has written a book even titled Collapse. Even Matt Malone one of the biggest IT dumpster divers interviewed by wired magazine had a chat with a Prof. of anthropology I think if I recollect correctly, he also said that any society that wasted at this rate in the past has collapsed with time.

$5 bare bones thrift store PC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6naa5_O1dzk

CPU usage is directly related to energy consumption I was told. Most of the times,
my CPU usage is around 15%, I have a 350W PSU, so it is around 50 Watts per hour
approx when in use. This is not too bad for an older PC.

Having a Mini PC is excellent in terms of saving space. This is one good reason,
folks may discard an older PC for a Mini PC.

True only in the absence of other factors. Anything with a motor might draw more power than the CPU under some circumstances. Even in isolation, CPU usage to power is not that kind of direct relation (even at 0% CPU usage the power draw will not be 0). Directly measuring power usage with a meter gives a more accurate number.

How are you measuring CPU usage?

htop process in Linux gives the top processes along with % CPU usage.

Edited to add:
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-re...gy-consumption

There is one response with a study above that shows linear correlation between
CPU usage and energy consumption.

Also system load and other good information. Htop is a good tool, if you take its limitations into account and understand what it does and does not tell you. I like other tools for reporting cpu usage better, but it is nice.

When I run Akregator, Chromium, Palemoon, and Thunderbird at the same time on my old HP/Compaq 6400 with 2.5G ram and Intel Centrino Duo processor I get one core at 1% and the other at 2% when running htop. I have to wonder what is driving your use to 15%.


A machine that uses 200W at idle and 250W fully loaded and busy with a direct and linear relation between CPU load and power. It is still not very efficient. Just something to keep in mind.

I tend to just keep a couple of old motherboards & PSUs, to test 32bit distros, when I had the time, but they're rarely used, as I have several old laptops that function much better for day to day use, but some date back to 2002, so mainly still using 'old stuff'.

Haven't bought a new laptop since about 2010, but I did buy myself a Raspberry Pi3 to see how Linux (& BSD) run on them this last year. It's hooked up to an old monitor most of the time, but I did buy an HDMI 11.5" monitor specifically to try out the HDMI way of doing things.

The only monitor I have is a TV with VGA input. I have an HDMI to VGA adapter I use with my Pi's.
That and the 7" Pi touchscreen. I've used laptops since 1998 but always had spare machines for testing stuff until around 2002 when I got off of windows so the (linux) host OS was actually efficient enough to run virtual guests so if I want to test anything its under virtualbox now.

I remember actually using tron and troff in Microsoft BASIC on my TRS-80 Model III. It's not just a movie name! Those computers seemed much more free and open than the fascist security machines we're given today. For example, I could peek directly at memory locations and poke data directly into them too. I remember coding my own Space Invaders clone using ANSI graphics characters. Each row of aliens was a string of those characters and the main loop just peeked at the keyboard buffer for user input.

Man, what a huge security risk to the homeland, fatherland and motherland those days were! I feel much more safe and secure today.

You still can today, its called 'bare metal' programming since your talking directly to the hardware and not through an OS.

Now I think I know why my xwindows is crashing. Say I have several programs open.
Using seamonkey browser for video or even images really boosts the CPU usage high, from 80 to 100% at the start. So if have a few programs open and the seamonkey browser has a site loaded with scripts or ads etc., then the CPU usage goes above 100% momentarily and this crashes the xwindows. Only way to prevent this is to have fewer programs running and use seamonkey in a limited manner.

Edited to add
CPU usage also jumps when I change from one program to another. So if I have
seamonkey open and change programs then it affects a lot more.
Opening certain programs for the first time also jumps memory use greatly,
for eg., seamonkey again. So doing multiple resource demanding tasks at
same time is leading to Xwindows crash more often, it was not like this before.
Also getting worse with time.

^ have you ever told us what your system specs are? or distro?
also if your main machine reflects on the ethic you're advertising here, i'd say hardware failure should be considered...


post of the day!

1Gb ram, 2.4Ghz P4 single core Processor, Puppy Linux older version distro from 2012 or so are the specs, have shared it before and glad to share it again. Feel free to ask if any other info. is needed.

If it is hardware failure, which part of hardware can be failing exactly ? Will just replacing the CPU paste solve the issue or is it much more than that ?

Thanks in advance.

Edited to add:
Came across this thread with similar issue that was solved on replacing the thermal paste of CPU
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/...asionally.html

Appears I have to give this a try before other things, if not, the issue will
only get worse with time.

Another contact suggested that I use only one program at a time and to also
change programs, open/close them slowly. This seems to be a temporary solution but in longer run will not help also if thermal paste is the issue.

This PC is quite old and the thermal paste has not been changed in this for
over 10 years or so.

likely all 3 aspects contribute to your problems.

overheating cpu and/or other parts, hard drive dying... who's to say?

try cheese!