J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message ,
writes:
Leaving it unplugged is probably the best, I imagine all cards do use
some power, so I may be savihg a few cents on my electric bill without
It's absence would probably also improve ventilation and so on, and
having it there (even _with_ the correct drivers) might still impede the
machine's operation, though in practice by an imperceptible amount.
In the old days, a NIC chip drew around 1 watt.
On modern chips, they're dual rail, with a higher voltage
for the I/O pins (3.3V maybe) and a lower voltage for the
core (to save on core power by using reduced amplitude
signals). And the Ethernet chips also have power saving features
to put portions of them to sleep when no packets are coming in.
If the RJ45 wasn't plugged in, and there was no heartbeat
from a router, then the chip might power down. (And the
driver and Device Manager setting can help it do that.)
Some older hardware probably runs at constant power.
Like that RTL8139 on the OPs card. (I just looked up
the datasheet, and it's 1.1W of power max.)
Much has changed over the years about IC design, and
back in the old days, we had relatively slow
computers burning up 150W just sitting there. If
you stick a power meter on an older machine, it's
shocking how much power it wastes. Just like the
CRT screens we used to use, would draw 150W for
a big monitor. Old computer hardware is
a "coal fired glutton" :-)
Paul