I must agree.  I once sized a UPS based on HP's published power requirements
for a large system and all its peripherals, and the thing never ran at more
than 30% of its capacity.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gavin Scott [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, November 06, 2002 4:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Power, BTU, Weight specs for HP3000s and peripherals?


Wirt writes:
> You can calculate (or at least estimate) the BTUs yourself by
> simply looking at the nameplate on the backs of the various
> devices. They'll read something like 0.5 amps at 120 volts,
> which of course means that the device nominally draws 60 watts
> of power.

From my experience these numbers are often "worst case" and "not to exceed
in normal operation" values which, when coupled with HP's historically
conservative engineering design may significantly overstate the actual power
requirements of the device.

Further, the specified values generally apply to maximal configurations,
where the maximum load is being drawn from the power supplies to run the
maximum number of internal devices, interface boards, memory, etc.
Especially with boxes like a 997-400 that can contain wildly varying amounts
of hardware, adding up the power or BTU numbers for all your systems and
buying an air-conditioner with that capacity is a recipe for a very
expensive AC system, but one that will keep the room nice and cool without
ever working very hard.

G.

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