Idle consumptions

This page reports the minimal consumptions of Thinkpads when idle. This means, in principle: minimum brightness, CPU and GPU at lowest speed, no wifi, hard drive spun down, no pcmcia cards inserted (see details of each entry).

This kind of information has several uses: comparing one's consumption with that of other people's setups, knowing which model to use as a gateway/file server, etc.

Model	OS	Remarks	consumption
600E PIII/450	Archlinux 0.8/xfce		9W
T41p	Ubuntu 7.04	Undervolted, fglrx, no dri; fan->+0.5W, powerstate=2->+0.7W, HD->+1.5W	8.3W
T43 (1871)	Debian (Linux 2.6.21, fluxbox)	DRI, alsa (power_save=1), with usb, no networking	10.1W (12.0W with HD)
T43 (2669)	Gentoo (2.6.20-gentoo-r5)	Undervolted, fglrx (powerstate=1), DRI, no alsa, no usb modules, no networking	12.7W
T43 (2686)	Fedora Core 6 (2.6.19.x patched)	Undervolted, radeon, rovclock -c 125 -m 130, no DRI, ALSA power_save=1, no usb modules, no networking, min brightness, HDD spun down	15W
R50e	Gentoo (linux-2.6.22-rc4 force_HPET, fluxbox)	With Networking, USB, firefox, thunderbird	11.1W
R50e	Gentoo (linux-2.6.22-rc4 force_HPET, fluxbox)	Fluxbox + shell (+fan)	10.5W
R50e	Gentoo (linux-2.6.22-rc4 force_HPET, fluxbox)	Blank Screen after 20min idle (+fan)	7.1W
X60	Ubuntu 7.04	Wireless kill switch on, min brightness	10.2W
X60s	Debian Etch	2.6.21 tickless kernel, processes tweaked with powertop, usb/fw unloaded, hd spun down, min brightness, ipw3945 set to powersave mode 7	8.3W
X60s	Debian Etch	2.6.21 tickless kernel, processes tweaked with powertop, usb/fw unloaded, hd spun down, min brightness,ipw3945 unloaded	9W
T60 (2007)	Fedora Core 6	Wireless kill switch on, 1400x1050 panel @ min brightness, fglrx (powerstate=1), HDD spun up (~1W saving without)	16W