Price and performance generally increase as you climb the workstation ladder, and so do heat, nose and power consumption. These metrics, which were of low or no concern years ago, are top of mind today.
Heat
We're all looking to cut costs and go greener; electricity is used by your new machine, of course, but also in cooling the office space that the machine heats up. Remember the heat output of a workstation impacts the company's overall utility bills. If you multiple that effect by the number of workstations in the office, it can have a measurable influence.
Noise
Although it might be easy to dismiss the concern over noise, we all know that nothing puts a damper on your productivity like the incessant whir of all those fans moving air through that desktop chassis. So how do you quantify the noise? Big buyers are actually measuring decibels now, before even checking out price tags and performance specs.
But for the rest of us without access to acoustics chambers, the basic premise is straightforward: the more watts the machine consumes, the higher your electric bill, the more heat is produced, and the greater the air flow necessary to cool it, meaning more noise.
Power Consumption
Where's the greatest power consumption? For anyone who's peered inside a chassis and seen the big heat sinks and fan sinks (with an active fan on top of the chip), you know the CPUs and GPUs are notorious problem areas. Über-clocked CPUs and GPUs consuming more than 150 watts mean more fans and more noise.
Testing a Workstation
Now every OEM is paying attention to more effective chassis design to optimize air flow and cooling, and these efforts are noticeably reducing noise. However, system noise is difficult to ascertain unless you can try out the unit yourself, so if unexpectedly high noise or power consumption is a major concern, see if you can buy at a brick-and-mortar store to more easily test it out and return, if necessary.
Otherwise, just keep in mind that choosing the fastest CPUs and GPUs — and opting for a dual processor for either — will drive up power consumption quickly, and chances are more noise will follow.
