Hi Dean. Interesting project. I've never had a way to measure, but I think video cards vary greatly in their power consumption. I used to use high end NVidia cards to fly flt simulators in home builts. I had mobos that were difficult to boot, and mobos that melted capacitors. My unsubstantiated and humble opinion is that these problems were caused by power hungry video cards drawing more amps than the mobo was designed to provide. Some later video cards had inputs for power cables direct from the power supply. If I was looking for a card for a home server, I'd look for a card with 32 Megs or less memory that didn't emphasize 3-D gaming. I'd guess that cards of that type would use minimal power and let you have a monitor available if needed. I'd look for one with passive cooling without the high-pitched noisy fan running 24/7. I used a Matrox G-450 in a W98 computer for a commercial fishing boat, very available on Ebay. I couldn't find power consumption spec for it on Matrox' web site. I think drivers are available for most OS.

PS (Still diggin) Here's a site which shows power consumption of video varying from 15 watts for a <32 meg NVidia card to 496 watts for a recent NVidia card. Think of it like a 15W light bulb vs 5 100W bulbs running all the time. Of course if you live in a cold climate, the 496 watts and it's necessary fans would help to heat your house :-o)

http://www.atomicmpc.com.au/forums.asp?s=2&c=7&t=9354

-----Original Message-----
>From: James Edwards <[log in to unmask]>
>Sent: Apr 21, 2008 6:02 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Running Without a Monitor or keyboard - Windows Home Server
>
>Dean Kukral wrote:
>> I have built a Windows Home Server using an older computer.  Once a WHS is set up, it is no longer necessary to have a keyboard, 
>> mouse, monitor, etc. connected to the basic box which is accessed via the lan.  Since it would be nice to let it run 24/7, as a good 
>> citizen, I would like to strip it of everything in order to minimize power usage.
>>
>> I was able to remove the video card, and it started and ran fine after giving a long and three short beeps.
>>   
>
>I would leave a video card in the box for the time you have to trouble 
>shoot why you can no longer access the box over the wire.
>
>
>-- 
>Jim

            Do you want to signoff PCBUILD or just change to
                    Digest mode - visit our web site:
                   http://freepctech.com/pcbuild.shtml