When doing device reviews can you include Power Factor?

[BoGs]

I was shocked to learn that my Mikrotik 2116 is only 0.46 power factor, and STH often talks about how little power Mikrotik (and other devices use power) and I went down the rabbit hole of figuring all that out. It sounds like an easy cheap way is to use cheap power supplies, but those cheap power supplies have very cheap power factor. When talking about power usage can we also include the total power?

In my example my Mikrotik 2116 uses ~19w on each of the two power supplies. When factoring in the PF the tiny "low power" Mikrotik is using more power then my single socket 4214 hp dl380 gen10. I bought the router because I thought that they are low power, I could of used a server and been better off?

Thoughts and advice?

(This was gathered using Raritan PX3-5 series PDU)

 

[RecursiveG]

Are you charged by real power or apparent power?

 

[bonox]

total power remains same regardless of power factor. Thus power =/= power factor. Power factor alters current draw and thus parasitic loss due to impedance. And a fraction of a small number is..... a small number.

On top of that, unless you're a significant industrial electricity consumer you are highly unlikely to be charged a power factor adjustment. And you're comparing a $800 16core router with a 2 cpu 2U server as equivalent usage based on powerfactor over 38 watts? If you could have used the server alone instead of the router, why exactly did you buy the router in the first place? Neither of them are any use if you don't actually run them and there's no way any server with that many ports could keep up with the bandwidth of the router. I know you said you've got 1 CPU, but you're also carrying 50+watts of fans on the other half of that box.

Power factor correction in consumer devices like computer power supplies is either based on marketing potential to ignorant users, or someone put regulatory pressure on them to improve life for the electricity distributors across nations worth of rollout, not with a view to improving the bottom line of a single user. These are programs like EnergyStar.

 

[bonox]

Are you charged by real power or apparent power?

in other words, does your bill have Watts(hours) or VoltAmps(hours) on it?