A green motherboard is environmentally friendly, produced with less harmful materials and consumes less electricity. It adheres to RoHS and WEEE directives and meets ENERGY STAR power consumption requirements. It includes power management circuitry and specialized processors for efficient power distribution. It is a critical component of a green computer system.
A green motherboard is an environmentally friendly motherboard. There are several ways a motherboard can be considered green. It can be produced with a manufacturing process that is less harmful to the environment and made with less harmful materials. It can also consume less electricity at both idle and top speed. Once it reaches its end of life, a green motherboard is also usually less harmful to recycle, having been created with less harmful materials.
Many manufacturers of green motherboards follow the European Union’s RoHS (Restriction on Hazardous Substances) standard. This directive restricts the use of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium and some polybrominated flame retardants in electronic equipment. On motherboards in particular, lead has been used in the solder used to connect computer parts to the board, in the conductors of the components themselves, and in the traces of circuit boards. Some manufacturers also adhere to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive, which mandates environmentally friendly collection, reconditioning or disposal of their electronic products.
Most motherboards meet a certain level of ENERGY STAR® power consumption requirements, set forth by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). A green motherboard typically meets or exceeds the latest specifications. Some of these motherboards save power by using lower voltage processors made with smaller transistors and different materials, which significantly reduces power consumption, especially while idle, providing better performance. Some processors can also reduce power consumption while performing less demanding tasks. Most motherboards also include intelligent power management circuitry that turns off video, Ethernet, and the hard drive as well as other devices and their controllers while they’re not in use.
An eco-friendly motherboard may also include a specialized processor dedicated to power management, monitoring, and efficient distribution of power based on a constantly changing load. At least one manufacturer has introduced motherboards with network interfaces that are compliant with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE) standard. This allows such a system to temporarily but dramatically reduce power consumption when it has detected little activity on either side of an Ethernet connection.
A green motherboard is a critical component of a green computer. The combination of a low-power motherboard, hard drive, video display, memory, power supply, and external components makes for an ideal green system. While every single green computer user contributes to the health of the environment, it becomes even more important for data centers containing thousands of identical systems to make full use of green technology wherever possible.
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