[Arthur75]

Do anybody has references about how many litres or kgs (or gallons) of oil are necessary to build a PC ?
I remember reading 200 litres, now looking in the web I find more 300 or 600 litres ! (citing UN as source):
http://www.linternaute.com/actualite/sa ... rt/7.shtml
http://asavoir.org/trucs/54_Cout-en-pet ... tion-un-pc

But somehow can't find the right words to come up with more reference in English, "computer oil gallon" or "computer oil gallon CO2" doesn't bring much, anybody has some ?

[Pretorian]

So if you'll skip on PC the oil will be left in the ground? Something like that? Let's not be kids shall we.

[Arthur75]

Just in order to have an idea of the oil and energy embeded into a laptop and desktop PC, what are you talking about ? Not sure ...

[vtsnowedin]

A computer made without using any oil or petrochemicals is possible but it probably won't fit on your lap. But I think it is unlikely we will not have enough oil to build new computers anytime soon. As oil supplies tighten we will abandon the most wasteful uses of oil first such as burning it just to create heat in a living space, then we will stop burning it in ICEs to drive around a single occupant on needlessly repetitive trips etc. The bell curve of oil production tails off a long way in the future and the surviving humans will have plenty of old computers to recycle as well as enough scarce and high priced oil to build new ones to help them find that last bit of oil.

[bratticus]

Three! -- No, wait only 2.7!

[bratticus]

The first problem is "what is a PC?"

There is an enormous range of device sizes that are called "a PC".

You might as well have asked "how much oil does it take to make any old thing?"

[pedalling_faster]

Do anybody has references about how many litres or kgs (or gallons) of oil are necessary to build a PC ?
I remember reading 200 litres, now looking in the web I find more 300 or 600 litres ! (citing UN as source):
http://www.linternaute.com/actualite/sa ... rt/7.shtml
http://asavoir.org/trucs/54_Cout-en-pet ... tion-un-pc

But somehow can't find the right words to come up with more reference in English, "computer oil gallon" or "computer oil gallon CO2" doesn't bring much, anybody has some ?

It's a great question, but you would need some time to gather the info.

You would need to consider the commuting method of the Foxconn workers who assemble many of the parts. Or maybe it's employees in Taiwan. You would need that information.

Also, that would be a first-order (simple) answer, because it took energy to make the cars that the computer-assemblers drive, and it took energy to make their homes - and that energy would need to be amortized appropriately.

Then there is the energy in the R&D effort that designs the computer, e.g. at Apple in Cupertino. Steve Jobs lives in Palo Alto - that's about a 15 mile drive - but we don't know how representative Jobs' commute is.

It would take a lot of information gathering. I would ballpark it at 10 gallons per PC, that is a non-scientific Wild-Ass Guess (as opposed to a SWAG, scientific Wild-ass guess.)

[Sixstrings]

Funny thing about PC's is how cheap they continue to get.. peak oil or not, they just get cheaper, smaller, with more features. Kindergarteners are getting handed iPads, all the teachers too. Netbooks are so cheap they're in the price range of the poorest of the third world poor. They might not have had breakfast, but by golly they're hooked up to the net.

You're fretting about how much oil it takes to make a PC, meanwhile Walmart is selling netbooks for $218:

Acer Aqual 10.1" AOD255E-13438 Netbook PC:

Key Features and Benefits:

Intel Atom N455 processor
1.66GHz, 512KB L2 Cache
1GB DDR3 SDRAM system memory
Allows you to do the computer basics of web surfing, emails and documents
160GB SATA hard drive
Store 106,000 photos, 45,000 songs or 84 hours of HD video and more
10/100 Fast Ethernet, 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN
Connect to a broadband modem with wired Ethernet or wirelessly connect to a Wi-Fi signal or hotspot with the 802.11b/g/n connection built into your Acer aqua 10.1" netbook PC
10.1" WSVGA Acer CrystalBrite LED backlit display
Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3150 with 64MB of dedicated video memory, supporting Microsoft DirectX 9
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-10.1-160GB-AOD255E-13438/16352472

Sheesh not bad for $200.. 1GM SDRAM, 160 GB hard drive.

So let's see.. the coffee I buy is now like $11.50 a can. So this netbook is the price equivalent of 20 cans of coffee. When I first started buying PC's they were $2,000 outfits. Can of coffee was probably $3 back then. So the old coffee-to-PC ratio was 666 to one. My point here is that coffee has gone up and PC's have gone way down. That trend will continue for the foreseeable future.. food and necessities inflating, but tech getting better and cheaper. A slightly puzzling conundrum, I agree.

[cephalotus]

Do anybody has references about how many litres or kgs (or gallons) of oil are necessary to build a PC ?
I remember reading 200 litres, now looking in the web I find more 300 or 600 litres ! (citing UN as source):

That would include around 300US$/"computer" just for oil and seems VERY unlikely to me when you can buy computers for 200US$.

It is energy intesive to build ICs, but modern computer design only a few ICs per computer compared to hundreds of ICs in old PC systems. Have a look at smartphones, which I would call the smallest computers these days. There are only a few main chips.

isuppli calculated that the components of a iphone do cost less than 200 US$, so the energy to make these components will cost ---a lot--- less:
http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/P ... uppli.aspx

[Arthur75]

That would include around 300US$/"computer" just for oil and seems VERY unlikely to me when you can buy computers for 200US$.

Yes, had the same thinking, but still looking for references in English, even not counting the "salaries" aspects, just the energy embeded in raw materials, chip building process, etc

[AgentR11]

When I first started buying PC's they were $2,000 outfits. ...

Youngster's these days... I swear,

When *I* was a young techy, my first serious desktop cost a little over $4,000; had a monochrome green screen, 1 MEGABYTE of RAM (that I had to hand push into sockets and step on to get them well seated) and an incredibly huge 40 MEGABYTE hard drive. I did have a used 8086 one before that, but as it was floppy only; I wouldn't really consider it serious. I did code on it though.

In contrast.. my phone has, basically, 4 GIGABYTES of RAM, 16 gigabytes of storage, a processor that zips along at a clock speed 100 times faster, and better screen presentation to boot. No need to mention that the phone weighs a few ounces; but the desktop took my whole hatchback sedan to move from store to office.

And it had to be carried from the car to the office.. UP HILL, BOTH WAYS, IN THE SNOW, WHILE IT WAS 105F OUTSIDE TOO!
lol

Seriously, worrying about the amount of energy needed to manufacture a PC??

[davep]

Pfft.

I started at college with COBOL on punched cards. Then I graduated to ICL DRSs with EIGHT-inch floppies (180kbytes!). My first proper non-floppy PC had less the 640k RAM and a 10Mb hard drive. Ah, the delights of config.sys and autoexec.bat to get that bugger to work.

[efarmer]

C:\>
C:\> copy con beatsme.bat
dir beats*.* /od/p
<CTRL F6>

beatsme
dir beats*.* /od/p
c:\ beats.me


C:\> type beats.me
Beats me, No Idea
Ask Pstarr

C:/>

[bratticus]

So let's see.. the coffee I buy is now like $11.50 a can.

Eww, you drink canned coffee? Get thee to a microroastery for thine penance.

[dolanbaker]

Funny thing about PC's is how cheap they continue to get.. peak oil or not, they just get cheaper, smaller, with more features.

....


So let's see.. the coffee I buy is now like $11.50 a can. So this netbook is the price equivalent of 20 cans of coffee. When I first started buying PC's they were $2,000 outfits. Can of coffee was probably $3 back then. So the old coffee-to-PC ratio was 666 to one. My point here is that coffee has gone up and PC's have gone way down. That trend will continue for the foreseeable future.. food and necessities inflating, but tech getting better and cheaper. A slightly puzzling conundrum, I agree.

Most of the costs of the earlier computers (before 1990) went into their development, plus the fact that electronics was a lot more "descrete" as in the boards required more manual or semi automatic assembly and of course the scale of production was much smaller.

In the past decade or so, the number of parts in any typical computer has remained essentially the same, yet the cost (to the consumer) continues to fall. It seems that the assembly process is becoming even more automated and the factories are being relocated to places of even cheaper labour, at some point that process must reach it's logical limit (100% automated plant, operated by slaves!).

Eventually, the recent increases in the costs of raw materials, fuel & labour must stop the downward trend in prices, the same could be said for most manufactured goods.

[Newfie]

Bunch of youngsters. My first 'PC' had 4 functions and 8 segment LED's and cost about $400 in the early '70's, that's about $4,000 now I guess.

But seriously, as their use has spread and development costs been amortized I think that their cost is pretty reflective of energy required to produce them. The plants are probably a few years old, so you are getting some benefit from past cheap oil, the infrastructure was built with $30/bbl oil even if the plastic used is at $80/bbl.

So, to SWAG it, take an average of $50/bbl oil at which is $1.25/gallon (42 gallons/bbl.) 10% profit and 5% labor and 5% advertising. So of a $500 pc you have $400 in primary production. So that is around 300 gallons of energy equivalent, all in including transportation.

Probably not the right answer but probably close to the right approach.

I guess you could argue that even labor and advertising require energy and add that to the mix.

[Serial_Worrier]

We can't continue in the "way we are accustomed" once oil dives off a cliff. It will be Mad Max time, scavenging what's left and killing off competitors with whatever can muster. The good news is steel-weapons will not magically go away after the collapse and those will make interesting weapons.

[Newfie]

We can't continue in the "way we are accustomed" once oil dives off a cliff. It will be Mad Max time, scavenging what's left and killing off competitors with whatever can muster. The good news is steel-weapons will not magically go away after the collapse and those will make interesting weapons.

Sorry, I missed the correlation between your post and the thread topic.

Please illuminate me.

[ralfy]

Not just oil but water and many other resources: probably hundreds of gallons of water, for example, for an IC on a computer wafer.