Power Consumptions

[IronBits]

http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/01/...lt/page19.html

[Shish]

Thanks for that link IB, I frequently have problems getting TH to load at all and I was trying to get that report.
Any idea what the watercooling was? cos that pic looks unfamiliar and the links stopped loading again.
Have to find an efficient totally quiet water cooling for the lounge server which is going to be in an Antec case with a replaced psu cos their`s sucks inwards for some reason and dumps heat INTO the case. Stoopid idea.
Been looking at the cooling tower ones including the Thermaltakes very cheap one, no fans, plus their more expensive, up to 4 fans versions http://www.thermaltake.com/product/L...quid_index.asp
Cheap tower one is only £60 here with 2 other ones, flat-2 fans, tower-4fans, around double that but still very cheap compared to the Zalman system.
Sorry if I`ve gone off topic a bit.
My Opti 165 system, with raid 5x4 disks and 1 Gb memory plus ATI 9800Pro AIW and 3 DVD writers, 3x120mm fans is doing around 254W, adjusted, from the wall socket according to the digital Powerpoint current breaker which all the sockets have built in in the den. Firing up obviously shows a much larger surge current which is significantly less than the dual Athlon 2500XP-Ms which run around 420W.

[IronBits]

I have no idea, I use firefox with ad, script and flash block so I don't see any of the advertisments

I know nothing of watercooling, except it has to have a pump, so it would sound like an aquarium .... sorry.

[Scoofy12]

watercooling need not sound like an aquarium. I have a WC setup (thats actually about 3-4 years old now, havent used it recently), that was basically silent. it had a very small (~1oz) reservoir, so no watery sounds at all. the pump did sound a little like an aquarium pump, but was soft enough that i didnt hear it over the PSU fan.

[rbutcher]

This topic of power consumption is one that bothers me now every time I get my electricity bill. DC started out as a fun hobby that allowed me to assemble secondhand parts people give me, together with the occasional new bargain I pick up (like semprons a while back), and crunch the world's problems away.
But I estimate I'm burning 100 watts per box, which defeats the object of climate prediction @ home.
Am I correct in assuming that the most power-efficient way to crunch is to buy the fastest AMD single core I can find, and run it as my sole box, storing working files on a USB stick and allowing the hd to spin down, and give away all the other boxes ?
How much juice does a hd use anyway ?

[Thor]

Well, an HD is pretty much nothig in terms of power consumption. I think it is save to say (and I have read it often) that it uses around 10W

I think a dualcore (AMD) with a very efficent PSU might be the better choice... It does not take a lot more power than a single core and still less than an Intel.

Take the smallest graphics card (or better none) you can find and leave the HD in... makes less trouble. And don't forget that Flash memory is supposed to have only very limited write cycles..

Thor

[rbutcher]

Thanks Thor.. prices in my area indicate that lower end of dual core AMD processors are the best bang for buck (athlon 64 X2 3800), assuming that :-
1. Clock speed - is this main criterion ? i.e. is a 2.2 ghz cpu going to do 10% more work than a 2 ghz cpu ?
2. Dual Core - does this double the work throughput, i.e. is a 2ghz dual-core going to do twice the work of a 2 ghz single core ? Or do programs have to be optimised ?
3. The dual core X2 3800 cpu uses only 89 watts according the the AMD website. Tom's Hardware figures are 217 watts at 100%, 129 at idle. So no great electricity saving here over my old single core XP 3000.
thanks
Rod

[Scoofy12]

1. if power is a primary concern, then you want lower clock speed. Power (and therefore heat) scale with (IIRC) the square of frequency. so lower frequency processors are more power efficient.
2. dual core processors don't take much more power than single cores, so that's more power-efficient as well. you won't get quite 2x the performance (depending on how memory-bandwidth bound your applications are... this is actually not so bad with AMD duallies), but if you run 2 instances of your DC app of choice (or 2 different ones), youll be close.
3. no great saving, but you will get nearly twice the work. and AMD's power management (cool n quiet?) works pretty well.

[ashiq88]

I frequently have problems getting TH to load at all and I was trying to get that report.
Any idea what the watercooling was? cos that pic looks unfamiliar and the links stopped loading again.
Have to find an efficient totally quiet water cooling for the lounge server which is going to be in an Antec case with a replaced psu cos their`s sucks inwards for some reason and dumps heat INTO the case. Stoopid idea.
Been looking at the cooling tower ones including the Thermaltakes very cheap one,

[IronBits]

Take the PS out of the case, then you can take the screws out of the PS, and reverse the fan.

[Brucifer]

Actually, go take a look at NewEgg. There are new X2's out there that are down in the 45w category. The fastest single cores are still up around 80-90w. So you are best off to get the lowest power consuming X2 now and you'll get more crunching output for less juice than the single core stuff.

[IronBits]

I read where someone said 125W is three kilowatt-hours per day.

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

It is simple maths too 125w x 24 = 3000w aka 3 Kwhrs.

[IronBits]

3000 x 9 + 2 GPU clients at 6000 each
27,000 + 12,000 = 39 Kwhrs per day x 30 days = 1170 Kwhs per month, plus
1 ton A/C unit to keep it all cooled down
10 Amps x 120 volts = 1200 Watts x 24 hours = 28800 Watts x 30 days = 864 Kwhs
2034 Kwhs per month x .08 cents per Kwh = ~ $200 per month electricity.
Sound about right?

[gopher_yarrowzoo]

yeah and Yikes @ yer utility bill

[the-mk]

expensive hobby

[IronBits]

Indeed, especially when I had 7 more PS3s added to the load, not counting that 5 ton behemoth 30amp 220 volt A/C unit outside during the summer months.

[jasong]

Well, if it's purely cost concerns, if a PS3 can run a project that you're really into, then running it on a regular computer is retarded. In my case, distributed.net is only going on for another couple months and folding doesnt interest me, so I'm running it on my cores instead.

[Skip Da Shu]

3000 x 9 + 2 GPU clients at 6000 each
27,000 + 12,000 = 39 Kwhrs per day x 30 days = 1170 Kwhs per month, plus
1 ton A/C unit to keep it all cooled down
10 Amps x 120 volts = 1200 Watts x 24 hours = 28800 Watts x 30 days = 864 Kwhs
2034 Kwhs per month x .08 cents per Kwh = ~ $200 per month electricity.
Sound about right?

No it doesn't. What you need to do is measure at the plug draw. My dedicated 'basket' crunchers (intel quads) draw an average of 127.5w at full load at the wall plug. These things mostly run on-board graphics so no GPU work going on (see Crunchers link in sig). Keeping them A/C'd is a big part of the problem. I've moved all of mine to the 'server oven' also known as the garage (the headless dedicated crunchers) and so have only have a box fan or two for cooling. They run an average clock speed of 3.06GHz on aftermarket HSFs and are all tuned to survive summer ambient temperatures > 105F.

Does the A/C compressor ever cycle off? If so it's not a constant 10A, probably an average of 1/2 that. That totally depends on the unit and the building/room it's in. When I had my crunchers located in my "shed" office I had two little window units that did run full time on hot days. A great deal of that was due to the lack of attic ventilation. After moving my office out to the garage (1/2 of it is finished out) and getting the crunchers into the un-A/C'd part I run a single 10K BTU unit that cycles off once it cools down the (much larger) room. I do have a 2nd 5K BTU unit but it's only used if I've left the A/Cs off while gone and the room has gotten really hot (for fast cool down). This is Texas so A/Cing 'the office' is a requirement. However with only 2 desktops, 1 laptop, a fridge and a microwave the A/C load is WAY lower than when there was an additional 8~10 crunchers in the room (as it was in 'the shed').

$200 is about what I pay to run my whole building (I have a separate meter on it) when I get one of those rare no A/C and no heat months. I'm paying over 50% more per KWh also. My last bill was $250 but that included 10 full time quads, two desktops (a quad and a X2), a dual core laptop, the fridge, the electric hot water heater, fans, A/C, lights, a couple UPS units, 4 switches, an occasional run of the air compressor, et al. @ .13 / KWh.

[IronBits]

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2009/power_c...tion_graphics/

[Skip Da Shu]

http://ht4u.net/reviews/2009/power_c...tion_graphics/

It's just the A/C cost I think is over estimated. I'm thinking it's only going to draw 10A when the compressor is running. I know my 10K BTU window unit out in the office has a large difference at the plug between compressor on / off cycles. I suspect that averaged over 12 months it's drawing less than 1/2 of that. Of course if you live on the equator someplace I could be very wrong. I'm thinking a rough estimate of something closer to $125 / month averaged over 12 months or less.

PS: See now, Glendale... can't be too far off from Austin, TX... drier probably but ... hmmm lemme check...
"Glendale, AZ is warmer than Georgetown, TX by 3°F."
"Georgetown, TX is wetter than Glendale, AZ by 28.6 in."

So, ya think we can write off our electric bills as a charitable donation?

[IronBits]

I WISH!!!

I almost never talk about absolute amps/cost because of the on/off nature of electrical devices.
Video cards for example, do they run less energy when you put the card/monitor to sleep?
How about when the monitor is just blanked out or turned off?
How about when it's just displaying text/graphics when surfing etc.
How about when you fire the beast up for some heavy gaming?
I'm not sticking my Kill-A-Watt on each system and get annal about it...

Yes, it can reach 120s here in the summer, and the BIG A/C unit eats 30amps each time it comes on.
So I tossed a nice Window A/C unit into the computer room window that runs at about 15amps when the compressor is on.
As you said, probably 1/2 the time on, 1/2 the time on fan mode (~5amps) ...

I try to keep my computer room free of crunchers so the Servers and my game box can enjoy nice cool dry weather in here, with the door shut.
I've run $500 per month electricity bills over in Laguna, California, and it doesn't take much around here to hit that high either.
If I turn everything off, then I can get it down around $250 in the summer months, and about $75 in the winter (gas heat).
As it is, I pay close to $300 every month, all year long now, on that new monthly average plan they have here.
$3,600 per year in electricity costs to survive the heat and the privilege of running a few servers and 1/2 dozen crunchers...

[Skip Da Shu]

I WISH!!!

I almost never talk about absolute amps/cost because of the on/off nature of electrical devices.
Video cards for example, do they run less energy when you put the card/monitor to sleep?
How about when the monitor is just blanked out or turned off?
How about when it's just displaying text/graphics when surfing etc.
How about when you fire the beast up for some heavy gaming?
I'm not sticking my Kill-A-Watt on each system and get annal about it...

Yes, it can reach 120s here in the summer, and the BIG A/C unit eats 30amps each time it comes on.
So I tossed a nice Window A/C unit into the computer room window that runs at about 15amps when the compressor is on.
As you said, probably 1/2 the time on, 1/2 the time on fan mode (~5amps) ...

I try to keep my computer room free of crunchers so the Servers and my game box can enjoy nice cool dry weather in here, with the door shut.
I've run $500 per month electricity bills over in Laguna, California, and it doesn't take much around here to hit that high either.
If I turn everything off, then I can get it down around $250 in the summer months, and about $75 in the winter (gas heat).
As it is, I pay close to $300 every month, all year long now, on that new monthly average plan they have here.
$3,600 per year in electricity costs to survive the heat and the privilege of running a few servers and 1/2 dozen crunchers...

Boy does some of this sound way to familiar. I've moved "the crunchers" out to the front half of the garage (detached). The office is the back half of the garage (finished out) of what was essentially a 2 x 4 car garage (two deep, two wide). Prior owner had already stubbed in sewer and water and I used that as incentive to finish off the back half of it years ago. It was an 'apartment' of sorts but I took it over as my office...hmmm musta been summer of '07. Getting those crunchers out of the A/C was a major step in cutting the 'lectric bill. When rates hit $.235/Kwh here last summer they would've killed me.

As a by product of my outrage at the $0.235 rate I hit one month, I have to admit I WAS anal 'nuff to put the kill-o-watt on each cruncher and just about everything else out here. These are headless dedicated crunchers using on-board video. So no monitor, no vid card, no gaming, no 3D graphics, running Xubuntu 64bit. They only float around in about a 8w range depending on work units being crunched and the occasional LAN and/or HDD activity. A much simpler scenario than doing real desktops I freely admit.

I was trying to figure out what the pay back period would be on replacing my old 'Goodwill computer store" PSUs with 80+ certified units. Obviously this is highly dependent on the Kw/h rate being charged but even at my new "low" (grrrr) summer rate of about $0.125/Kwh the average payback on 80+ PSUs is about 1.9 years when I can pick up a SS300-ES or EA-380 on sale for $36. This was down well under a year when the rates peaked last summer. At those rates my old B3 Q6600 (since moved on) actually had a payback of just 4~5 months. Keep in mind this was replacing old 250w~350w units... so they weren't terribly over power-supplied to begin with.

The trick comes into figuring out what that 'normal' load is. Bypassing the momentary thought to make current reading adapters/taps for the 20/24 pin, P4 pin and molex (HDD) PSU outputs (sorta like the article you gave us the link to on vid card power)... I took the average at the plug wattages and 'guestimated' an average efficiency of 81% on the 'certified' units. I did some math to see if I could validate that using mostly SS-300ES and EA-380 PSUs but did some checking with a couple of non-80plus certified PSUs also. The then current crunchers were all OC'd Q66 and Q67 CPUs (no case, 1 HDD, 1 HSF, 1 or 2GB of RAM, maybe a NB fan in uATX mobo w/ onboard vid). They averaged out to ~104w each being ask of the PSU with them running BOINC on all 4 cores. About 128w average at the plug

An interesting thing I stumbled across while doing all this extra (even for me) anal stuff was... It appears that all switching PSUs for desktop computers get their best efficiency at just under 50% load. I don't see how the common method of calculating max load of all components at full load and then adding some 'cushion' wouldn't cause folks to end up with their 'normal' load under 20% and well off any good spot on the efficiency curve. Well that leads to another whole diatribe on PSU overkill... better quit now... but HERE is a link where you can see the independent test results for 80+ certified PSUs.

l8r, Skip

[Shish]

I've finally finished the 2nd home server and I'm just starting my new DC rig with an I7 in. So that means 5 rigs in the last few months. Phew, now my back is totally gone so I'm back in bed for a few days working by phone and internetically only which is harder than doing it myself even with somebody else's hands.
Anyway, a handy link I've used for new workstations I've found and used a lot is Corsairs site and I'm now using, mostly (when I can get them), their HX range as efficiency is good, connectors are fabulous for cable runs and plenty of them. I prefer the single rail type against Coolermasters idea of many 12v ones and 80plus silver efficiency gives mostly 90%'ish efficiency. Not the best available efficiency but a fair bit cheaper than the 90%+ models out now. Plenty other manufacturers offering 80plus silver certified psu now but a warning is check how many connectors you're getting if you want to run lots of raided stuff.
Linky http://www.corsair.com/psufinder/default.aspx

[Skip Da Shu]

Here's a current deal on a Bronze 80+ with a rebate going on it. Ends up being $30 + shipping, 400w which should be plenty for anything w/o a big vid card in it.

NewEgg 80+ RaidMax

[em99010pepe]

i am not so knowledgeable about this matter. So i have to learn it. Thanks for the post.

spam

*EDITED by Bok* to remove spam link in the quote...

[Shish]

Hmmm, new I7 just tested running 100% and drawing 330@the wall as opposed to dual core 939 @ 220W on 246V. Same config, same software but added a 4850ATI instead of a 1600. So 4 core as opposed to 2, plus new psu and running 4 cores, 2 threads per core= extra 110W. Idle is 145W 180W, just about a few more than 939.Not bad, quite pleased and psu is running at max efficiency according to the manufacturer graphs. Just wish we had US power charges instead of UK but I did a good fixed 5 year deal 2 years ago so not too bad either. But multiply that by 4 rigs and it starts getting expensive.