Estimated PC Run Cost figures

[OldChap]

Josh.....J has lots of rigs and over here (Europe) the voltage is 220-240 (nominal 230)

In Uk a typical plug for toasters and kettles is the same as for washing machines and dryers. the fact that all home gear uses this plug means that it contains a fuse that is typically 3amps for a light or say a radio up to 13amps for a washing machine. Very few houses have higher output sockets than that. Most plugs in Germany are the same too just without the fuse if I remember

EDIT: @Pulsar...Didn't the psu in that super case/setup that MM reviewed have a big gold psu?

Further EDIT:....forget it ...it was 1100w... http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/...ght=Supermicro

[jcool]

@jcool-Your computer uses 2kw of electricty per hour? Here in the USA on a 120V circuit that equates to approximately 18 amps. Here there's a special plug that you have to use for 15A+ equipment to separate it from the regular 10A plugs. Most homes don't have any 15A+ plugs in their home, except their dryer if it's electricity. Most circuits in homes are 20A breakers. You sure you did the calculations right? Heaters that people use in their homes are typically 1000watts or so tops, and you're claiming your computer does twice the wattage?

Current total power draw is what I said - means all rigs put together
They do run off the same breaker though, not a problem over here.
Some kitchen appliances (e.g. electric kettle) can draw more than 2000W short-term. Our electic lines in general are way better than yours

[=[PULSAR]=]

Thinking about this Gold PSU, it's only 1000W but it will be dedicated to an SR-2 MB. I can get it for $189 after rebates.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16817341028

[jcool]

That's a great PSU, and more than strong enough. I'll be running the SR-2 with my slightly older OCZ GameXstream 850W (2x X5680, 2x HD5870, 12GB, 2 HDDs, 2 SSDs, etc)

[=[PULSAR]=]

The SR-2 will be the dedicated cruncher with a ATI 3450 The other computer that will actually have a case will be the 980X with dual 295's...to much power draw on a cruncher roughly 200W during idle just for the video cards. The 980x will crunch when I'm on it gaming more than likely or replying to Dave's PM's

[jcool]

Yeah, well - Dual 5870#s draw below 50W idle so that#s a nonissue
Stupid NF200 chips on the SR-2 probably draw more than that anyway

[=[PULSAR]=]

I'd be happy with 700-750W power draw from it. We will just have to wait and see.

[josh1980]

Current total power draw is what I said - means all rigs put together
They do run off the same breaker though, not a problem over here.
Some kitchen appliances (e.g. electric kettle) can draw more than 2000W short-term. Our electic lines in general are way better than yours

I work in the electric power generation industry, so I have some(but not alot)as to the differences overseas. I thought you meant for 1 single computer. If I had known it was for the farm I wouldn't have mentioned a word. :P

As a comparison, if you have 80% efficient power supplies right now consuming 2kw/h and you switched them all to 90%(the bottom of the gold band) and electricity is $0.10 per KwH then you're looking at a savings of approximately $250 per year. More if you include the cost of cooling that extra waste heat.

I've attached a cool little spreadsheet I made that lets you:

1. Look at the cost of electricity for a theoretical computer you build and see how the change in efficiency affects the cost of electricity.
2. Input the current values for your power supply and see how much the change in efficiency by simply upgrading your power supply changes the cost of electricity over a year. Often I find that for loaded computers, the cost to upgrade can sometimes pay for itself in less than 2 years.

The chart is protected, only the green values are editable. I did this for simplicity. There is no password if you want to unprotect it or edit it. If you repost it please give me credit for the original product.

-Josh

[=[PULSAR]=]

Nice spreadsheet Josh wish it had a field where you could put in a base wattage for a rig and customizable energy rate.

Just took my X58 classified rig off water and back to air so far saving myself 100W

[jcool]

Josh (my name is Josh too so this is confusing ),

neat spreadsheet!
I already use pretty efficient PSUs, most of them are at least 80+ Bronze certified. With the 230V line here that gives me 85-87% efficiency across the board. The best of the best would score around 92% efficiency, so there is some room for improvement, just not that much. Still, I won't be buying anything other than 80+ Silver and Gold any more.

[josh1980]

Nice spreadsheet Josh wish it had a field where you could put in a base wattage for a rig and customizable energy rate.

Just took my X58 classified rig off water and back to air so far saving myself 100W

It does. All of the fields on both "sheets" that are green can be changed as you want. There are 2 sheets!

You can change the wattage and the price of electricity. All of the parameters are adjustable!

[perkam]

Interesting thread.

For those in high rate states, some of you have programs in your states that allow you to purchase solar panels which, in addition to reducing your own bill, allow you to sell electricity received from the solar panels back to the energy companies at a specified $/Kwh rate.

Just thought I'd put that out there.

Perkam

[=[PULSAR]=]

I was thinking about that but I'm waiting to make my move to Florida. I wonder big a 3000 watt solar panel array is.

[werdwerdus]

I was thinking about that but I'm waiting to make my move to Florida. I wonder big a 3000 watt solar panel array is.

lol probably bigger than the roof on your house. (just guessing)

[josh1980]

Hah! People that work in solar KNOW it's not even close to profitable to sell solar power and compete with coal and nuclear. 100 Watt solar panels (maximum output) is approximately 450-600 USD. You can buy solar panels at newegg if you want to check pricing. If you assume$ 500 is the total cost for shipping, installation and setup (which it is FAR FAR from), and you got your maximum 100 watts of power 12 hours a day every single day (which is basically not going to happen), it'll take just 12 years to pay for the panel. At $0.10 per kwh you'll "save" a mere $43.80 a year. If a tree falls on your panel and breaks it, or a wind storm picks up a piece of debris and shatters it, you have just lost any money you thought you would eventually save. This is not including the cost of the inverter to convert solar power to the voltage and frequency your home uses, any batteries needed, power losses due to using an inverter and batteries, etc.

The solar panel I looked at was 5ftx2ft for 100 watts max output. That breaks down to approximately 10 watts per square foot nominal. So for 3000 watts, you'd need approximately 300 square feet of solar panels. At $500 per 100 watt panel, you're looking at an investment of "just" $15k, without installation, inverter, batteries, etc.

Solar is great for only 2 purposes:

1. People that want to "save" the Earth.
2. People that live in the middle of nowhere and have no access to electricity, but want to use some of the basic needs (lights, etc).

#1 is an interesting argument, because solar cell production uses some sophisticated equipment that needs chemicals that aren't entirely "environmentally friendly".
#2 is for a very small population. My mom owns some land in Northern Arizona, and there is barely a dirt road leading to the property she owns. So yeah, that $600 for a 100 watt solar panel comes in REAL handy for some of the smallest appliances.

Do I laugh at those people that think solar is the future. Only for those that want us to switch to solar today. Someday, solar might be useful and cost effective. But for now, definitely not.

Quite frankly, if you are looking to buy solar to cut on your electricity bill, you are better off buying LED lighting for your house. Those bulbs will pay for themselves in about 8 years time, making the possibility of saving money even more likely(I haven't heard of a tree falling on an LED light bulb in your living room and someone being upset about it... they'll have more things to worry about than a light bulb). Remember, the heat from an incandescent is paid for twice during the summer. Once to create it, and once to remove it via A/C. I put all LED lighting in my house. But in the hottest part of the summer, my electric bill is lower than anyone else I know.

---
Disclaimer-I do work at a nuclear power plant, so my opinions may be biased as such. However, I feel that the information I have provided is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Feel free to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

[ReKcOlNu]

Interesting, list my state as $0.12 per kwh; seems rather high. I have no clue how accurate that is because the power company writes their rates in the most confusing way ever.... http://www.fpl.com/rates/pdf/FPL%20R...Jan%202010.pdf Try and decypher that!

After looking at my elec bill to get the kWh rate its not so cut and dry either. kWh is broken up into 5 different rates for various stuff like Supply Services, Delivery Services, etc, adding all those up comes to only $0.067469, but there is a residential cost of $15.15 and a franchisee cost of $1.07, and then of course state and city taxes on top of that total.

[jcool]

Hah! People that work in solar KNOW it's not even close to profitable to sell solar power and compete with coal and nuclear. 100 Watt solar panels (maximum output) is approximately 450-600 USD. You can buy solar panels at newegg if you want to check pricing. If you assume$ 500 is the total cost for shipping, installation and setup (which it is FAR FAR from), and you got your maximum 100 watts of power 12 hours a day every single day (which is basically not going to happen), it'll take just 12 years to pay for the panel. At $0.10 per kwh you'll "save" a mere $43.80 a year. If a tree falls on your panel and breaks it, or a wind storm picks up a piece of debris and shatters it, you have just lost any money you thought you would eventually save. This is not including the cost of the inverter to convert solar power to the voltage and frequency your home uses, any batteries needed, power losses due to using an inverter and batteries, etc.

The solar panel I looked at was 5ftx2ft for 100 watts max output. That breaks down to approximately 10 watts per square foot nominal. So for 3000 watts, you'd need approximately 300 square feet of solar panels. At $500 per 100 watt panel, you're looking at an investment of "just" $15k, without installation, inverter, batteries, etc.

Solar is great for only 2 purposes:

1. People that want to "save" the Earth.
2. People that live in the middle of nowhere and have no access to electricity, but want to use some of the basic needs (lights, etc).

#1 is an interesting argument, because solar cell production uses some sophisticated equipment that needs chemicals that aren't entirely "environmentally friendly".
#2 is for a very small population. My mom owns some land in Northern Arizona, and there is barely a dirt road leading to the property she owns. So yeah, that $600 for a 100 watt solar panel comes in REAL handy for some of the smallest appliances.

Do I laugh at those people that think solar is the future. Only for those that want us to switch to solar today. Someday, solar might be useful and cost effective. But for now, definitely not.

Quite frankly, if you are looking to buy solar to cut on your electricity bill, you are better off buying LED lighting for your house. Those bulbs will pay for themselves in about 8 years time, making the possibility of saving money even more likely(I haven't heard of a tree falling on an LED light bulb in your living room and someone being upset about it... they'll have more things to worry about than a light bulb). Remember, the heat from an incandescent is paid for twice during the summer. Once to create it, and once to remove it via A/C. I put all LED lighting in my house. But in the hottest part of the summer, my electric bill is lower than anyone else I know.

---
Disclaimer-I do work at a nuclear power plant, so my opinions may be biased as such. However, I feel that the information I have provided is accurate to the best of my knowledge. Feel free to do your own research and come to your own conclusions.

OR, you live in Germany. Over here, you get about 3x as much for the solar power that you generate and feed into the grid than you have to pay for your elec out of the wall (0,17€ out, 0,45€ in). Guarantueed by the state for 20 years.
It used to be even more, the rate is going down each year (basically if you built huge solar fields over here in 2005-2006 you'd be ing rich, at 0,55-0,60€ per KWH)

[The_Beast]

Could anyone gander at how much my PC uses at idle and at 50% load? the 750Gb and the 1Tb drives are external if that helps

[ReKcOlNu]

Could anyone gander at how much my PC uses at idle and at 50% load? the 750Gb and the 1Tb drives are external if that helps

You could look at Q6600 CPU reviews to find a ballpark figure for the power consumption, though most are probably using a video card that eats more power then yours and most reviews use apps like prime95/Burn to find max load which use more power then WCG/Boinc will, in my own tests (AMD Deneb X4) Prime95 (set to lots of ram) eats about 40W more then Boinc does, CineBench CPU tests were pretty close to what Boinc uses IIRC.

Not sure how well this pans out but if I use Antec's PSU calculator, select my parts, use the recommended defaults and divide the recommended PSU wattage by 1.75 the result is very close to what my PC is using at the wall running Boinc on all four cores.

You could always buy something like the Kill A Watt meter for around $20 or less if you shop around/get on sale.

[gmat]

Well running my rig on both WCG and GPUGrid would get into the 700-800W ballpark. Not going to run that 24/24, the electric bill wont be looking good at all... granted it's definitely NOT built for energy efficiency. Idle is above 200W already..
The one i SHOULD be running 24/24 is an atom+ION 24W (at full load) HTPC, but it's totally not suited to crunching (let's say the CPU is barely more efficient than a handheld calculator...).

[THOMO]

That calculator also works great figure out how much money you save switching to energy effecient light bulbs. Just changed my 100W bulb to a 10W running 12 hrs day thats $6 a month. Running to walmart tomorrow to buy more bulbs.

I did that 18 months ago, BIG savings and God's truth, what I saved offset the cost of a 8 core Harpertown machine(320w constant)
VERY worthwhile doing.

While EE light bulbs do indeed save you money (and help the environment, in some cases) I wouldn't use them longterm in any rooms where I sit for prolonged periods of time. Studies show the wavelength from compact fluorescent lights can cause skin damage and blood disease. Not to mention the very harmful chemicals contained in them. If they ever break etc you need to be very careful (if you actually care about yourself that is).

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...in-956696.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...-room-now.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7172662.stm

If a room in my house can operate with a CFL then I'd rather not put a light on (and save even more money).

If your really serious about saving money then I suggest you try these http://www.litebulbs.co.uk/ which are LED bulbs. Very very long-life and very little power.

[123bob]

OK, would now be a good time to mention that I pay a whopping 0.05 cents per KWH out here in the Pacific Northwest????

Yeh, it rains all year long, so we have VERY good Hydro power....

That being said, I'm actually paying attention to the more efficient supplies, light bulbs, etc, etc. Why? So I can squeeze more rigs in, of course....

Good thread!

Regards,
Bob

[THOMO]

Well running my rig on both WCG and GPUGrid would get into the 700-800W ballpark. Not going to run that 24/24, the electric bill wont be looking good at all... granted it's definitely NOT built for energy efficiency. Idle is above 200W already..
The one i SHOULD be running 24/24 is an atom+ION 24W (at full load) HTPC, but it's totally not suited to crunching (let's say the CPU is barely more efficient than a handheld calculator...).

Here in the UK my pc costs 3pence per hour to run whilst doing light work. If I fold or game the cost rises to 6 pence per hour. 10hrs a day = 60p x 365 days a year would work out to roughly £219 a year. If I left this on 24/7 folding my costs would be 6pph x 24hours x 365 days = £565 a year

I leave my acer aspire folding 12-15hrs a day with its atom n270 @ 1.6ghz. It actually performs quite well considering, and like the pro's say.......every little counts

[D_A]

Ever been in a room with regular fluorescent lighting? That's all the CFLs are. There's substantially less harmful chemicals in a dozen CFLs than in one 36w flouro tube and the most significant risk when you break one of those is from the broken glass. That's it.
From the BBC article (the only one with any credibility):
If you broke five bulbs in a small unventilated room then you might be in short term danger
Dr David Ray, toxicologist

Five bulbs, all at once, in a small unventilated room might present a short term danger. Since very few people are in the habit of sealing themselves in the crapper and breaking bunches of CFLs I can't see any significant threat to 99.999999999% of the population.

As for the radiation levels, WHAT A CROCK OF BOLLOCKS! You get hundreds of times more UV exposure just walking out into the sun light (which you NEED to do to PREVENT you from getting sick from lack of vitamin D ) than you do sitting for hours on end under a CFL.

If these studies (a junk media article is not a study, btw) had any credibility, shouldn't the majority of the office workers in the entire western world, all of whom spend their entire working day under this exact same fluorescent technology, year after year, be direly ill? What's that? They're not? Funny that.

[THOMO]

If these studies (a junk media article is not a study, btw) had any credibility, shouldn't the majority of the office workers in the entire western world, all of whom spend their entire working day under this exact same fluorescent technology, year after year, be direly ill? What's that? They're not? Funny that.

The links I provided were merely the first three which came up under a quick google search. You can look yourself and find a lot of "studies" which back up these claims.

The fact you generalise about all of worlds office workers being perfectly healthy is tantamount to stupidity. How can you possibly extend that argument asif you are fully informed as to the health states of all those people? Simply because they aren't all emailing you with symptoms or falling down at their desks etc you deem them to all be fine?

How much mercury can you injest before you fall ill? C'mon.....talk sense.

Besides, my post was simply meant for people to see and take note of, I don't expect everyone to jump away from CFLs simply because I said they can be harmful. It obviously doesn't matter to me what you light your rooms with.