Electricity costs?

Devrij

Devrij

Devrij

Soldato
Joined
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I'm flirting with the idea of getting into folding, but I have a few concerns that I'm trying to work out before I can decide whether to do it or not, and the main one is electricity costs.

I have a 3570K at 4.5GHz and a 7950 which I'll be overclocking as well. So I'll be drawing a fair amount of power from the wall, which I know will mount up if I strat running 100% loads 24/7! What kind of increases in bills did people with similar/comparable setups get when they started folding? I suspect I would just be folding overnight to combat temps and noise (my gf works from home in the same room and would flip), but I'd like to get a rough idea of the worst case scenario.

Also, because I game and use photoshop, I do need all my gpu/cpu power at times, so how efficient is the client at getting out of the way of other tasks, or do you shut it down when you game for instance?
 
The folding client is very efficient at managing itself and doesn't get in the way of any other tasks as its run as a low priority process.

Any idea how much power your rig pulls at the wall running prime? ATI/AMD cards are very inefficient with regards to folding to I'd leave to just running on the 3570k, this will reduce the heat output and power draw considerably.

Assuming you run the client 12 hours a day I'd expect an increase of around £7-10 per week in electricity, assuming its drawing around 600w at the wall and 15p kw/h
 
that would be for cpu and gpu at the price, otherwise cpu alone wont add much

with cpu only , i used 14/15 pence i think? in 4 hours at night time , that was with cpu + gpu , plus what ever was on standby , fridgefreezer.
 
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ozaudio said:
that would be for cpu and gpu at the price, otherwise cpu alone wont add much

with cpu only , i used 14/15 pence i think? in 4 hours at night time , that was with cpu + gpu , plus what ever was on standby , fridgefreezer.
Click to expand...

That sounds reasonable. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I may have to start contributing then. It seems a waste to have all this hardware that only gets used for my amusement when it could be put to meaningful use. And besides, I'm running out of excuses to upgrade my kit. If I'm folding/crunching I can say to my gf "you would deprive the world of a cure for cancer?!!!" when she asks why I'm upgrading my cpu. :p

I think I'll see how much electric I use on the meter in one week, and then I'll fold for a week and see what the difference is. If it's affordable then I guess I can start contributing :D £10/week would be too steep for me, but if I only fold with my cpu overnight then that should be noticeably less.
 
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Best buy yourself a mains power meter then you'll know exactly what you're using. I have a 3570K which crunches, it uses between 100-130W depending on the project, this is at 4.2 Ghz running at stock vcore, and a lightweight graphics card, my gtx 570 uses about 20w idle so I disconnect it when not in use.
 
it also depends wear you live... if its hot and you run air con the the heat from the PC will be making the air con unit work harder..so more electric used.. or if you like me in the UK my PC is supplementing my heating so canceling out some of the cost of the power it users at this time of year
The room the PC is in is noticeably warmer in the mornings since its been F@H 24/7
 
600W at the wall for a 7950 and 3570K at 4.5Ghz would be impossible. My system is a 7970 and even clocked at 1150/1600 and 4.5GHz 3570K it draws 230-270w. You will see a slight increase in bills of course.

I disabled the GPU in FAHControl, my system draws 140W running 100% all day today. PPD is 21055. I will enable my GPU but for me it really isn't worth running the GPU all day as it adds another 100+W to my power usage. My monitor and speakers are turned off while I'm not at my pc so they don't factor into this.

Idles at about 80W by the way, so 140W doesn't seem too bad to me.
 
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Remember you can click the memory back on most gpus as crunching doesn't really need it to be so fast. That can save some power.
 
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