Just how much is F@H costing me?

Admiral Huddy

Admiral Huddy

Admiral Huddy

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If i'm running my dual core PC 24/7 with both cores crunching 100%, just how much is it costing me on electricity per year?

PC = AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (stock settings)
PSU = 600w Seasonic S12
Graphics = Leadek Geforce 7800 GTX
Memory = 2x512 Corsair XMS PC3500LL
Motherboard = ASUS A8N-SLi Premium Nforce4
Samsung Spinpoint SATA-2 250gb

what do reckcon?

Just so i know...
 
I would also like to know this.
I found this site but not really sure on the details to put in.

I think a X2 system uses about 200W full load (guess). This site says it would cost £7.92 per month and £95 per year.

http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp

edit: Just found out the X2 alone uses about 200W. A whole system would be about 450W.

That would be £17.82 a month and £216 a year.
 
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lee87 said:
I would also like to know this.
I found this site but not really sure on the details to put in.

I think a X2 system uses about 200W full load (guess). This site says it would cost £7.92 per month and £95 per year.

http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp

edit: Just found out the X2 alone uses about 200W. A whole system would be about 450W.

That would be £17.82 a month and £216 a year.
Click to expand...

it depends also on other items too such as the Graphics card, hard disks etc and the efficiency of the PSU..
 
Aren't most older x2's rated at 110W (newer ones 89W)? Which i assume is the max they will use unclocked? You also need to remember the graphics and most other parts of the sysem are hardly being used whatsoever so they probably dont add that much to the electricity draw.
 
also remember that since most people have their computer on for 8-12 hours a day anyway that it's just really the extra cost of leaving it on overnight plus the slight increase of it being at full load continuously.

I'm on a card meter at the moment for electricity and our normal use for a 2-bed house and 3 people (each with a computer) generally averaged about £7 a week, when I added a couple of machines in the loft and the girlfriend left her machine on all week due to a cold-boot problem that went up to about £10 a week

So for a 2GHZ socket-A dedicated cruncher (neither even had optical drives, also both used ancient 1-2MB PCI GFX cards) it worked out to about £1 a week each.
Having the fully-fledged machine on 24 hours instead of about 6-8 hours a day added an extra £1 for the week.


Sorry it's not very scientific and is very approximate but personally I don't find it a very expensive hobby/habbit - I'm sure it'd come as more of a shock if I was given a quarterly bill though :o
 
No way an X2 uses 200W - it would eat itself. The absolute maximum for older X2s is 89W, but most now have a limit of 65W. Bearing in mind that's a worst-case scenario and you're probably using 50-60W, even accounting for the inefficiency of the PSU it's gonna be pulling less than 100W. I doubt your whole system uses much over 200W.

I don't know how much it's costing per year. But one of the best things you can do is to buy an expensive PSU to start with, as it's likely to be more efficient and save you money later. Which you have :)
 
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I have one of those power meter plug in thing'ys and a A64 Venice 3000+ @ 2000MHz full load on seti uses 96 watts, idle it uses 70 watts
Spec are
A64 3000+
Asus A8V-MX
generic 128Mb AGP 8X graphics
DVD writer
20 Gb Master Hdd
60 Gb Slave Hdd
Onboard Sound
Oh an a floppy!
Hope that helps
Can try a few more systems if you want
Dual Xeon 2.8 @ 3.2
P4 3.0 @ 4.0
Barton 2600+
 
lee87 said:
I would also like to know this.
I found this site but not really sure on the details to put in.

I think a X2 system uses about 200W full load (guess). This site says it would cost £7.92 per month and £95 per year.

http://www.ukpower.co.uk/running-costs-elec.asp

edit: Just found out the X2 alone uses about 200W. A whole system would be about 450W.

That would be £17.82 a month and £216 a year.
Click to expand...

450w is a joke, please.

according to my ups my x2 system draws 210w idle and 386 dual load, graphics in use and defragging (hdd's)

please take into account i have,

x2 4400 at 2.75ghz @1.6v
2gb ram
x1900xtx heavily overclocked 750/820
quad 80gb drives
dual 500gb drves

thats a heafty system, and should draw considerably more power than stock x2 4400

Mr.Admiral Huddy owns efficant hardware such as samsung hdd's, 7800 and seasonic psu so it should draw even less than the avg. x2 system :)
 
Yeah, that x1900xtx will use a fair whack (as will at 7800 GTX).

P4 dual cores are serious Watt-monsters. Everything else is 100W or less.

150W without the graphics card, 225W with. Roughly. :)

Of course, with electrickery prices skyrocketing, the cost is already more than it should be. :(
 
Admiral Huddy said:
it depends also on other items too such as the Graphics card, hard disks etc and the efficiency of the PSU..
Click to expand...

I think the efficiency of the PSU is one of the biggest factors as less efficient PSU's not only use more power than necessary they also generate more heat because of the extra power which requires more cooling which also requires a little more power.

Easy way to make solitary crunchers on a network use less and power and crunch quicker is to set up XP's inbuilt remote control or use a third party system like http://www.realvnc.com/ and remove the graphics card and keyboards and mice and you can unplug CD/DVD drive cables.
 
rich99million said:
also remember that since most people have their computer on for 8-12 hours a day anyway that it's just really the extra cost of leaving it on overnight plus the slight increase of it being at full load continuously.

I'm on a card meter at the moment for electricity and our normal use for a 2-bed house and 3 people (each with a computer) generally averaged about £7 a week, when I added a couple of machines in the loft and the girlfriend left her machine on all week due to a cold-boot problem that went up to about £10 a week

So for a 2GHZ socket-A dedicated cruncher (neither even had optical drives, also both used ancient 1-2MB PCI GFX cards) it worked out to about £1 a week each.
Having the fully-fledged machine on 24 hours instead of about 6-8 hours a day added an extra £1 for the week.


Sorry it's not very scientific and is very approximate but personally I don't find it a very expensive hobby/habbit - I'm sure it'd come as more of a shock if I was given a quarterly bill though :o
Click to expand...

I agree with you. Most of our pc's are on like 8 hours a day and more at weekends. General useage, downloading and gaming. Yea, maybe not all the time the cpu is not @ full 100% but certainly is when gaming.

Taking your current electricity bill into account, your not going to pay a load more on top of that for running it 24/7 use. Its not going to work a load more tbh.

Plainly folding machines, then not adding a high end graphics card or even a mid range one at that fact. Optical drives too can cut down on wattage too. Stay away from things that are not needed.

Electricity bill here is paid by my dad. Doesnt mind when the pc is on 24/7. A while back I had a dual xeon rig @ 3.2GHz, 3800+ venice @ 2.8GHz and this P4 2.2a folding 24/7. The bill went up but not by much.

I would prefer to be on a meter really. Pay as you go. Girlfriend has it in her flat atm. Moving soon into a new flat. I'l try and get some rigs folding there. Give her a little extra for the electricity bill ;)

Back to the original question, its not going to cost that much more tbh. Most people use thier computers pretty much all the time anyways so calculating the extra, it does'nt work out as much as one might think.
 
oceaness said:
Easy way to make solitary crunchers on a network use less and power and crunch quicker is to set up XP's inbuilt remote control or use a third party system like http://www.realvnc.com/ and remove the graphics card and keyboards and mice and you can unplug CD/DVD drive cables.
Click to expand...

Thats what Im thinking of doing really. Set up a custom 3 rig tall stand with just, mobo, cpu, mem, psu, lan card if it does'nt have onboard and maybe a PCI graphics card on each rig. Its where to put it though and how to connect it to my network. should have started up folding in the winter as my actic gets really cold. In the summer though, it gets really humid on the warm days. Might just have to be in my room again :D
 
Thanks for the guide.

If I get chance to build a little farm, I think I will use a small HD. Use a CD-Rom to install and OS etc. Keyboard and mouse used etc. Then unplug the Keyboard, Mouse and CD-Rom and move to the next. I will then check them very frequently using an old 15" monitor. See how they are doing, then once things have settled, just let them do thier own thing. See the stats get completed.

Oh, one question for you guys. Is there is a difference from using Win 2K and Win XP when folding? Probably going to install 2K on the other machines. Not sure yet though.

Thanks.
 
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