Maximum PC

Were there a lot of air conditioning days?? I am thinking that mine must be costing about $100 per. mo. I don't think I want to do this for ever.

Yeah, but how much of that is AC? I paid about $45 for the same period of time with one computer. You have some other appliance(s) sucking down the juice, or something is wrong with one of your computers. You don't have monitors turned on all the time, right?

Hey, I was studying for my A+ and the book gave these figures:

Mobo = 20-30w
CPU = 30-70w
AGP Vid Card = 20-50w
PCI Boards = 5w each
RAM = 8w per 128mb
IDE hard drive = 5-15w

So, there you have it. My machine I'm figuring about 210w. I believe power in northern Illinois is running at $.06 per kwh. So, 210w per h at 24h per day = 5.04kwh per day. that makes for $.3024 a day, times 30 days for $9.07 a month

So, there you have it, my machine is running just over $9 a month. But, that doesn't account for the monitor, CD drive (10-25w and I have two), printer, scanner, DSL reciever, speakers, or any of the other electronic gadgets, such as USB keyboards and mice.

Edit: Just looked at my MS USB mouse, 5v at 100ma, for a whopping 0.5w! lol

Dan O.

From the FAQ at Stanford

That quote specifically states that is the power consumption of a CPU. Computers consist of far more than a CPU, including the mobo, ram, HDDs, PCI cards, VGA cards, etc, etc.

Saying that a PC only uses a much power as a 60watt light bulb is flat out wrong.

Dan O.

Doesn't g.m.waters (red ranger3) have a few dualies? Xeons use alot more power then say a single Athlon or Pentium.

In the context of a FAH folding machine, the CPU is drawing nearly all of the power. The HDD, cdrom, pci cards, and all the other peripherals don't draw power while FAH is running (well, 99.9% of the time that it is running). As for the mobo and ram, sure. But how much power does ram draw? A watt, or two, maybe?

The author of the FAQ said his information was based on the Lawrence Berkeley research. If you think it is wrong, feel free to read the research he cited and point out any inaccuracies in their study. While a little old, the study determined that an average Pentium class computer uses about 45 watts while active (a 386 class computer used 65 watts) and the monitor uses from 75 to 120 watts. So, yes, according to that study a computer uses about the same amount of power as a 60 watt light bulb.

Even if they used twice as much power, it wouldn't justify that power bill. It has been HOT here in Cali recently. I'll bet it is the AC sucking up the juice.

Did you read my earlier post at all?

According to the book I'm reading, ram uses 8w per 128mb. So, my ram is using 32 watts alone, far more than "A watt, or two".

Unless I'm mistaken, if your hard drive is plugged in, and it has not been turned off by the OS via Power Management, then it is spinning contantly consuming 5-15w per drive. I know that a good percantage of PCs have more than one drive.

And don't forget about the mobo, that thing consumes a good 20-30w alone!

And by the way, according to AMD, my CPU uses 68w, more than 60, but I also have it overclocked, so I have no idea how much wattage my CPU uses.

Dan O.

Thats true. So not only would he be cooling his house from the heat outside, but his A/C has to run against all the computers he has.

I figure that one high-end PC running full time adds maybe 10 bucks a month at the most. So in his case, and I'm just guessing, about $120-$150 of his total bill is because of his rigs. Now, not all of that is for just running the rigs. Part of that is for the extra the A/C would have to run to counter the heat generated from all that sweet computer power.

I have two computers that fold most of the time on right now. I have others that I could add to the fight, but I don't want to overload my A/C. So maybe in a month or two, I'll fire up another and start kicking out somemore WU's out.

Gadget, here is where I think you are mistaken.

That study was done to measure the difference between a PC running 24/7 and a PC running F@H 24/7. That's why they only refer to the CPU when it comes to wattage.

The Stanford site explained this all fully when it posted the results of the study.

Sorry I offended you, but you were mistaken, though an honest mistake.

Dan O.

Yes, I read your earlier post. And 8 watts per 128mb is correct. I'm not sure if that amount is constantly being used though. What does your book say? Ditto with the CPU, once it hits the halt state. Of course, this isn't going to happen with FAH running.



Most HD's spin down after 15 minutes of inactivity. If you're running FAH 24/7, you're drive is probably down 16 to 20 hours of the day.

No, the study was done in 1997 and explains power management and investigates why power management on many PC's wasn't working.

[quote]The Stanford site explained this all fully when it posted the results of the study.
/quote]
What? Where? The Stanford FAQ says, "On average, a Pentium-type computer uses between 45-70 watts (I've read various different sources on this) while it is on." I believe this is correct. The only systems being used when by FAH when a human is not at the computer are the cpu, memory, and mobo. Maybe your new UPS will have some power usage log feature and you can let us know how much juice your computer is pulling.

Why do you think that you offended me?

I agree - the cost of cooling 10+ comps can be pretty significant in the summer. I walked into my office last saturday and for some reason the AC wasn't working, which is really strange for a university. It was over 80 degrees in there. I went back home after a few minutes!

I'll have my first electic bill since running FAH shortly. Should be interesting - I'll be really surpised if it has gone up more than $8.

no ac, i dont run it wont let in fresh air. but i have 9 fans, 6 window fans and 3 that just direct air thru the house, there are a 32", 27", and a 13" tvs that run a lot, the big ones run behind two 500 watt sony receivers with 5.1 surround on both, two 21" viewsonic p810s, and a 17" viewsonic running a lot, 17 mostly off. our main machines are pretty much maxed out with good stuff, high end video dvd burners, cd burners , there are maybe 6 ups ranging from 1250 down to 500s, and this is an all electric apt. plus my personal 23cf double door refer with ice, water etc. but we both work and are not home all the time. i hate to cook to. but i have to be honest, i have to be careful when i turn the light on my overhead is almost nil, my only two available circuts use a full 35 amps for mostly computers 24/7, i have had my yearly inspection early this week and now i will tap into the elecrtric heating for more amps. its not like i turn on the heat in here. this is 2047 kwh. the xeons use a little more, they need over a 400 watt power supply mines a 550 antec server supply. and get ready the new motherboards for Intel will the same type of power they changed the pins that connect to 24 and 8 to the mb. same as servers are now. and i dont know if it makes a difference but all our boards are fairly high end lots of mem, cases, fans, 3 kvms, i live at frys, if it plugs in i probably have one, or two, plus the high end fans on all the machines, and water cooling on our main machines both hydrocool200s.

also, (i ran out of breath in the last post) most modern cpus (faster than average) will consume closer to 100 watts, and a good overclock could bring it to 120 or more, even Intel think its time for something new to cool its cpus the e chip runs 20 watts hotter than the same c chip. might be why they cancelled the next two chips, heat and the ability to cool them. i would also think that most of you run maxed out machines ( not on the "farms") they are pretty bare, but mine are all really stand alone machines, need only monitor mouse and kb to complete. i, we know they will run hot so we buy high end hsf hsinks and lots of fans to improve airflow. all this shit uses up the watts, my main machine back in the scsi days used just under 430 watts, with 4 scsi 10000rpm drives, and a controller, jeeze i think i ran out of brearh again.

Some of your machines are like the one I am using now. It pulls lots of current. It has two scsi controllers and has 2 15k and 6 10k hard drives. It is on a 500 kva ups and I can't put my monitor on it or it kicks out. One of my other machines has 4 drives and 3 of them are scsi. My wife's computer is IDE raid 0. These 3 computers use a lot of power and would be running any how. I would leave them on for folding. The other 5 rigs are just for folding and I will probably sell these off to cut down on electricity. The thing with that is I will leave folding on them and tell who ever buys them that it is there but we will not be getting all their folding time any more.

phred, your not selling off to buy xeons or opterons are you, my xeons pulled my points up pretty good, even tho they retired a 2400+ so i only got 3 cpus out of the deal. ill sell it and the mb, buy a new mb, and put my barton 2500+ back on line, need video and disk first. with your machine sounds like a huge drive could replace many scsi, with raid if you multitask or do video or high demand stuff. and use lots less juice to.