Actual costs of Folding

S

Somnambulator

Gawd
Joined
Apr 13, 2008
Messages
856
hi, i've been a casual F@H folder for years (for a different group...shhhhhh!). i only run it on 2ndary machines that stay on 24/7 regardless of f@h. recently read an article (CANT FIND IT!) that showed the average Intel Quad-core utilizing enough power 365/24/7 to cost the average consumer over $100/year. thought i'd pass this on to the people that leave PCs on overnight exclusively to fold.

i aint no tree-hugger green-world advocate and dont care about saving energy or using less gas unless it saves me money and doesnt intrude on my life style. just thought it was interesting to see how it costs to run a power-hungry PC these days. obviously you'd be running yer PC during most of the day, and maybe you need it on overnight for file sharing or torrents or whatever, just thought some would be interested to see how much $ it costs to keep it on 24/7.

i used to keep all my PCs on 24/7. in fact i had 5 PCs running 24/7 over the last 6 years, but with energy costs up i did a little research and now only keep my server on 24/7 and turn my main/gaming rig off when it isnt doing anything special.

if this is a common topic here, delete, remove, whatever cause i dont really read this section.
~Somnambulator
 
We do what we can to reduce the power use. Efficient PSUs, runnng headless boxen and so forth. But the science comes first, the power billis what it is. We are the Horde.
 
Kendrak said:
We do what we can to reduce the power use. Efficient PSUs, runnng headless boxen and so forth. But the science comes first, the power billis what it is. We are the Horde.
Click to expand...

Well said. Most of us are well aware of the power costs and it's up to you what come first between science and power bill. Also, in some areas, it's cheap enough to afford running a few boxens 24/7/365.

Another thing to consider is that in many areas, we also have winters and those computers which run is also considered heaters so in some sense, we save money with them, which will even out in the end of a year.

 
Xilikon is right. Those boxens are great heaters in the winter. My basement office gets wicked cold in the winter (~55F sometimes less :eek: ) I started folding last February and I noticed that my basement was much warmer and a lot more enjoyable to work there. Now that I have a lot of folding boxens, this will be a toasty warm winter...in fact I have boxens in a lot of locations now...and those GPUs are pure heating pleasure. :)

 
Many years ago I wrote this....

How many tiny hands go cold,
Before we let loose of our gold?
How many souls must reaper shred?
How many children cold and dead?

What does it take to make you fight?
To end this ill, to stop this blight?
How many fathers drying tears?
Of mum's who've lost their little dears?

A newborn's life for that new suit?
A mother's breast for a pair of boots?
Grandpa's wisdom exchanged for beer
WHAT DOES IT TAKE to make you hear?!

For every box that idles by
We make our choice to let them die
How much more selfish can we be?
Let's damn them all to eternity.

"Electric bill is way to high".
So let another victim die.
"I want to drive a nice new car."
Who cares of those whom cancer's scarred?

Little do I ask of you
You know that which you need to do.
All that a hero needs to say.
"I built another box, today."

They're worth $100/year.
But that's just my 2 cents.
YMMV....but I hope you're on the same road.
 
Yeah, runnin' a quad for less than a $100 bucks a year, I'd really like to read that article, I thought it was more than that :eek: (it must be sans monitor :confused:) Hell, my 2x C2D E6600's, diskless/headless pull, at the wall 24/7 (Kill-o-watt meter), about a 100w. (bein' "mathematically challenged" about how much is that/year, I realize a 100w's doesn't equal a $100 bucks :rolleyes:)

I have 2x Q6600's that pull at the wall (kill-o-watt meter) about 320w combined (they're OC'ed, WC'ed and even though they're WC'ed I still have several 120mm case fans) :)

So..., IMO what it all boils down to is like the old song says "nothings free" (or something like that) just about everything costs money. (I wouldn't call a $100 bucks a year a lot of money) ;)

Not trying to get philosophical or "all knowing" I prefer to spend my little bit of income on computers and folding. (I'm not into bowling, fishing, basket weaving, etc)

I apologize for this post in advance, it kinda' pushes my buttons to read about the cost of folding which in the long run it saves lives and eases suffering (I can make more than $100/year picking up and recycling aluminum cans) when we spend about a billion dollars a month killing and destroying life. (chill on the "shorts twist", it's not meant to be political :rolleyes:)

FOLD ON and don't forget to recycle them aluminum cans :p

 
I "retired" my boxes earlier this year when I reached a million points.
I had, at the time, three dual core boxes running 24/7.
My electricity bill was about 40 dollars more a year......10 gallons of gasoline.

I have turned my charity elsewhere this year, but I am very proud of what folding is doing and to think of the value of this research in dollars and cents ........is missing the point.


 
Folding costs me about an extra 100 Watts which translates to about £70 this year.
Next year I expect it to cost about £3000 ! :eek: (kidding)

I hope that new found oil in the Arctic gets put to use just to bring prices down a bit and those devious bastards who helped hike the oil price get jailed.
Solar power is making big strides now to become affordable and reliable long term, I plan to go solar by 2011.
 
I'll just say this. I'm unemployed. I have no income at the moment. Until my power gets shut off I'm running all my systems 24/7 and damn the bill. 3 overclocked Q6600s. 1 overclocked 8800GT. X2 [email protected]. A couple single core machines. As I said, everyone of them runs 24/7 and will not be turned off.

As some people here already know, I have extremely cheap electric compared to most. Around $0.05/kwh. I got my last electric bill and it was $150 and I still haven't paid it. For a bit of perspective, my electric bill with no a/c, heat or computers running is $38 per month. Right now I'm in the middle of summer and my apartment has nothing resembling insulation so my a/c runs way too much and my computers are in the hottest room of my apartment (coldest in the winter). With no a/c or heat running my bill is around $78 per month.

Basically, I don't give a flying fuck about electric costs and I've avoided selling any of my systems so far. The only thing that will shut down the systems is if I get to the point where I can't support my son. Until that happens the systems will stay on as long as I have electricity.

 
I live in Alaska and during in the winter, I just use a Prescott folding boxen in each room. Now I don't need to buy coal for my furnace. So I'm saving the enviroment by not creating green houses gases from the coal.

(j/k on all points)
 
My farm normally uses just over 2 kW/h.
50 kW/h per day, 1,500 kW/h per month, 18,000 kw/h per year.
At around 8.5p per kW/h, a years folding costs me around £1,500.
Thats on top of the £2,000 I send on upgrades.

There is talk that the electric prices are going up again by 10-25% before winter, here in the uk.

My new farm may use 25-50% more power, once I get all the new vid cards that are on order.

Luck ........... :D
 
LOL... tell me in a couple of months when I'm spending 400 per month on electricity I'm close to 300 a month right now.

 
Like I've said before, I try not to worry about all of that. I'm about to do another round of upgrades, so I'll be ignoring the electric bill even harder.


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jws2346 said:
Yeah, runnin' a quad for less than a $100 bucks a year, I'd really like to read that article, I thought it was more than that :eek: (it must be sans monitor :confused:) Hell, my 2x C2D E6600's, diskless/headless pull, at the wall 24/7 (Kill-o-watt meter), about a 100w. (bein' "mathematically challenged" about how much is that/year, I realize a 100w's doesn't equal a $100 bucks :rolleyes:)


Click to expand...

Great post jws! Being mathematically impaired myself I rely heavily on Excel to do the heavy lifting in the math dept.

If you have Excel, here's how I do it. (I'm not sure this is 100% correct but it seems close so it's what I use to see the cost)

In a blank worksheet, put some headings to make it easier to see/remember what's what. In cell A1 I use "Load" in cell B1 I use "KwH" in cell C1 I use "Cost/KwH" in cell D1 I use "Cost/Day" and in cell E1 I use "Cost/Month"

Now for the numbers. In cell A2 put you system power load. In my case it's currently running 325 watts. Cell B2 is a formula "=SUM(A2*24)/1000" which will give you KwH/day in my case it's 7.8. In Cell C2 goes your cost/KwH of power from your bill. I don't have the cheapest power but in my case it's "0.1485" or about 14.9 cents/KwH. Cell D2 is another formula "=B2*C2" and format for currency. This gives you your cost/day. In my case (using the numbers I gave here) it's $1.16/day. Lastly to get the monthly cost I put another formula in E2 "=D2*30". Note that this only gives you 360 days for the year, but I prefer a monthly number so it's good enuff fer me...

All things being equal, DAMN the power bill BACK TO FOLDING!

 
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