- Joined
- Aug 12, 2004
- Messages
- 8,374
I've not seen much in the way of this so I thought I'd start some testing on power use of my machines. I'm testing with a "Kill a Watt - KAW" (about $20 on Amazon.com) which shows your power use. My method is going to be testing with the tower only connected through the KAW and I'm going to report idle power use and power use with FAH running. I'm really just trying to get a better idea of how much juice I'm really using by folding and what my boxes are using when sitting idle. I'll be updating this regularly over the next couple of weeks as I get to each machine and I'll also be posting the specs of each machine along with OS and FAH client(s) that are being run.
If any of you other folders happen to have a KAW it would be great if you added your results as well. In the end I'll compile all the results into a spreadsheet. Maybe some of you might find this useful, maybe not. Either way I think it will be an interesting experiment. The results are for the tower only, no monitor, UPS, cable modems, etc. I've found so far that I need to let FAH run for a few minutes to get fully started up to get valid numbers. First number is watts, second number is amps. Idle results are just that - sitting at the desktop with no scans, defrag, screen savers, etc. or any other activity happening. Stuff is running but not active - system idle process at 95% or higher.
First machine is my main home rig.
Socket 478 P4 3.2Ghz 512K Northwood
Abit IS7 Mobo
2GB Corsair XMS PC3200 (2x1GB)
3 300GB Hard Drives
2 Optical Drives
600W Ultra Power Supply
Nvidia 6800GT AGP Video
Windows Vista
Single FAH504 Console Client
Idle - 122 W - 1.65 A
FAH Running - 178 W - 2.35 A
Results on this machine show a roughly 55W increase in power use by running FAH.
If any of you other folders happen to have a KAW it would be great if you added your results as well. In the end I'll compile all the results into a spreadsheet. Maybe some of you might find this useful, maybe not. Either way I think it will be an interesting experiment. The results are for the tower only, no monitor, UPS, cable modems, etc. I've found so far that I need to let FAH run for a few minutes to get fully started up to get valid numbers. First number is watts, second number is amps. Idle results are just that - sitting at the desktop with no scans, defrag, screen savers, etc. or any other activity happening. Stuff is running but not active - system idle process at 95% or higher.
First machine is my main home rig.
Socket 478 P4 3.2Ghz 512K Northwood
Abit IS7 Mobo
2GB Corsair XMS PC3200 (2x1GB)
3 300GB Hard Drives
2 Optical Drives
600W Ultra Power Supply
Nvidia 6800GT AGP Video
Windows Vista
Single FAH504 Console Client
Idle - 122 W - 1.65 A
FAH Running - 178 W - 2.35 A
Results on this machine show a roughly 55W increase in power use by running FAH.