easy way to have more $ for lights

turbodog

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The title is a little misleading, but I wanted to try and attract as many as I could to this information.

I used to run the distributed net software. This was a code-breaking application, and is similar to seti@home and other such programs. It is a brute force approach to solving some math problems.

I ran this for over 4 years before I gave it up. Recently, I decided to see how much extra power my computer used while running this software. The numbers disturbed me.

The following measurements came from a kill-a-watt meter. The general word on these units are that they are highly accurate, so I would call these measurements pretty darn significant.

Computer watts used at idle: 110
computer watts used running client: 180

Dnet client pulled an extra 70 watts while running. Now, look at the numbers.

70 watts * 24 hours per day * 30 days per month divided by 1000 to convert to kilowatts = 50.4 kilowatt hours per month.

50.4 kwh/month * $.082/kwh = $4.13 per month or $49.56 a year.

This does not count the extra electricity used to remove this extra heat from my house. I'd say that adds about 50%to these figures.

So...... no intensive computing and you'll have extra cash for lights.

On the other hand, if you get $50 worth of entertainment out of running the software each year, then go for it.

These figures are for a p4 3.0 cpu.
 

cobb

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I use to do the seti thing and leaving my desk top on 24/7 ran my bill up an extra ten bucks a month. NOt only do you have the extra cooling to deal with, but also the service fee that is based on the kw used. Cheapest I ever got my electric bill was 14 bucks.
 

KevinL

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Thanks for the excellent observations and figures. I caught on to this early, but it never really got much attention.

I ran the dnet client as early as 1997. For years they always said it is 'free'. Well, not TRULY free.

The CPU MUST be executing something every clock tick. "Idle" to us actually means the CPU is running a fixed loop of instructions designed to keep the CPU 'just ticking over', kind of like, idling a car engine still means you will burn gas compared to an engine that is powered off.

Previous versions of Windows (98 and earlier) had a very inefficient idle thread that caused the CPU to run full blast and draw full power all the time. So in a sense, running a distributed computing client was truly free, since if you let the CPU idle, it would burn its full amount of electricity anyway.

But the move to true native 32-bit Windows (as opposed to Windows neatly sitting on top of 16-bit DOS) in the form of Windows NT and descendants (2K,XP, etc.) also brought a more efficient idle thread as a benefit. Now "idle" is really more akin to idle, with the CPU drawing less electrical power. Back in those days I'd overclock everything I could get my hands on. While running NT, and idling, heat dissipation was noticeably lower. I found out the difference in the amount of heat because when I ran dnet full blast, it would result in a burning hot heatsink and crash the box.

I later got a midrange APC UPS with management capability and the ability to measure how much power was being drawn from the UPS at any given time - these calculations were borne out by the data.

Eventually, we would run dnet during cooler months to generate more heat /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif and in this sense as well, it is 'free' because you're enjoying the heat and no heat needs to be removed from the home. Now this was in the era of 20-30W processors. These days we're looking at 80W processors that can actually oscillate between 10-80W of power dissipation depending on how intensive their CPU load really is.

I'm not saying these distributed computing clients are bad, some seem like worthwhile causes, but I would say go in and make an informed decision. Consider the electrical/cooling bill as a DONATION. It's not free, but if you're willing to donate that amount of electrical power, certainly by all means!

I now park my desktop in standby mode whenever I'm not using it or whenever I'm away. Instant resume is good stuff. It still does draw some power but substantially less than fully powered on.

I think it's time we looked at power-efficient computing. The Ghz race has cost us dearly in terms of AC power. It's great if you need a room heater, but what about the warmer months.. or what if it's warm ALL the time?

Soon I'll be trading in my 17" CRT for an LCD, one of the benefits will be lower power consumption /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif There's an upfront cost but it is time to replace my six year old monitor anyway.. who knows how much time that aging tube has left on it.
 

greenLED

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hmmm... yup, I've noticed that my laptop is always HOT when I'm running SETI. If I want max battery life while traveling, I turn SETI off... much cooler!
 

VidPro

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you can/could run HLT cooling programs even on win98, to ceace the majority of the cpu power when its "idle"
Rain, Waterfall, and programs like that, would do it long before it was integrated more into the OS.
 

cobb

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I would cut my processing time in half with nt 4 setting the seti thing to high priority and ran a second copy in regular mode, so if could still work when I was asleep and it was off line. I had to manually connect it.

I dont think they recommend running it on a laptop.

I did a search for shared computing or what ever its called and they had a service that actually paid you to process some stuff for them. I think it required DSL or a cable net connection, which I didnt have.
 
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