turbodog
Flashaholic
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.
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.