F@H, BOINC etc. power usage

[Ergroilnin]

Hello,

 

I have been interested in these projects that let people use their unnused computational power for "the bigger good" or so to say.

 

I have also seen a lot of people say (not necessarily on this forum mind you), that it is basically free power for the science.

 

Well obviously it is not free for the volunteers though, since it does take energy to run a computer at high usage.

 

So did anyone calculate just how much energy (Not asking for money value, as electricity costs vary a lot between different countries etc.) does it cost to partake in this kind of project say daily?

 

I am sure that there are different ways to look at this considering varying effectivenes of differents pieces of hardware, their combinations etc., but is there perhaps some average number as a "base point" or something? Or perhaps just numbers from you people, who calculated that for your own setup mind giving me the numbers in relation to the hardware used?

 

I mean, my current rig (4770 non-k, 16gb RAM, 1060 6gb) is hardly to make the number cruncing world shatter, but this kind of project is in my mind in a way that "every bit helps", but at the same time, I am hardly wealthy (well... kind of living from a pay check to pay check in a way, but I am not deff not in poverty or something...) but I do need to include such numbers in my monthly bills so that's the main reason why I am asking.

 

Thanks for any info or even specific numbers beforehand.

[Jurrunio]

Nvidia GPUs have working power monitoring for the entire card, 1060 for example is rated to pull 120w at stock and you'll see it do exactly that on a reference card (custom cards can have different power limits). Of course this does not take idle due to not getting work (e.g. F@H's current situation) into account.

 

CPU and AMD GPUs are harder to measure as their power monitoring arent accurate and only takes the CPU/GPU itself into consideration, but you can estimate with package power * 1.2x

[IntMD]

((System Power Usage in Watts)/1000)*Cost per kWH where ever you are

 

For example:

 

A system using  400W power usage doing whatever it is at 15 cents or whatever currency per kWH

 

400/1000=0.4

0.4*.15=6 cents per hour

 

Leave it to do that for 24 hours, then you would have...

 

6*24=$1.44 per day.

 

If you have 10000 users or equivalent running 24/7 all at the same power usage and cost it would come out to $14400.00 per day in electricity.

 

In reality, most people just let it run during the day while they are doing other stuff, so not all of that would be cost attributed to just doing that.

[Metallus97]

I have my PC connected to a killawatt and I am currently doing about 600W on a R9 3900x (light OC), 5700xt, vega 56)

[minibois]

7 minutes ago, Ergroilnin said:

So did anyone calculate just how much energy (Not asking for money value, as electricity costs vary a lot between different countries etc.) does it cost to partake in this kind of project say daily?

How much it will cost in power depends on:

- How much power your PC will use

- How much electricity costs where you live

- How long you are running the system

 

Say you run your PC 24/7 and only do GPU folding.

A GTX 1060 uses about 120W under full load, so give or take add another 30W for the rest of the system (which is mostly idling).

So 150W, 24/7. 

 

Pricing  from power differs from country to country, so let's take the USA as an example (which is generally along the 'cheaper end' while Germany and the Netherlands are more expensive). Power costs about 12 cents (0.12 USD) per KWH.

 

Now let's plug all that information into a calculator like that from RapidTables and you get this:

https://www.rapidtables.com/calc/electric/electricity-calculator.html

So 13.15 USD per month, or 158 USD a year.

 

Of course you can get a better estimate of your PC's power usage by using a power meter (like a Killawatt or TP-Link HS110).

This is also why having more videocards in one system is generally seen as 'better', as that is (in proportion/PPD per watt) better. Because now you're spreading the ~30W system power among more videocards which can pull in more points.

[Eigenvektor]

You can estimate how much your system would use fairly easy. F@H will pretty much run the GPU at 100% and/or CPU at 100% if you configure it that way. So run some stress tests, see how much power draw you have and that's essentially what you would see when running F@H at full power.

 

I've set my system to only fold on the GPU and the GPU is also power limited and undervolted to keep noise/heat/power draw at acceptable levels. So this is something you could also do if e.g. you want to help but also keep your power bill in check.

[Zoravar]

I have my computer on a UPS, which logs and reports power usage.  Below is the report during the COVID folding event.  Which is a 3900X with two 1070s.

 

But as others have said, to find your cost per hour use this:    ((System Power Usage in Watts)/1000)*Cost per kWH

 

Multiply that by however many hours you're folding to find out how much it would cost.

 

If you don't know how much power your computer takes, you can estimate that with the calculator here: https://outervision.com/power-supply-calculator

 

I've found the load wattage the calculator spits out to be reasonably accurate.