Join the SPCR Folding@Home effort

Zyzzyx · Post by **Zyzzyx** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 9:58 am

Up $40/mo, eh?

I know running my 2-5 systems (depending on what I'm messing with) has raised our electric bill a bit. And my roommates have mentioned it too. But then I remind them that their 20-30 minute showers aren't helping our water bill. They usually shut up after that.

Post by **Rusty075** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 12:05 pm

F@H and your electric bill:

A 150W PC will consume about 108kWh of energy per month, if run for 24hours a day. (That's assuming its actually drawing 150W all the time, which is hard to judge, but it's as good an approximation as any)

At the national average electrical rate of $0.084/kWh, that means that each PC will add $9.07 to your bill each month.

But that's assuming you've added a PC that would otherwise be off. If you've got a machine that's just idling along and you start running F@H on it, you'll probably only jump the wattage used up by 25-30W's (someone with a Kill-a-Watt could check that

)

That would only add $1.50 to your bill.

EDIT: Just had a thought:

Now that it's cold, if you're using electric heat, the F@H cost is even lower. The extra heat produced by the PC's will reduce the load on your heater, offsetting their electric cost. (it may actually come pretty close to balancing itself out to zero added cost)

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 5:58 pm

Now that it's cold, if you're using electric heat, the F@H cost is even lower. The extra heat produced by the PC's will reduce the load on your heater, offsetting their electric cost. (it may actually come pretty close to balancing itself out to zero added cost)

So you're saying everybody in Canada should be folding like mad!

wussboy · Post by **wussboy** » Wed Nov 19, 2003 7:19 pm

I would be beating TRC if I had to heat my house with PCs. Damn it's cold here in Calgary!

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Thu Nov 20, 2003 2:25 am

At the national average electrical rate of $0.084/kWh, that means that each PC will add $9.07 to your bill each month.

In NY and NJ I think the rate is more like twice that. I couldn't run anywhere near as many pc's as TRC-13 for $40/month.

TRC-13 · Post by **TRC-13** » Thu Nov 20, 2003 2:48 pm

The $40/mo gain is just with the 5 PC's I’ve added recently. I would say total I pay about $80-$90/mo for folding

I am seriously looking into hooking up solar panels and batteries to ATX-12V power supplies to power my boxes during the day and commercial power during the night. I've already converted all my lights to florescent and reinsulated all the walls in my new house to save energy.

The reason my stats have suffered lately is that I have shut down some of my slower contributors to see how much my electric bill is affected. I’m going to leave them off for a month and see if the difference is worth selling them off and buying faster more efficient machines with the money I saved from not powering them. It should work out for the best in the end. That or I can run an extension cord over to a neighbor’s house and run it into my basement.

If anyone wants some cheap barebones systems great for folding ask me in a month I might be selling some.

TRC-13 · Post by **TRC-13** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 6:56 pm

I'm going to start bringing my boxen back online. I should be able to see a difference in the power bill, if any, this month.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Wed Dec 03, 2003 10:54 pm

Why, is it getting cold in Nevada?

David

TRC-13 · Post by **TRC-13** » Thu Dec 04, 2003 9:05 am

Not too cold but it's in the upper 30's or lower 40's at night now and our heater in our new house is not proving it'self very usefull. I have a fan pushing the hot air upstairs and it seems to warm that part of the house better than the heater! ohh well. Today I am going to try to heat the house with just computers and see how well it does. I have my silent boxen upstairs. My wifes computer, Livingroom HTPC and our bedroom HTPC. Those being mostly XP 2000+'s and low airflow they produce some impressive heat when folding.

edit: It actually got down to 27°F lastnight.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Wed Dec 17, 2003 8:59 am

"I've already converted all my lights to florescent "

Tell me more.

Oh man I can't believe, for however long it lasts, that I've gotten up to position 62.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sat Dec 20, 2003 9:02 pm

Explain this one to me. Mac, he's at the bottom of our folding team. He's completed 2 WUs. And he has zero points.

mormakil · Post by **mormakil** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 4:04 am

He has 0.06 points

. My guess would be that he has instability problems and "finished" two WU really fast, i.e some corruption happens and the WUs was wasted but credited according to its stage (1 minute not more I believe)

peteamer · Post by **peteamer** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 12:27 pm

In the hope that it may inspire more to join the effort,
I've done it and it's easy.
Nice to 'give' something back.
Had a lot of good reads and idea's from SPCR, nice to be helping the team.

Also nice to see my comp. 'do' something for a change.

Pete from 'Sunny' (sic) Cornwall, UK

Zyzzyx · Post by **Zyzzyx** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 2:31 pm

Welcome to the Fold, Pete

Yeah, it is nice to see otherwise 'wasted' computer time doing something useful. The 'friendly' competition is another fun side benefit of it too.

peteamer · Post by **peteamer** » Sun Dec 21, 2003 2:48 pm

Cheers for that.
Will only allow it to run midnight to 08:00(just for folding) each night till I know it's OK.

(In the back ground 18:00-00:00)

Thinking of hiding it in the attic and running remote somehow so it can run 24/7.

Any ideas anyone?

(Promise to get over the Emoticon thing soon

)

Pete

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Dec 22, 2003 1:33 am

Here's an interesting item. I woke up today and we're just 44 points behind Abit.

Ironically enough both teams have completed 50904 WU's.

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Sun Dec 28, 2003 9:25 pm

Oh nice.

PC#2 runs 92 out of 100 frames, 35 minutes each, and hangs. I reboot, and the whole thing is thrown out. Missing files. How much time wasted?

Then, pc #1 it does about 62 frames, and I see a message that says it can't continue, and decides to forward the results right away. I'm sure that was worth a lot of points.

Zyzzyx · Post by **Zyzzyx** » Sun Dec 28, 2003 9:28 pm

Any overclocking on either of those systems?

How well do they fare running 24hrs of Prime95?

Are they Palomino core AMDs being forced to use SSE code?

aristide1 · Post by **aristide1** » Mon Dec 29, 2003 9:51 pm

Both are PIIIs. PC 2 is a 600 (6*100) running at 6*133 = 800MHz, the mobo and the PC133 are running in spec. It's slightly overvoltaged and runs very cool. It ran 3 weeks with no problems.

PC 1 is a 1.2GHz PIII running stock, no OC. That's the one I posted pics of here. Both run very cool.

ColdFlame · Post by **ColdFlame** » Tue Jan 13, 2004 7:12 pm

Today I surpassed the 10,000 points barrier! Woohoo! I remember when I started with just 1 machine, then added another one and now I'm running 4 machines, each of which is 2 Ghz of faster. I remember when I was happy to become green, now I'm quite urging to become orage (no chance btw

)

Thanks for all the help I got in this forum and also thanks for all the advises in another forums to make my PCs quiet, otherwise I wouldn't be able to have 4 of them folding

PiSan · Post by **PiSan** » Sat Jan 17, 2004 9:02 pm

Up to a little while ago I had no idea something like this existed! Another thank you to silentpcreview.

I should have a quiet comp up and running by the end of the week. This one's way to obnoxious to sleep with. Then I can help the effort.

Li7hium · Post by **Li7hium** » Tue Jan 20, 2004 2:35 pm

Whatever happened to my name sake, Lithium?

He used to fold regularly, and now I think I have only seen 1 WU returned by him on our combined stats page over the past 4 months?

CronoDL · Post by **CronoDL** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 3:00 am

Hey guys, I've been coming to SPCR for a little while now, put together a pretty quiet system with the help of all you guys. I never registered for the forum until today. Just wanted to say thanks, and that I also joined the F@H. You guys rock

randalee · Post by **randalee** » Tue Jan 27, 2004 8:18 am

Welcome Crono... Help us beat back the Mac fellas who were threatening to overtake us... Every folder counts!

Randy

Schrebowitz · Post by **Schrebowitz** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:15 am

I just joined the cause, AMD Athlon XP 2500+@3200+.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Wed Feb 18, 2004 2:40 am

Excellent! Welcome.

David

PS. Is your Athlon a Barton? I am successfully running two 2500+ Bartons at 3200+ or even higher. One is at 200MHz FSB, the other at 207 or 208.

sthayashi · Post by **sthayashi** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:30 pm

I've come to fight the good fight for SPCR. The team that I WAS on previously didn't seem as interested in folding, so the team score dwindled slowly.

I've come to fold with 3 FSB underclocked Athlon 2400+ XPs (1.5Ghz instead of 2.0) and a pair of Pentium III 550s. Let's see if we can overtake the knights and the macs.

haysdb · Post by **haysdb** » Thu Feb 19, 2004 12:37 pm

Welcome to the SPCR folding team sthayashi.

David

Michael_qrt · Post by **Michael_qrt** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 3:06 am

I just downloaded the F@H client and began folding for SPCR. Been wanting to for a while but there were obstacles of not having quietened my computer yet and not having an always on internet connection. I've quietened my computer to the point that my samsung sp1614N is the loudest thing in it (must try suspending it sometime). Unfortunatly I still don't have a decent connection but I thought what the hey, I'll start it up anyway.

Anyway I'm just going to be folding on one machine for now, a 2500+ at stock speed. Also the computer won't be on all the time or connected all the time so I don't anticipate much output but its a start.

BTW can someone tell me how to que up work so my machine always has something to do when not connected?

peteamer · Post by **peteamer** » Sat Feb 21, 2004 3:27 am

Welcome Michael_qrt, to the happy ranks of folders here.

Can't help you with that question I'm afraid, though a quick search on the forums should net good results.

I would imagine someone will point you in the right direction or even have a complete answer soon though.

Good luck and don't be put off by low output, it all helps

Besides... it won't be long before the bug bites harder and has you in its grip

and you feel the ...'need' to prove your comps. ability to fold 24/7 with no problems and without disturbing you cause it's sooo quiet

You can 'optimise' your folding power by running "-advmethods" at the end of the command string for F@H.
(Will find a link to explain it so it makes some sense for you

)

Pete

Power to your/our (.../not... their

) folding