Thanks for replies.

My motives was to like to know, (inter alia) how much other people pay for the SETI@home equipment electricity bill.
Not in £, $ or €. In % of your earnings.
For to decide, how crazy I'm (was). ;-)

If someone say he pay 200.- €. For some this are 'peanuts', for other this would be too much.
Also - I guess the electricity is very expensive in Germany. Maybe the most expensive area of the world.. ;-)
Because of this all I asked because of %.

I guess - I with my 14 % of my (current) earnings, I'm (was) one of the craziest members here around.

Because of this that this was/is too much, I decided to make a 'small break' with 24/7 crunching.
My RAC will fall like a stone.

Current I need to safe my money for other things in my life.

It's a pity, but the true.. that's life.



'Special greetings' to Hundsstern, I don't understand your message.
I guess your english isn't well enough to understand the opening message of this thread.

Also, please don't harass me with this kind of private messages. If you will continue, you will get a place in my ignore list.


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[Optimized project applications, for to increase your PC performance (double RAC)!][Overview of abbreviations, which are used often in forum and their meaning.]

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Sorry, guess I didn't really answer before. I pay around 5% of my take home in electricity that I consider only for Boinc.

-Dave

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Sorry, guess I didn't really answer before. I pay around 5% of my take home in electricity that I consider only for Boinc.

-Dave

Mine is 5.8792899408284023668639053254438%(Calculator output) or 5.87% If You don't want an exact figure. :D By June though It will be about 5.98% and that doesn't include the extra amount for the cooler which will boost the amount to 8.39%. Oh and this is for the whole house, Not just My PC, router, dsl modem and lcd monitor.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I hope I will get this place in your list. You have that place in mine :O) My english seems to be well enough that you can understand what I whant to tell you. Sten-Arne is right. It some people don't like you. Have a nice day :O))

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I still can not understand, why so many people spend so much money in Hardware and energy. I crunch for Seti, because I can. I never spend a cent to buy special Hardware. If I can't pay th bill, I can not have a beer. I bought a 9600GT not for crunching cuda. If my Pc would not be "big enogh" for crunching,I would buy a bigger one with the biggest GPU/CPU coult get for money, shure! :O))) All for crunching. Some dicussions I can realy not understand. What will Sutaru say? Sometimes I think: " Look I'm No. 1 in Germany, look my machines, look, how much money I spend. If I look around, I see more and more jobless and poor people. And a few others get richer and richer. I hope that we will still can buy toys in a few years. Sorry Sutaru I don't know you, but I like you. And sometimes I think you are a self-actor.

Never had a hobby?

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

yeah it keeps us off the street...
why back last century ...i think it was 98...
i was working on another hobby.
even more expensive.
plus now i don't have to worry about radiation.

ROFL!@!@!

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

I guess my answer would have to be not much of a percentage. I only put money I make above and beyond my regular money to my hobby. I have built machines for parts, painted a house, done electrical wiring...I guess the only thing for seti that I actually pay more for would be the electricity for 2 of my video cards use as I would have built a similar machine but with just 1 or 2 video cards. I built my Opteron machine that my i7 replaced while taking a break from seti.

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

I still can not understand, why so many people spend so much money in Hardware and energy. I crunch for Seti, because I can. I never spend a cent to buy special Hardware. If I can't pay th bill, I can not have a beer. I bought a 9600GT not for crunching cuda. If my Pc would not be "big enogh" for crunching,I would buy a bigger one with the biggest GPU/CPU coult get for money, shure! :O))) All for crunching. Some dicussions I can realy not understand. What will Sutaru say? Sometimes I think: " Look I'm No. 1 in Germany, look my machines, look, how much money I spend. If I look around, I see more and more jobless and poor people. And a few others get richer and richer. I hope that we will still can buy toys in a few years. Sorry Sutaru I don't know you, but I like you. And sometimes I think you are a self-actor.

Never had a hobby?

A hobby doesn't have to be an obsession, nor does it have to rule every aspect of your life. I realize that you don't fall into this category, and I can't really say whether Sutaru does or not, but there are plenty of people out there with addictive personalities that will do just that. Then blame the project for making it too easy to become addicted. It's up to each and every person to keep this a healthy hobby without letting things such as server outages affect their mood.

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for the exact amount i invested in the last 2 years in hardware i will have to take all my bills out from archives and do some math. no time for that now.

what i want to say is that i am paying around 150€/month for elictricity which makes up 75% of my total income.
this is for boinc combined not only seti. i personal would like for you to stay and continue crunching.

you know this would be a great project for me...
next winter...
i'll sit in the drafty old shop and count penium 2s, 3s and 4s
and athlons and durons...then look through old copies of computer
shopper and figure the prices of the cpus and mbs...and the mint
i spent on ram and the fortune in cases...
and then if the wife is in a good mood..ask her to dredge up the
power bills for the last 11 years...
not to mention the isp bills...
oh i forgot the kvm switches and the routers and the cables...
oh and the software...
and the hospital bills from that last move when i had to move all of the farm..
and had a heart attack...
yeah sounds like a plan to me.

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Well...I have 5 pc's running 24/7/365 and I have NO idea what I use in electricity but I am sure someone could do the math for me. I am lucky enough to rent an apartment where heat and lights are included. I have lived here for 4+ years and the landlord has never approached me for a power supplement probably because there are 5 other units here and they just look at the total bill and not on an individual basis. Until the day comes that the landlord cracks down I shall keep on doing what I do for the project.

As far as my investment in the hardware end of things I have only bought 2 power supplies and 2 moderate priced video cards so maybe $400.00.

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http://www.novascotia.com

I wish the guy in the video on the Home page would stop by and tell us how much he spends. Especially how, how much electricity that beast eats. :O

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Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.

Albert Einstein

20 years ago I came across some data which showed if used more than three hours a day or if turned on more than once a day (and allowed to cool in between such as morning and night) a computer lasted longer if left on 24/7. Thermal cycles and power surges are what lead to failures. This is nothing new. This is why the first vacuum tube computers were practical. The predictions of tube failure were based upon turning a radio on and off several times a day not on leaving it on. So any calculation of electric power cost needs be balanced against the increased life of the computer. The other consideration is computers are more likely to be replaced for performance rather than failure.

That said, many years go I did do the power cost calculations based upon 150 watts x 24 hrs for 3.6 kW-Hr per day. Back then I got 17 cents US per day. (For 17 cents a day you can help ET find a friend in this lonely universe.) That was a cheap kW-Hr rate obviously and ignored the time for other uses and the savings from reduced failure rate.

All else is about equal. You need a bit more A/C in summer and a bit less heating in winter. Consider it a wash.

The issue is quickly changing. The power per CPU is down from its peak about four years ago and now there is more than one core per CPU with the power consumption remaining about the same. Some time back I kept old computers online instead of decorating the closet. For a while I had four computers online for doing animation frames but also ran S@H. Four computers were four cores. Today I have two computers and five cores and the quad core draws less power than the single core. (The quad run the home entertainment center in real life and occasional animation frames.) I have a dual core I am going to finish assembling "REAL SOON!" but I don't know if I will go to 1+2+4 cores or just 2+4 and retire the oldest machine. The clock speed of these machine varies from 1.7 GHz for the quad to 2.6 GHz for the single core so I'll have to see actual performance before deciding as pure number crunching is a different result than a benchmark rating.

There is no clear way to calculate the costs with current technology. It is too hard to estimate for all the reasons above, couple I have not mentioned (like RAM avoiding swap) and certainly others I have not thought of.

So bottom line, if you are turning your computer off at the end of the day, stop doing that. It will probably save you money in the long run and process more WUs. Leave your monitor on with a blank screen not a screen saver and let the energy star feature power it down to stand-by. That way it will last longer too.

If you have more than one core, set your preferences to use them all. You won't notice the difference.

Consider keeping your old computer working with a LAN, wired or wireless. You will get a router eventually even if you abandon S@H so why not now? Besides they have bragging rights.

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Unvarnished
Haaretz
Jerusalem Post
The origin of the Yahweh Cult

20 years ago I came across some data which showed if used more than three hours a day or if turned on more than once a day (and allowed to cool in between such as morning and night) a computer lasted longer if left on 24/7. Thermal cycles and power surges are what lead to failures. This is nothing new. This is why the first vacuum tube computers were practical. The predictions of tube failure were based upon turning a radio on and off several times a day not on leaving it on. So any calculation of electric power cost needs be balanced against the increased life of the computer. The other consideration is computers are more likely to be replaced for performance rather than failure.

That said, many years go I did do the power cost calculations based upon 150 watts x 24 hrs for 3.6 kW-Hr per day. Back then I got 17 cents US per day. (For 17 cents a day you can help ET find a friend in this lonely universe.) That was a cheap kW-Hr rate obviously and ignored the time for other uses and the savings from reduced failure rate.

All else is about equal. You need a bit more A/C in summer and a bit less heating in winter. Consider it a wash.

The issue is quickly changing. The power per CPU is down from its peak about four years ago and now there is more than one core per CPU with the power consumption remaining about the same. Some time back I kept old computers online instead of decorating the closet. For a while I had four computers online for doing animation frames but also ran S@H. Four computers were four cores. Today I have two computers and five cores and the quad core draws less power than the single core. (The quad run the home entertainment center in real life and occasional animation frames.) I have a dual core I am going to finish assembling "REAL SOON!" but I don't know if I will go to 1+2+4 cores or just 2+4 and retire the oldest machine. The clock speed of these machine varies from 1.7 GHz for the quad to 2.6 GHz for the single core so I'll have to see actual performance before deciding as pure number crunching is a different result than a benchmark rating.

There is no clear way to calculate the costs with current technology. It is too hard to estimate for all the reasons above, couple I have not mentioned (like RAM avoiding swap) and certainly others I have not thought of.

So bottom line, if you are turning your computer off at the end of the day, stop doing that. It will probably save you money in the long run and process more WUs. Leave your monitor on with a blank screen not a screen saver and let the energy star feature power it down to stand-by. That way it will last longer too.

If you have more than one core, set your preferences to use them all. You won't notice the difference.

Consider keeping your old computer working with a LAN, wired or wireless. You will get a router eventually even if you abandon S@H so why not now? Besides they have bragging rights.

People have argued that for a long time but I am in your camp. Most all of my hardware problems were on a startup. I actually took the A+ course at our local Voc-Tech school because of the costs of having people work on our network. All the class did was make me even more dangerous to computers....LOL but have saved a bundle and never turn a machine off for the night and I have a few old ones and lots of older ones that would still work. We also have cheap power from a Dam.

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Official Abuser of Boinc Buttons...
And no good credit hound!

People have argued that for a long time but I am in your camp. Most all of my hardware problems were on a startup. I actually took the A+ course at our local Voc-Tech school because of the costs of having people work on our network. All the class did was make me even more dangerous to computers....LOL but have saved a bundle and never turn a machine off for the night and I have a few old ones and lots of older ones that would still work. We also have cheap power from a Dam.

Self-taught is the most dangerous of all. ;)

There is a rather cheap switchbox that lets you hook four computers to one monitor/keyboard/rat set. I found it useful.

Once you get a flat screen TV think about migrating one of those computers to its VGA connector. IF nothing else the TV networks stream program content to browsers and browsers can go full screen.

---

Unvarnished
Haaretz
Jerusalem Post
The origin of the Yahweh Cult

People have argued that for a long time but I am in your camp. Most all of my hardware problems were on a startup. I actually took the A+ course at our local Voc-Tech school because of the costs of having people work on our network. All the class did was make me even more dangerous to computers....LOL but have saved a bundle and never turn a machine off for the night and I have a few old ones and lots of older ones that would still work. We also have cheap power from a Dam.

Self-taught is the most dangerous of all. ;)

There is a rather cheap switchbox that lets you hook four computers to one monitor/keyboard/rat set. I found it useful.

Once you get a flat screen TV think about migrating one of those computers to its VGA connector. IF nothing else the TV networks stream program content to browsers and browsers can go full screen.

I'm self taught in recent computing, Although 30 years ago I did get two certificates, One is Basic programming(B+ grade) and one in Computers(I did get an A on that) and 30 years of computer usage. At least I know how to install software, build a PC and totally harden My DSL connection(2 hardware firewalls(Router and Modem, I changed the passwords too), wireless 108Mbps(Super G) connection between the router and My 3 PCs(Fully encrypted at WPA2(full strength), AES+Tkip, MAC addressing, etc), 1 software firewall, 1 anti-malware program(on automatic sweep every night, plus upgrades) and 1 A/V program(on automatic sweep every night, plus upgrades), Oh and a KVM? Mere Childs play to Me.

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

/initiate_thread_topic_recovery

....... spent approximately 1550$ on seti@home: to date
on hard drives mostly

All of my machines accept for two were headed to the recyclers at one point and all have been put back in service for distributed computing.

$21.00 a month for power to the machines that are devoted to seti (4)

I'm laid off from a 30k job and living off the last of my savings.
so technically 15% of my budget goes specifically to seti related activity

My inner child says : I'd spend far more if I could .... Why ? _E.T. is out there and it would be tremendously ignorant of us not to seek 'Them' by whatever means we have available to us.

While my (highly repressed) -Responsible adult side insists that... Noble as it is, seti is probably of the least valuable contribution, You (The OP) can make to society.

Distributed computing is so much more than just 'hunting with seti'.

Crunching cancer, Folding proteins and advanced mathematics could benefit greatly from just a share of the flops your machines can offer.

Downtime can happen to any system, at any time, if it's not your systems that are down, please continue to compute for another project.




[/.02c]

People have argued that for a long time but I am in your camp. Most all of my hardware problems were on a startup. I actually took the A+ course at our local Voc-Tech school because of the costs of having people work on our network. All the class did was make me even more dangerous to computers....LOL but have saved a bundle and never turn a machine off for the night and I have a few old ones and lots of older ones that would still work. We also have cheap power from a Dam.

Self-taught is the most dangerous of all. ;)

There is a rather cheap switchbox that lets you hook four computers to one monitor/keyboard/rat set. I found it useful.

Once you get a flat screen TV think about migrating one of those computers to its VGA connector. IF nothing else the TV networks stream program content to browsers and browsers can go full screen.

I'm self taught in recent computing, Although 30 years ago I did get two certificates, One is Basic programming(B+ grade) and one in Computers(I did get an A on that) and 30 years of computer usage. At least I know how to install software, build a PC and totally harden My DSL connection(2 hardware firewalls(Router and Modem, I changed the passwords too), wireless 108Mbps(Super G) connection between the router and My 3 PCs(Fully encrypted at WPA2(full strength), AES+Tkip, MAC addressing, etc), 1 software firewall, 1 anti-malware program(on automatic sweep every night, plus upgrades) and 1 A/V program(on automatic sweep every night, plus upgrades), Oh and a KVM? Mere Childs play to Me.

More power to ya! I don't see it really as all that hard. Most of it is just not being afraid to break it. My brother supervised the Cincinnati vehicle maintenance department before he retired. It is only recently I convinced him to match plug to socket and he can't break anything. It mostly when I get clever that things die an ignominious death -- like the time I thought of a way to revolutionize linux. As soon as it crashed I realize it was a failed revolution. After the second time I swore off being a revolutionary.

If I don't count an abortive six month of linux back in 97 I have been using it for ten years -- started just before I started S@H. I find I can more or less pass certification on the hard questions if I am a little generous but fail on doing the rookie things like adding new users and groups and creating a hierarchy of partitions. A single user never does those elementary things. Of course the sarcastic person asks why it took ten years. It took that long to screw up enough to have to learn the problems.

On comp.os.linux.setup there are a couple people annoyed with me for my outrageous suggestions that just happen to work but are not the "correct" way to fix the problem.

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Unvarnished
Haaretz
Jerusalem Post
The origin of the Yahweh Cult

People have argued that for a long time but I am in your camp. Most all of my hardware problems were on a startup. I actually took the A+ course at our local Voc-Tech school because of the costs of having people work on our network. All the class did was make me even more dangerous to computers....LOL but have saved a bundle and never turn a machine off for the night and I have a few old ones and lots of older ones that would still work. We also have cheap power from a Dam.

Self-taught is the most dangerous of all. ;)

There is a rather cheap switchbox that lets you hook four computers to one monitor/keyboard/rat set. I found it useful.

Once you get a flat screen TV think about migrating one of those computers to its VGA connector. IF nothing else the TV networks stream program content to browsers and browsers can go full screen.

I'm self taught in recent computing, Although 30 years ago I did get two certificates, One is Basic programming(B+ grade) and one in Computers(I did get an A on that) and 30 years of computer usage. At least I know how to install software, build a PC and totally harden My DSL connection(2 hardware firewalls(Router and Modem, I changed the passwords too), wireless 108Mbps(Super G) connection between the router and My 3 PCs(Fully encrypted at WPA2(full strength), AES+Tkip, MAC addressing, etc), 1 software firewall, 1 anti-malware program(on automatic sweep every night, plus upgrades) and 1 A/V program(on automatic sweep every night, plus upgrades), Oh and a KVM? Mere Childs play to Me.

More power to ya! I don't see it really as all that hard. Most of it is just not being afraid to break it. My brother supervised the Cincinnati vehicle maintenance department before he retired. It is only recently I convinced him to match plug to socket and he can't break anything. It mostly when I get clever that things die an ignominious death -- like the time I thought of a way to revolutionize linux. As soon as it crashed I realize it was a failed revolution. After the second time I swore off being a revolutionary.

If I don't count an abortive six month of linux back in 97 I have been using it for ten years -- started just before I started S@H. I find I can more or less pass certification on the hard questions if I am a little generous but fail on doing the rookie things like adding new users and groups and creating a hierarchy of partitions. A single user never does those elementary things. Of course the sarcastic person asks why it took ten years. It took that long to screw up enough to have to learn the problems.

On comp.os.linux.setup there are a couple people annoyed with me for my outrageous suggestions that just happen to work but are not the "correct" way to fix the problem.

I just use either XP x32 or XP x64, x64 is the primary OS here on My main PC and on one other that's under reconstruction and x32 is for the auxiliary TV(an old donated and repaired HP media PC w/a PCI TV Tuner card inside[stock for the PC] that My relative offered Me once, When My TV needed a new 150w DLP arc lamp, the HP PC then did a good job as a spare TV for a month and It's still hooked up to the Satellite box to this day, Just in case as the lamps do burn out and they cost about $90 each w/shipping). I'd tried Linux, But It makes My head hurt, So that's over with. But If someone likes Linux thats fine with Me, That's their choice and I respect that. :D

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The T1 Trust, PRR T1 Class 4-4-4-4 #5550, 1 of America's First HST's

I wish the guy in the video on the Home page would stop by and tell us how much he spends. Especially how, how much electricity that beast eats. :O

Awesome system. Sort of thing you could install in the basement to keep the house warm ;)

I'd love to know his RAC too!

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