Seti at home takes a lot of power

I have been a member of Seti only for a short time but have 6 machines crunching 24/7. September was my first full month crunching with all 6 machines, I have to say that while I support the project, I cannot from a personal perspective allow myself to spend $82.54 a month extra for the power to run 6 computers full time. $82.54 is how much my electric bill went up in September. Yes, that's about $13.76 per machine which is in the realm of other threads I've seen on the subject. I also believe that I have seen where S@H has scanned the sky at least once with no results (I could be wrong on this). So the chances that they will find life in this manner is, I believe, low. However the project does support many other worthwhile projects. I don't mind building machines but will have to sell them as I don't need a couple of them. I'll never be able to match the scores of other fanatic members whose numbers are in the millions with only one machine. Thanks[/b]

Thank you both for the replies. I'll leave it running on my server (it does run all the time) and my wife's Mac Pro, it seems to run cool and quiet, for a month and see what my electric bill is. Thanks again, nice replies.

I've not noticed a difference in my usage over the years. I live in Texas so my energy use tends to fluctuate throughout the year. I get bills from $90 in the winter and up around $300 in the summer.

I do have quite a few higher end PC's running seti and other projects 24/7. I have to assume that I pay more than $8.00 for everything else running in my place during the winter.

I'd take a bit longer of a look at your power usage. I'd even check it for a few more months and make sure you aren't doing something else that may be sucking on the Kilowatts.
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Proud member of TSWB.

End terrorism by building a school

I cannot from a personal perspective allow myself to spend $82.54 a month extra for the power to run 6 computers full time.

I have no Idea what the wattage requirements are for each one is.

Machine #6775753 is a new build I7 3820 w 2 550 TIs. It was running nicely showing both GPUs working. I did have trouble with it in the beginning with the latest drivers, so I backed down to where it is now and it was running fine. However I think it and the I7 920 are what's hogging the wattage, so I started the FX4100 back up, and throttled the cpu down. I'll leave the 3820 and 920 down until I see what happens. Don't have a kw meter or an amp meter always wanted one, but they're spendy. Will look around and see what I can find Thanks again.

However I think it and the I7 920 are what's hogging the wattage, so I started the FX4100 back up, and throttled the cpu down.

FX4100 was just a whim, saw a MB for free at Microcenter and chose the 4100 for $89.00, case with a 400 watt PSU for $28, already had a DVD, 4 gb memory (1333) and bought an Crucial M4 for 94.00 Windows 8 is free - for now. Bought an HD 5450 for $29. So I was up and running for $240.00. Yes you get what you pay for, but with it running win 8 and off an ssd it really isn't bad. All it does is S@H and internet. Thanks a lot for the last two posts. That really helps out with which computer uses the power. I haven't tried to run only the GPUs and no CPU - didn't think about that. I'll give it try. Thanks again.

I'd hate to see what the power bills are for some of our more massive crunchers. 500K RAC doesn't come cheap.

I'd hate to see what the power bills are for some of our more massive crunchers. 500K RAC doesn't come cheap.

If i had the funds, and the location, i'd just put solar panels on my roof with some batteries & an inverter.
Only expense would be the purchase & installation costs, and replacing the batteres every few years. Even then, they'd pay for themselves in no time.
$2.50/kWh here & it goes up every year.

I've done something quite similar with my single cruncher. It's an IBM Intellistation Z-Pro 9228 with two each quad-core Xeon X5356 processors and an overclocked MSI Radeon R6870 Twin Frozr graphics card, all water-cooled with a Koolance Exos v2.0 external system. Running SETI on all 8 cores and the Radeon throws a goodly amount of heat into the office/spare bedroom.

It dipped down into freezing temps this last weekend. Instead of setting the house furnace thermostat to kick in at 67 degrees, I've just let the IBM run SETI through the night, and set a box fan in the doorway of the spare bedroom blowing air into the upstairs hallway.

I know electric heat isn't as cost-effective as our natural gas furnace, but I can at least crunch and make use of the waste heat. That's assuming I can keep it fed with Seti WUs on the download/upload end of late.

If I remember correctly, server farms of late use the waste heat from the racks to warm the office spaces in northern climates. Not a bad idea...