I run SETI 24/7 on an I5-4690 with a GTX 770 Graphics card. My power supply is an EVGA Bronze certified 750 watt unit. I know this would be fine for most people, but I'm wondering if in my situation it would be worth replacing it with gold certified, and how long the payback would take. It looks like decent gold certified 750 watt power supplies cost about $90 on Amazon. I can't decipher my total cost per kilowatt hour from FPLs website but I'm linking it below. I do know that electricity in my area is cheaper than in most other parts of the country, but I don't know how much difference that actually makes for a computer running 24/7. Thanks much!

https://www.fpl.com/rates/pdf/Jan2017-Residential.pdf

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The difference it makes to your power bill is going to be very very small and the new power supply will be dead before you will have actually saved anything.

Save your money and stick with what you have until you have to replace it. ;-)

Cheers.

I run SETI 24/7 on an I5-4690 with a GTX 770 Graphics card. My power supply is an EVGA Bronze certified 750 watt unit. I know this would be fine for most people, but I'm wondering if in my situation it would be worth replacing it with gold certified, and how long the payback would take.

As Wiggo said, the amount of power saved would be bugger all so the payback time would take for ever.
You would actually save a fortune by replacing your video card with a newer model.

GTX 770 230W
GTX 1050Ti 75W
The 1050Ti has slightly lower performance than the 770, but you could run 3 of them (if you motherboard supports it) and almost triple your work done and still use less power than you current video card.

GTX1060 120W
GTX 1070 150W
GTX 1080 180W

or you could go the Titan Z for 250W. Incredible performance at a ridiculous price.
I'd suggest a GTX 1070 or GTX 1060 (or even a couple of GTX 1060s if you motherboard is up to it). They'd produce a lot more work than you do now, and use a lot less power.


The GTX 770 was a good card in it's day, but as Shaggie's graphs show, it's terribly inefficient and is actually down near the bottom of the list for Credit produced per Watt Hour.

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Grant
Darwin NT

Doing 1 task at a time here, my 1060's rarely use above half of their maximum power rating.

Now that, you'll notice on your power bill. ;-)

Cheers.

I actually just ordered a 1060 6gb but it will be going into another computer that will be running SETI

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Thanks, I actually did order a 1060 6gb that will be going into another machine that also runs SETI 24/7. You have a good point though, I didn't consider that the biggest savings would be realized by swapping video cards instead of power supplies. Maybe it's time to Ebay the 770 and get another 1050 or 1060 to replace it with.

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To figure out my cost per KW/h I just divide the amount I'm changed by the KW/h. So for 1285 KW/hs I paid $208.41, or $0.162 KW/h. Since the rates change during the year I keep a yearly average. Which is closer to $0.18 KW/h.

Going from a Bronze to Gold PSU would save about 6.5w for every 100w of load. If we figure a 250w system load about 16.25w would be saved, or 142.35 KW/h a year. With my cost of $0.18 KW/h that would save about $25 a year and it would takes nearly 4 years for the PSU to pay for itself.

I really only compare the cost of more efficient PSUs when I am already replacing it for another reason. Like when I bumped my gaming system from a 650w to a 750w PSU. I only had to factor the difference in cost between the more more efficient models. Instead of the whole cost of the PSU. The EVGA SuperNOVA 750W Gold and Platinum PSUs were only about $10 different and I calculated I would save about that in a year. So I opted for the Platinum model. The Titanium model would have saved <$20 a year and it was $50 more than the Gold model.

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SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours
Join the [url=http://tinyurl.com/8y46zvu]BP6/VP6 User Group[

I gave up long ago doing the math.
I just pay the bill when it comes.
It has ranged from $400.00 to $850.00 over the years.
I suspect the next one is gonna be a whopper.
Seeing the killawatt meters on three of my rigs going mad with shorty fever...............

My RAC is up, and there is no free kibble for the kittyman.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Keep in mind switch mode power supplies are generally most efficient around their 50% load point, and their efficiency drops like a stone from around 15% and lower (sometimes it can start dropping off from the 20% load point for cheaper units). The efficiency drops off more sharply over the 50% load point, but it's a steady drop to the 100% point (unlike the shallow drop in efficiency with lower than 50% loads, that turns into a free fall at around the 15% mark).
The better power supplies will generally meet their claimed efficiencies between 30%-70% of their rated output, for 80 Plus Bronze units it's from 20%.
Having a huge 1kW PSU with only a 200W load will result in very poor efficiency unless it's a 80 Plus Titanium rating. Even then, it'll be 6% worse off than if it were supplying a 500W load (50% of it's rating).
Likewise having a 200W PSU with a 195W load will not only result in poor efficiency, but significantly reduced life expectancy from running so close to it's limit.

Personally I consider 75% to be the maximum acceptable load for any PSU I use.
40-60% is ideal IMHO. You get good regulation, minimal noise and ripple, good efficiency and good cooling without the fan having to run flat out, and therefore long life.


EDIT- having really high efficiency doesn't have much impact on power bills if the load is only a few 100W. But with large loads; the larger the load the greater the impact of even small improvements/falls in efficiency.

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Grant
Darwin NT

I did an assessment of power savings of going from gold to platinum rating PSU on my Penta-Nano BOINC server which is dedicated to SETI 24/7. The numbers worked out to a savings of about US$4.23 per month with an 8.3% reduction in power usage. It also has the added advantage of reduced load on my UPS. Here is the video I posted on it: https://youtu.be/URAPQ6hcWGY

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GitHub: Ricks-Lab
Instagram: ricks_labs

Thanks for the help everyone. I've decided on my primary computer to swap my GTX 770 with a 6GB GTX 1060 I ordered from Amazon. My other computer needed a new power supply anyway so I got a 650 watt gold rated PSU for it, and it is also going to inherit the GTX 770 for now. I'll probably Ebay the 770 in the near future and use the proceeds to get a 1050ti or3gb 1060. I was looking at some benchmarks and realized the 770 was more outdated than I realized - for a lot of games the $109 2gb GTX 1050 gets the same frame rate using 75 watts vs 230 watts.

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You lucky guys.
If we got here in Germany $0.16 kWh we would be happy.
Nowadays we got another price increasing round.
My actual electricity costs are raised from €0.229 kWh to €0.243 kWh.
And this are very cheap prices. In Germany you can get electricity up to €0.28 kWh as well.

Due to this costs I only run a small i3-2100T with a 750Ti.
Before I added the 750Ti the power consumption was 75W, with the 750Ti the power consumption raised to 135W.

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Regards from nothern Germany
Roman

SETI@home classic workunits 207,059
SETI@home classic CPU time 1,251,095 hours

$0.2554/kWh here in the NT of Australia.

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Grant
Darwin NT

You lucky guys.
If we got here in Germany $0.16 kWh we would be happy.
Nowadays we got another price increasing round.
My actual electricity costs are raised from €0.229 kWh to €0.243 kWh.
And this are very cheap prices. In Germany you can get electricity up to €0.28 kWh as well.

Due to this costs I only run a small i3-2100T with a 750Ti.
Before I added the 750Ti the power consumption was 75W, with the 750Ti the power consumption raised to 135W.

You should change i guess.
I only pay €0.219.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

It all depends on where you live and from what part of the power grid you pull from. I pay $0.45/kWhr at peak times, $0.31/kWhr at part-peak times and $0.12/kWhr at off-peak times. That is with an EV and solar rate too. I'd love to have a $0.12/kWhr all-day rate.

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Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

It all depends on where you live and from what part of the power grid you pull from. I pay $0.45/kWhr at peak times, $0.31/kWhr at part-peak times and $0.12/kWhr at off-peak times. That is with an EV and solar rate too. I'd love to have a $0.12/kWhr all-day rate.

Here it's a flat rate, the same all day, every day.

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Grant
Darwin NT