I turned off 7 video cards and only went from 40 million ppd to 32 million with 6 2080TIs crunching. I have to close the windows on the house to stay warm ! But the over $800 electric bill was just too much. We will see next bill what this does for me.
Mark, I know that this may be an unpopular opinion and comment in this particular sub-forum, but ... have you ever even considered "mining"? Rather than shut off those 7 video cards, why not set them up to mine ethereum (either directly, with a pool, or through NiceHash, which is DEAD SIMPLE to set up, and pays out directly in BTC), and then those 7 currently-unused cards, would be: 1) Doing something useful, and 2) Paying the electric bill for themselves, as well as the rest of the cards, or at least significantly offsetting the electric bill.
I'll break it down for you a bit.
I use Nicehash. I have 9 rigs crunching.
I have two server chassis, one with:
1) 5x GTX 1660 ti cards, and
2) 4x RX 5700XT cards.
I also have 5x gaming PCs with 2xGPUs in each, I've got a mixture of RX 5700/5700XT, GTX 1660 ti, GTX 1660 Super, RX 5600XT, and GTX 1650 (those last ones don't mine ethereum, they mine Ravencoin, because they have 4GB or less memory).
I also have a number of Ryzen 6C/12T CPUs CPU mining Monero.
Altogether, my little farm is pushing $100 USD / day in revenue. It probably uses $10 / day in electricity. (2800W)
However, I have electric heat, and I'm heating my apt. this winter with my rigs, so I would normally be using nearly that much power just heating my apt. this winter, anyways.
Something to consider, really, in today's environment (BTC and ETH prices relative to Fiat / USD are sky-high right now). Why idle cards, when you could be running them, and they could MORE than pay for themselves. In essence, their profit would be subsidizing the other cards running F@H. You could have BOTH a Folding and mining farm going on, and heating your house with both.