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Overclocking (and running F@H 24/7) is a waste of electricity.

VirtualLarry

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Just saying...

No wonder my electric bill is $95/mo for a single person. Overclocked CPU. Overclocked GPU. F@H running 24/7.

The sweet-spot for CPUs, as far as power consumption, is within specifications. Overclocking, especially increasing voltage, reduces performance/watt.

I guess I'm getting more power-sensitive in my old age.
 
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Running a high power machine 24/7 at full power is probably not the greatest idea in terms of power consumption.

Try not running F@H all the time. You should be able to make direct savings off that, at the very least.
 
Not necessarily:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sandy-bridge-overclocking-efficiency,2850-13.html


Also keep in mind with power-gating and the ability to clockdown/undervolt @ idle overclocking really doesn't increase power usage (AT IDLE) as much as it used to. Chances are your electricity bill is so high because you are running F@H all the time. Yea, if your PC wasn't OCed it wouldn't use as much power, but you wouldn't get as many work-units either. 😀
 
Some CPU's I have I've been able to increase the frequency and still slightly reduce voltage over stock

The downside with a lot of mobo's though is that adjusting the voltage loses all your power saving features

I think everyone knows overclocking increases power consumption. A overvolted nehalem can draw a LOT of power. I think it's kind of a blanket statement to say the best efficiency lies in the stock range though- I wouldn't be surprised if there's budget CPU's out there that have better performance/watt overclocked. Also, what about people who undervolt their CPUs? Isn't that better efficiency with the same performance?
 
tommylommykins said:
Running a high power machine 24/7 at full power is probably not the greatest idea in terms of power consumption.

Try not running F@H all the time. You should be able to make direct savings off that, at the very least.
Click to expand...

this.

I've always run overclocked and used to leave my computer running all the time. Not anymore, nowdays i build a dedicated gaming box running overclocked to the max and for all other needs i just use my laptop or HTPC which are both very low power. And i dont spend a whole lot of time gaming but its still worth it to me to have a dedicated box for it.
 
Let's keep a few things in mind as we ponder power consumption.....

Most of these CPU's consume, what 60W-130W idle and a quick check if the internets shows ~225W under load for i7 Extreme? Feel free to correct me, but even if I'm off it's probably not much and what I'm about to say will still make sense.....

Now keep in mind we're talking about the CPU here, if we're gaming there is probably another 300W-500W being drawn from the vid card....but anyway....

Figure out your per KW/h price...I live in VA so I pay around .10 per KW/h (you guys in the NE and Cali are probably taking it from behind so you can probably double that)

If my CPU draws 100W idle then I pay .10 cents for every 10 hours I leave it on as I have used exactly 1KW (1000W).

If I ran Folding@home and the CPU was running at 225W then, for the same time I'd use 2.25KW (2250W), thus it would cost me .23 cents to power my CPU over the same 10 hours.

Now in order to calculate the difference in cost for an OC vs a non-OC CPU we would have to take the delta, which, and I'm just guessing might be an extra 10W-25W? Running 25 extra watts 24/7 at my rate of .10 cents per KW/h amounts to a wopping $1.80 extra a month!! Probably closer to $2.60 for you NE and Clai boys....

Now when we factor in an entire system it gets a little more costly, folding@home 24/7 is about the same is running a 5000 BTU AC unit all the time, but I remind you the title of the post isn't "running your PC 24/7 is a waste of money", it's "Overclocking is a waste of electricity", which by comparison only costs a few dollars extra....😉
 
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knut said:
Hahah, good f-in point :biggrin:
Click to expand...

Wouldn't we all? I have this curious . . . bill-sharing arrangement . . . with an aging parent. She pays the first $100; I pay everything over that. During maybe three months out of the year, I'm lucky if I get by shelling out $130.

The "parent" adopted some habits years ago which I may have encouraged: "Don't turn your computer off . . . " "If son has two, I must have two computers. . . . "

Usually, with the file-server, we have a minimum of 3 machines running 24/7 here. While I've been criticized for not being generous with Mom, she's a "user" with minimum needs, so I built her an LGA-775 with low-end C2D and an $80 mATX motherboard a couple years ago. I'm refurbing it now -- doubling the RAM (done and A-OK); adding "the Last Wolfdale" E6700 3.2 Ghz. Seems a shame to waste all that on the XP-32-bit OS, but . . . . she won't let go . . . Not eager to . . . ."learn new tricks" per the old adage . . .

Her machine consumes maybe 126W at idle (and during most of her usage); my quad-core seems to be using just under 300W.

Last summer, we decommissioned a freezer to save power (finding frozen s*** in there from 8 years ago!) Then, I got this idea to convert the top-loading freezer into a wine-chiller with a Johnson-Controls digital temperature control. The freezer may run for a few minutes a day to keep the interior between 53F and 56F (and the older the contents, the better!)

I'd LOVE to trim $50 off our electric bill! This will be . . . . a looooong process.

Maybe we should all just use laptops . . . .

Well . . . at least I use the C2Q power-hog as an HDTV. That's something. (Except Mom leaves her old tube-TV's on -- two of 'em -- 24/7 unless I run around in the late evening and switch them off.) I STILL think -- for the grocery runs I "have" to make, she believes gas is still $0.35/gal like it was in the '60s . . . .
 
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Instead of getting her an E6700, should have built her a Zacate mini-ITX rig for $300. Unless she's a gamer, she won't need those kinds of CPU speeds (3.2Ghz C2D) for day-to-day tasks. Zacate's not sluggish. But it does sip power.

Edit: I think she would need to move to Win7 though. I had trouble getting hardware video acceleration working in XP on my HTPC (780G chipset), I had to use Win7 to get it to work. I fear Zacate is probably the same way. XP is neglected these days, time to upgrade!
 
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VirtualLarry said:
Just saying...

No wonder my electric bill is $95/mo for a single person. Overclocked CPU. Overclocked GPU. F@H running 24/7.

The sweet-spot for CPUs, as far as power consumption, is within specifications. Overclocking, especially increasing voltage, reduces performance/watt.

I guess I'm getting more power-sensitive in my old age.
Click to expand...
I believe F@H & 24/7 are the sources of the problem.

I have multiple HDD, all shuts down in 15 minutes idle. OS and games are on SSDs, which never goes idle. Monitor shuts down 15 minutes idle. PC sleeps in 1 hour idle. Unless gaming, CPU/GPU stays idle.

Consider my problem. When both me and my wife plays on PC, room temp goes up by 4c to 30c, while air condition is set to 25c. Fun time.
 
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F@H is an expense, you are donating to a cause through your electric bill. If you find that reasonable, depends on the person - do I wish to donate x $ to this y/n?

As for OC being a waste - I suppose it depends - can you get more computing for the same amount of electricity + write-off on hardware some other way? (upgrade or another system).. I'll leave that open, since I don't know. I doubt it though...
 
Most systems idle at around 100W. If you get X performance folding at 150W, and 1.3X performance folding at 200W then no, it is not a waste of electricity, even though the increase in power use is non-linear, you have to take into account the 100W base.

You can't just say "my CPU uses 95W folding at stock, and 145W folding OC'd, thats a 53% increase in power consumption for only 30% increase in performance".

Also, if you cared about performance/watt, you wouldn't be running a 65nm CPU in 2011.
 
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My 2nd comp/file server with Athlon II 250u @ 2.1GHz (overclocked), X25-v 40GB SSD, 1.5TB Samsung HDD, Seagate 1.5TB sips around 60w idle, 70w full load.

My main comp with 2500K @ 4.5GHz 1.28vcore, 2x Crucial M4 64GB SSD, 2x Samsung F3 1TB HDD idles at around 70w and uses 165w under full load using prime95 (major stress).

You need to upgrade to newer processors 🙂. I dont fold anymore but I would think that a 2600K could pull in some nice PPD #s and still consume a lot less watts than your CPU/GPU combo.
 
Let's keep a few things in mind as we ponder power consumption.....

Most of these CPU's consume, what 60W-130W idle and a quick check if the internets shows ~225W under load for i7 Extreme? Feel free to correct me, but even if I'm off it's probably not much and what I'm about to say will still make sense.....

Now keep in mind we're talking about the CPU here, if we're gaming there is probably another 300W-500W being drawn from the vid card....but anyway....

Figure out your per KW/h price...I live in VA so I pay around .10 per KW/h (you guys in the NE and Cali are probably taking it from behind so you can probably double that)

If my CPU draws 100W idle then I pay .10 cents for every 10 hours I leave it on as I have used exactly 1KW (1000W).

If I ran Folding@home and the CPU was running at 225W then, for the same time I'd use 2.25KW (2250W), thus it would cost me .23 cents to power my CPU over the same 10 hours.

Now in order to calculate the difference in cost for an OC vs a non-OC CPU we would have to take the delta, which, and I'm just guessing might be an extra 10W-25W? Running 25 extra watts 24/7 at my rate of .10 cents per KW/h amounts to a wopping $1.80 extra a month!! Probably closer to $2.60 for you NE and Clai boys....

Now when we factor in an entire system it gets a little more costly, folding@home 24/7 is about the same is running a 5000 BTU AC unit all the time, but I remind you the title of the post isn't "running your PC 24/7 is a waste of money", it's "Overclocking is a waste of electricity", which by comparison only costs a few dollars extra....
Click to expand...
Depends on the CPU, obviously. Idle could be anywhere from 3-50W. Load, from 15-140W. Your i7 extreme has a TDP of 130W, and while it will probably go over that for certain applications, going over by 100W is not realistic at all.

GPU load power draw, again, depends on the GPU; anywhere from 20-ish (I'm guessing) to 60W idle, and 50s to 300-odd watts load.

Obviously other components are a factor as well, and they'd probably add in another 50W or so.
 
According to kill-a-watt, my most power consuming system is my I7 950 @ 4 ghz and 1.35 vcore. It has 2 470 video cards. When I run all 3 with F@H, it draws 500 watts. I have 3 other similar systems, and all running F@H 24/7, and my power bill is only $200 a month.

You must be doing something else to consumer all that power, or you are getting raped / kwh
 
drizek said:
Also, if you cared about performance/watt, you wouldn't be running a 65nm CPU in 2011.
Click to expand...
I guess you are referring to my Q6600? That sits unplugged in the corner. Too much power usage, especially at 3.6. I was talking about my 45nm C2Q Q9300 chips, I overclocked them by raising the FSB from 333 to 400, from 2.5 to 3.0Ghz. On the computer on the left I had to bump the vcore. Speedstep/EIST are still enabled. (Which doesn't do all that much, 6x multi to 7.5x multi isn't much room to work with.)
 
Markfw900 said:
According to kill-a-watt, my most power consuming system is my I7 950 @ 4 ghz and 1.35 vcore. It has 2 470 video cards. When I run all 3 with F@H, it draws 500 watts. I have 3 other similar systems, and all running F@H 24/7, and my power bill is only $200 a month.

You must be doing something else to consumer all that power, or you are getting raped / kwh
Click to expand...

Interesting.

I've got a stove (used perhaps twice or thrice a week), a refrigerator (that doesn't run all the time), some lights (on all the time), and two desktops (in sig), one running 24/7 with MagicJack, one turned off 99.99% of the time (used for guests visiting), both connected to 26" LCDs, and an AM2+ 780G HTPC with a BE-2400 (2.3Ghz 45W dual-core), on 24/7, and a 32" LCD TV connected to the HTPC, used probably 8-10 hours a day, and a laptop also running 24/7, although usually with the display off.

Oh, and a 12000 BTU A/C, it fits in a box below the window that was built-in to my apt. (which seems to be losing the battle, as I'm watching my thermostat creep subtly up, after turning on the 2nd GTX460 for F@H.)

Edit: My electric is $0.15 per KWh.

Edit: During the winter, I have to leave my windows open, in order to maintain normal room temperature (otherwise too hot if I close the windows).
 
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Oh, and a 12000 BTU A/C, it fits in a box below the window that was built-in to my apt. (which seems to be losing the battle, as I'm watching my thermostat creep subtly up, after turning on the 2nd GTX460 for F@H.)
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Erm...yeah. According to my calculations that's costing you around 50c per hour. Your folding rig is nothing compared to this.

Oh, and to increase ppd/watt, multi-socket bigadv is where it's at. A 48-core Magny-cours can get nearly 1 million ppd.
 
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