Hello. My name is Mike. I have started crunching numbers for rosetta and I was wondering if someone could guide me on the power consumption that my computer is using to do the actual crunching.

My specs are in order I believe. I have a Quad Core Q6600 and I didn't do any special mods to Boinc or in any way try to "optimize" it's use. I installed Boinc, attached it to Rosetta@home, and away it went. I noticed my temps went from about 30c idle to around 60c while crunching. I'm not too worried about the temps but I am kind of worried about the power consumption. Assuming I left it on 24/7 crunching for Rosetta.....is that going to throw my power bill through the roof at the end of the month?

What can I reasonably expect? I am only using this one computer and don't have a "farm" of PC's. Thank you.

Welcome to the project. There are a lot of factors which are going to influence the impact your system and Rosetta has on your power bill. For example, what rate are you paying for power and do you live in an area, like I do, where air conditioning is the rule of the day all year round.

The majority of my systems are modern quad or hex core systems running in "female mode" - i.e: headless with their displays routed back to a central system via a VNC server / client lash up so I am not paying to power a bunch of monitors. I run these systems flat out 24 hours a day.

What I see is that each of these systems seems to add about $20 a month to my electrical bill.

A more interesting question is that since the University of Washington /Rosetta is a registered charity, can I take a tax deduction for the expense incurred in running dedicated systems as a donation "in kind" - this would not be a deciding factor in my participation - I believe in the work they are doing - but I could use it as a justification for adding few more boxes to my collection.

Hello. My name is Mike. I have started crunching numbers for rosetta and I was wondering if someone could guide me on the power consumption that my computer is using to do the actual crunching.

My specs are in order I believe. I have a Quad Core Q6600 and I didn't do any special mods to Boinc or in any way try to "optimize" it's use. I installed Boinc, attached it to Rosetta@home, and away it went. I noticed my temps went from about 30c idle to around 60c while crunching. I'm not too worried about the temps but I am kind of worried about the power consumption. Assuming I left it on 24/7 crunching for Rosetta.....is that going to throw my power bill through the roof at the end of the month?

What can I reasonably expect? I am only using this one computer and don't have a "farm" of PC's. Thank you.

Just to add what Chris said....WELCOME MIKE!!!
I have 12 pc's running right this minute, it fluctuates up and down a bit depending on what I am doing and my electric bill is about $250.00 to $300.00 higher than my neighbors bill, that is similar to Chris' guesstimate. I do however use video cards to assist in my crunching, not for Rosetta but for other projects, and they can chew up the power quickly. I have an all electric house and my bill hovers around $500.00 a month more or less.
Again WELCOME to the wonderful world of crunching!!

I wanted to just confirm that I generally figure at least a penny an hour for electricity, but it certainly depends upon how much your power costs and what CPU is in the machine. And certainly turn off the monitor when not in front of it. Also, as was pointed out, if you are air conditioning the room the machine is in, then you might figure on adding another 50% or so, because your A/C is going to have to run more frequently then it would otherwise... on the other hand, if you are in to a time of year that you need heat, your machine running is reducing the frequency that your furnace has to kick on, and therefore saving a bit on heating costs.

You do have some degree of control over the heat produced and the power consumed. This is in the BOINC preferences. You can set it up to utilize a percentage of the CPU, and if you run at less than 100% you will be "idle" for the remainder. For example, I find that running at about 70% reduces the average fan speed on my CPU heat-sink noticeably. The machine is still powered on 24hrs a day, but using less power and producing less heat for a portion of that time. BOINC implements the 70% by running for 7 seconds and then suspending for 3 seconds, so it is perhaps a subtle difference. But if you are accustomed to how your machine sounds at full throttle, you can hear the difference, and will see a lower temp to confirm it.

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Rosetta Moderator: Mod.Sense

It's worse when you run the GPU for crunching. If I force BOINC to run (w/ GPU) on battery, it dies in about 10 minutes (it lasts around 1 hr normally).

You do the math D:

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Hello. My name is Mike. I have started crunching numbers for rosetta and I was wondering if someone could guide me on the power consumption that my computer is using to do the actual crunching.

My specs are in order I believe. I have a Quad Core Q6600 and I didn't do any special mods to Boinc or in any way try to "optimize" it's use. I installed Boinc, attached it to Rosetta@home, and away it went. I noticed my temps went from about 30c idle to around 60c while crunching. I'm not too worried about the temps but I am kind of worried about the power consumption. Assuming I left it on 24/7 crunching for Rosetta.....is that going to throw my power bill through the roof at the end of the month?

What can I reasonably expect? I am only using this one computer and don't have a "farm" of PC's. Thank you.

Hello Mike:)
I hookup each of my computers to a KILL A WATT EZ meter to check how much power
each PC is using. In my area I use my rate at $0.093 cents/kwh. The cost per hour for each PC all quad processors are as follows: pc1= $0.0105, pc2=$0.0125,
pc3= $0.0144, pc4= $0.0156 and pc5= $0.0165.
I run all 5PC 30DAYS YEAR ROUND. Based on my old records of 5 computers running
12hrs/day/mo, I am spending $19.03 a month to run Rosetta@home. But now I am
running my 5 computers 16hrs/day/mo year round which cost me roughly $30/mo.

If you are running just 1 PC, you are just spending roughtly $5/mo
I hope this give a good idea. joseps:)

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I turned off my 5computers when I went on vacation. When I return today, I can not upload work. Need work units to run computers.
joseps

The up side is that with enough boxes you can heat your house in the winter.