Powering your Rigs
21 Oct 2016 23:42:35 UTC
Topic 202144
(moderation:
Hey guys,
I had a quick question about how you supply your Rig's with power. Currently I'm running 5 computer's (my gaming laptop ~200w, and 4 old buisness computers ~300W each)[all power consumption numbers are estimates] in 1 room and they are happily eating 1500w (estimate) which keeps me right at my 80% amp limit. I want to upgrade soon and build 4 (starting with 1, but essentially a proven copy) new systems. I used an online calculator to estimate they would be consuming 500-650w each, putting the 4 systems above my limit of power.
There is woefully little information on powering multiple high-power computer's in one room, even looking up things like home server racks and the like have little or more often no information about power.
So I was wondering, for those of you who run multiple systems, what are you doing to power them? I would like to keep them in one room if possible (ethernet, cooling, noise).
Btw, before you get all hot and bothered and fire off a post about how 4 crunching rigs isn't in the spirit of boinc, or how much 2kw-3kw will cost me, just know that I
A. Want to (I feel it's a good use of my time and effort.)
And B. Can afford to (I feel science is worth investing in.)
Any help will be appreciated, even if you just tell me to stick them in separate rooms.
Jordan
Btw, the new rigs would be
)
Btw, the new rigs would be xeon 2660 or 2670 dual cpu system's and ideally would have 1070s in them. Kvm setup so only 1 set of peripherals and they would be dedicated crunchers.
Most of my rigs are spread
)
Most of my rigs are spread across multiple locations, never on the same line. 3 at the same location but in 2 separate buildings. The remaining 2 of 5 are in entirely different part of the city I live in also on separate lines. So that is how I do it.
At one time I had issues with
)
At one time I had issues with power consumption at my home. 15amp line was not enough so I had to put systems around the home. Using a Kill-a-Watt meter is a handy way to see how much power your pulling from the wall. I also checked my breakers to see if they were warm or hot, I tried to make sure they were cool. One solution I had for my single crunching room was using the 20amp GFI line from the bathroom, it is on its own breaker.
Money was ok for awhile unitl I quit my job. I was paying $300+ in electricity a month running appx 3million points a day when we had Parkes units. Sold off all my 980tis, 980s ect. Now I'm down to mostly low powered rigs running 750Tis with the exception of one Titan Black. Im all for building big four gpu rigs, when the budget allows I'll be right up there again with Zalster ;)
For fun I use Team viewer, which I can log onto my computers from my phone if needed..love it. I have five headless machines with no need for a kvm.
Even 500 added watts in a
)
Even 500 added watts in a room raises the temperature considerably compared to the rest of the house. In a house with poor equalization in winter this can be a virtue, but otherwise it is a problem. Open windows in cross-ventilation can help a lot when the wind is right, but what about rain? What about when the wind is wrong?
While you seem to understand the line power limit issues, others reading here may not understand that it is not OK to load up a home circuit until the breaker trips, then just back off a smidgen. For fire safety reasons, the steady load should be substantially below the nominal rating (i.e. no way is it OK to put a steady 20A load on a 20 ampere circuit).
I think in most houses it is easier to find sockets which are truly on different circuits (so protected by different breakers) in different rooms.
Personal circumstances and house designs vary, but I think in general people with more than 500 watts steady-state of BOINC power consumption should get started on looking for extra rooms. Choosing cases with more, larger, and lower-speed fans can help make the crunchers better neighbors than the screamers you get when trying to cool a high-end box with fewer, smaller, faster fans.
As in most cases power is a serious long-term expense, I suspect many of the pretty serious Einstein participants who use older-generation hardware would be better off selling it on eBay and investing the proceeds and the power savings in Pascal-generation GPU cards, running on boxes not older than Sandy Bridge. Computing power per watt really has gotten rather a lot better in the last few years. In the Nvidia line anything older than Maxwell generation is pretty questionable for 24/7 use for power expense reasons, even though lots of gaming users can be happy with some of them.
Just my 2 cents, and I'm not in the truly high end.
I'm running most of my
)
I'm running most of my machines in a office, divided into 2 groups, each of them on a separate circuit. Here the limits are ~3.6kW (16A * 230V) and my groups currently consume 700-900 W and 500-700 W, so that should be pretty OK.
One also needs to consider what other devices are connected to the same circuit - wash machines, cook stove, etc can consume a few kW.
-----
Make sure to get real power
)
Make sure to get real power #s. Most online calculators are junk by using max TDP. A Killawatt or power read from a UPS (good idea anyway) would be a better way to judge power usage.
I currently have everything in my spare room, 4 PC with 5 CPUs and 5 GPUs. I added a window fan this summer to push out the heat instead of trying to cool it. Now I'm thinking of trying to watercool a PC and move it close to a living area for better heat dissipation.
Availability of circuits is
)
Availability of circuits is one of the things that has kept me from expanding too much with my BOINC gear, although that isn't stopping me from looking into the prospect of building two 2P E5-2670 setups, each with a pair of GTX 1060's (or 1050 Ti's, haven't decided yet... I lean more towards the 1060's due to known performance as well as waterblock availability).
Knowing what else is on the circuit for your rig is definitely something you'll want to look into before hand. Houses thankfully have one huge perk - you can sometimes run a new line specifically for your rigs. I'm looking forward to such when I eventually get a house, so then I won't have to turn off BOINC when I fire up the benching rig!
I have found in my own home
)
I have found in my own home that you CAN put up to 6 pc's with 6 core AMD cpu's in them and high end gpu's too before starting up a 7th one blows a 15amp circuit. BUT it ALSO makes the outlet plates hot enough to fry an egg on!!! After having to bring in an electrician to replace some very burnt parts, fortunately no actual wires were damaged though, and installing 4 brand new 20 amp circuits for me means I now have most of my pc's in one place where they are crunching just fine, although putting out a ton of heat. It's in the low 60's outside and in the mid 90's in my basement!! My basement has little to no flow thru ventilation and even adding a return vent right over the pc area hasn't helped.
My electric bill in the summer is twice what my neighbors is and we have similar sized homes and families, but in the winter time mine it is about half of his as my heat pump almost never runs. My top floor though, I have a 3 story Colonial Style home, does get pretty chilly on the colder nights. Extra blankets on the beds helps though.
I too use VNC to run most of my pc's headless, all of them except one are Win10 pc's and it's not that hard to make work, but it can be frustrating at times. Sharing files between pc's can be a royal pain in some cases.
You need to get a Kill-a-Watt
)
You need to get a Kill-a-Watt meter if you want accurate numbers. For reference, I have an i7-4790K with dual GTX 1070s dedicated to crunching and it draws 336 watts from the wall.
n12365 wrote:You need to get
)
Agreed, I have one and it shows that things like the quality of the power supply can also make a difference in the wattage used by the pc, with the better ones often using less that the cheaper ones. I'm fixing up an old Dell that a friend wants to sell that bounces from a max of about 120 watts to a low of about 80 watts changing by the second!! It's pretty amazing how much it changes and how quickly, and it's not even crunching.