Well, afraid the cost of folding in power terms has come to a head, and I'm cutting right back. Sorry to the team, but when the elec bills start shooting up, you can't help but look at two PCs running 24/7.

have sold my AMD64 3500+ for

Jason, buy a dual core AMD cpu. Twice the folding, one CPU and one PSU. Still running 3 PCs (4 CPUs) 24/7 at home.

Are there any 2 CPU cores for socket A boards? Somehow I don't think so. For now I'm just going to have to cut back and try to market other people to help me out.

You are not alone ...actually went out and bought a plug in mains power monitor ....my PC uses 150 watts ...the other two in the house are roughly the same.......... so thats nearly half a kilowatt :eek: ...all the lamps in the house are energy saving ones now...and the pc monitors are switched off when not being used ................even for five minutes

Monitors take a lot of juice, also HDDs tend to take a fair bit.

Imagine a loft with around 30 rigs running, two are dual CPU, and you get an idea of my electirc bill

I always had monitors off anyway - so it was just the PCs

I always leave my p.c's on 24/7, but then I don't pay the electric bill

Still running 3 PCs (4 CPUs) 24/7 at home.

Question: are your's set @ 100%? have you encountered any problems; am I sitting on a time bomb? :confused:

All mine are running 100%. The dual processor system has had both cpus running 100% since I started folding 14 months ago. The others have been running for about 12 months. Same with my pcs at work.

A suggestion to anyone who is having electric bill issues.

I have sene some of the new intel stuff running and can confirm that the new core duo architectures laptop and otherwise give a hell of a lot of processing power for not a lot of electrical power.

In light of this I am sure that AMD will try and counter this so you should be looking at about 60W from a dual core CPU that is very fast as opposed to more like 120-135W today.

LCD's are so cheap these days for 17" screen and are equivalent to a 18/19" CRT. The picture quality is good and more importantly the electric consumption is much lower as is the space taken up.

Power supplies, quality makes such as tagan and others make power supplies that are much more efficient eg 80-90% conversion against about 30% conversion for a cheap supply. That means a cheap 400W supply could be using up to 3 times the electrical power to produce that 400W output compared to a quality supply.

Graphics cards, if you don't need top performance either use the onboard one if it is there otherwise go for a low to mid end card without a fan. If it can run without a fan as stock it isn't using much power.

Hard disks, you are looking at probably 15W for a 15k RPM drive at spin up and about 1W at idle. So for your typical 7200 RPM desktop drive you are looking much less than that for each drive.

Other devices, the more is onboard the less add in cards you will need so the cheaper it will be and the less electric it will consume on ancilery components and power regulation

Anyway sorry if this at all patronising, but we have just done a how to get a big system to run off a 325W PSU exercise for some custom servers I had to make up in a tiny enclosure.

Something like a new Core Duo Mac Mini uses very little power, but would make a very very good folding machine. (might not be stunning for gromacs, but the rest would be great)

All mine are running 100%. The dual processor system has had both cpus running 100% since I started folding 14 months ago. The others have been running for about 12 months. Same with my pcs at work.

Thank you!

Well I've been running 3 PC's at home 24/7. But with my move they will be going on Ebay, and will once I'm settled be replaced by a centrino duo core lappy.

There is a big difference between a server PSU that's rated at say 325W and a generic 400W PSU - I'd trust the 325W one

Totally agree with the sentiment of the post though, joking aside.

Get a proper quality PSU that is efficient, and if you're after FAH only, you could go for a laptop 4200 rpm drive, cheapest (if possible onboard) gfx, and try to avoid as many moving parts as possible.

I'd love to be able to watercool all my machines to solve the second problem of FAH with the kind of number of rigs I've got - noise caused by having to deal with heat.

I duct the hot air away from the machines into an outlet pipe on the roof during the summer, or down into the house during the winter/colder times of year.

At least that way I don't increase my gas bills I suppose

I heard of a watercooling rig in a garage that was hooked up to a load of piping under a drive to keep it snow free in canada or the US.

Good idea and you could plump it under the kitchen floor for that nice underfloor heating effect

I heard of a watercooling rig in a garage that was hooked up to a load of piping under a drive to keep it snow free in canada or the US.

That is a really neat idea, big fan of water cooling due to it being very quiet.

Use lots of dual impeller 40mm fans at the moment, but then we are building ultra reliable 1u servers where noise isn't an issue as long as you can change a failed part. The 325W PSU is only dinky 1u high, and yes i agree an generic 400W PSU will probalby cook itself well before 400W, but it is the efficiency you want. I invested in a 550W PSU just incase i ever needed that much juice. THis thing is solid as anything and quiet, so while i may have spent an extra £20 buying it i know i have saved that in electric alone with the current prices an how often that machine used to be on.

Mods, If we were to make a what to look out for if you are making a folding rig thread would somebody make it a sticky?

EDIT: started if somebody wants to do the honors please:)