Nearly 26,000 kWh Was Used On Linux Benchmarking In 2016

[EthraZa]

Looking forward to when you got some more kws and can run a Flux Capacitor benchmark

[nuetzel]

No, in the US at least this area in the midwest there is only ever one power provider for a given area.

Market, market, market --- you're in the US, but here in 'old' Europe (EU) you have the right to select 'your' provider even you 'only' have one provider who 'own' your local wire. => 'Market'

[nuetzel]

Not sure what the effective price per kWh is offhand since they charge sales tax on top of the cost, plus a flat "delivery fee" each month and some other charges tacked on top of just the basic kWh cost.

The 'effective price per kWh' is normally definite as bruto vs netto.
'bruto' means (e.g. here in EU) with _all_ parts of tax and other costs (net, EEG, 'Mehrwertsteuer' - 19% in most parts of EU).
'netto' means without 'Mehrwertsteuer' but _all_ other parts.

We are currently at 28,69 ct (Eurocent) - which is Huge!

By 25,943 kWh you mean mathematically 25943 kWh or 25.943 kWh (SI)?

You have to pay 7443,05 €. (+/- your 'better' contract with another provider)

Hopefully still within a few years I'll be able to invest in a solar roof to offset all of our power-hungry benchmarks.

We have a big solar installation (18,6 kp (kWh peak)) on five parts of our huge ~550 m² roof.
It produce ~13.000 kWh per year which could serve for 2,5 normal houses, here.
The invest was ~64.000 € six years, ago. --- Yes big price because of the five parts and several years of planning, bank and EEG, etc. Over 20 years of 'Förderung' (constant guaranteed price) we get some 4~6% yield.
Compare with your needs...;-)

Greetings,
Dieter

[Mark Rose]

28.69 ct makes the $0.15 I pay seem cheap.

[gutigone]

Holy crap you didn't beg for money at the end, that's a first?

Also, consider how much he's paying per month for electricity, yet he can still afford to buy multiple CPU/GPU a year. Consider that the next time he says he can't afford something hmmm? Michael earns way more than he lets on it seems.

[monkeybutt]

Wouldn't the wiring need to be replaced for 240V as well? I've never dealt with 240V work myself. Fortunately, all of the electrical is within metal conduit, but yeah for just a 1~5% increase in efficiency, not yet worth calling an electrician out (I prefer not opening up the breaker box nor experienced with 240V requirements) until I have an electrician out here for other work in the future.

Hey Michael, I've been lurking on your site for years and never felt the need to chime in until today. I think CMDRZOD's idea to swap the receptacles for 240v and swap the neutral wire in your panel is spectacular. Give that guy a cookie. Beyond just a minor efficiency increase, it will alleviate all of your breaker-tripping issues as your amps will go down by half, without needing to rip up all your drywall. You'll lose the ability to plug in 120v appliances on that circuit, however. That may be a deal breaker, depending on how liberal the electrician was when installing the wiring in your house.

Ever consider a warm water storage tank in your basement or something, and pulling thermal heat off of your processors with water blocks? I toyed around with the idea a few years ago but the amount of heat my server is puking out doesn't make it worth it. If you put the warm water tank in series and before your domestic hot water, you can pretty dramatically lower your water heating bill. That will also take the heat out of the living space, which will reduce air conditioning costs.

[ldo17]

The first is to use only 80 Plus Gold or better power supplies.

I remember a report from several years ago about how Google ran its fleet of 460,000 servers (that was the figure at the time, no doubt it’s more now). They would skimp on every part of the hardware cost, except the power supplies. Because the single biggest cost of running any large-scale compute installation is the electricity bill.

[Michael]

Ever consider a warm water storage tank in your basement or something, and pulling thermal heat off of your processors with water blocks? I toyed around with the idea a few years ago but the amount of heat my server is puking out doesn't make it worth it. If you put the warm water tank in series and before your domestic hot water, you can pretty dramatically lower your water heating bill. That will also take the heat out of the living space, which will reduce air conditioning costs.

Unfortunately rather a big upfront investment of 50+ water blocks and all the time involved in setting it up, plus the huge hassle of needing to take down the entire system and power off everything when it comes to pulling a system out of the rack for any maintenance or changing components.

[CMDRZOD]

Hey Michael, I've been lurking on your site for years and never felt the need to chime in until today. I think CMDRZOD's idea to swap the receptacles for 240v and swap the neutral wire in your panel is spectacular. Give that guy a cookie. Beyond just a minor efficiency increase, it will alleviate all of your breaker-tripping issues as your amps will go down by half, without needing to rip up all your drywall. You'll lose the ability to plug in 120v appliances on that circuit, however. That may be a deal breaker, depending on how liberal the electrician was when installing the wiring in your house.

Ever consider a warm water storage tank in your basement or something, and pulling thermal heat off of your processors with water blocks? I toyed around with the idea a few years ago but the amount of heat my server is puking out doesn't make it worth it. If you put the warm water tank in series and before your domestic hot water, you can pretty dramatically lower your water heating bill. That will also take the heat out of the living space, which will reduce air conditioning costs.

Thanks for the compliment, I'm also a long time lurker and just began posting today for this article. When I had a large amount of PC's in my home, and being an electrician, running 240v to them is the first thing I did to try to reduce power use as much as possible. As another poster said, every watt saved is less cooling and AC cost.

As far as watercooling PC's goes, I have a custom water loop with 3x GTX980Ti and 5960x processor at 4.5Ghz. I would never recommend running normal water through these copper cooling blocks. The water at minimum needs to be ran through a reverse osmosis. There's just too much particulates and sediments in tap water to ever run through a PC cooling loop.

[ldo17]

... running 240v to them is the first thing I did to try to reduce power use as much as possible.

Some of us run 240V as a matter of course.