4 ms·

> 350 watt psu, PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts. That's the theoretical maximum you can draw from it. Sure, SETI was probably

> 350 watt psu, PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts. That's the theoretical maximum you can draw from it. Sure, SETI was probably drawing a higher load than idle, vs off, but I highly doubt it was drawing 100%. Even more complicated is the heat. If they lived in a cool climate, at least some of the waste heat that was emitted would have been absorbed by the building, which they are (presumably) paying to heat at least a few months of the year. Edit: also if it was a public school, wouldn't they be off for about 3 months over summer ?

Alupis 11y ago
> PSU's arent light bulbs You are right. I was just going off the source I found, which accounted for some of the aspects you point out, but not all. These numbers simply provide a rough estimate, and detail how the sys admin certainly did cost the school district real (and potentially very substantial) sums of money. > Even more complicated is the heat. You make a good case for the winter months, but the opposite would hold true for the summer months when the heat becomes a real issue and additional air conditioning may be necessary, etc... > Edit: also if it was a public school, wouldn't they be off for about 3 months over summer ? Not necessarily. Usually over the summer months (for a traditional schedule school as opposed to a year-round schedule like many public schools are these days) some of the staff is typically on campus monday-friday doing various administrative tasks, workshops, prepping for the next school session, moving classroom furniture, cleaning, etc... IT staff would be included in this, and therefore we can reasonably assume the sys admin was still running his systems.
nerd_stuff 11y ago
He lived in Arizona which is hot and a school full of space-heaters (humans) will probably run AC more often than heat. What grandparent commenter showed was the school district's numbers are plausible. I doubt the district entered into a legal battle without first consulting an engineer or two about the electric costs.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  I wonder if anybody even so much as plugged a typical computer used into a Kill A Watt and compared with/without SETI running.
  - holyoly 11y ago
    I have. I tested 3 models of HP that we had on campus which are kind of aging. Here's my results in Watts: HP 6000 Pro SFF - Core2Duo E8400 @ 3GHz - 100% CPU: 70, Idle: 26, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1, HP 6200 Pro SFF - Core i5 3470 @ 3.2GHz - 100% CPU: 83, Idle: 31, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1, HP 6300 Pro SFF - Core i5 2400 @ 3.1GHz - 100% CPU: 100, Idle: 30, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1, It's been a few months now, and I can't remember what I used to max out the CPU. It wasn't SETI @ Home, but it should give you a pretty good approximation. When it was off, it had Wake on LAN enabled, so it still drew some power. But it would fluctuate between 0 and 1.
    - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
      Neat! Thanks for that. That definitely supports the estimate of cost from running SETI. You wouldn't think it'd be that much, would you?
- Natsu 11y ago
  Speaking only for myself, in Phoenix we barely ever turn on heat, even in winter, whereas the AC is currently running and will be for another month or two yet.
cbhl 11y ago
Even if the machines only drew 50% of that at load, it would still be over $3 000 000. That's a lot of money.
rconti 11y ago
It's definitely worth pointing out, but his electricity estimate is so low that the numbers effectively work out for Tier 1 in the SF bay area. I'm sure a school is not in tier 1. But maybe they get beneficial commercial/educational/government pricing, I don't know. They may be off for 3 months over the summer. Which might mean they were actually off, or it might mean that they ran 24/7 and NONE of that time was for 'educational' purposes.
CydeWeys 11y ago
> PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts. Yes, it will draw even more than 350 Watts at full load. 350 is the output power, whereas incandescent lightbulbs are measured in input power. So a 350 watt power supply, depending on efficiency of the PSU anyway, is probably using around 400-500 Watts at the wall at full load.
- vectorjohn 11y ago
  But this completely misses the point. You can put a 1000 watt PSU in a computer and it won't draw 1000 watts at full load. That's just the max the PSU can supply. SETI is mainly CPU intensive so even if they had the absolute smallest possible PSU, SETI isn't going to cause it to produce the full 350 watts. And that's a pretty awful efficiency you suggest. It may be that bad, but I'd sure hope not.
  - CydeWeys 11y ago
    SETI also runs (or did, from what I remember) a 3D screensaver. It's not doing nothing on the videocard, anyway, but I don't know how close to fully maxing out anything it gets. Talking about power load, though, I have a Kill-A-Watt pass-through power meter, and I have measured power at the wall exceeding the rated output power capacity of an 80% efficient power supply on a computer running at full load (running a graphically and computationally expensive computer game). A lot of PSUs are pretty inefficient. You can look up the stats. It wasn't until recently that you even had a lot of them earning the 80 Plus "bronze" rating, which is 80% efficiency. There's still plenty with worse efficiency than that. A decade ago, you're probably looking at 60% efficiency on average.

Alupis 11y ago

> PSU's arent light bulbs You are right. I was just going off the source I found, which accounted for some of the aspects you point out, but not all. These numbers simply provide a rough estimate, and detail how the sys admin certainly did cost the school district real (and potentially very substantial) sums of money. > Even more complicated is the heat. You make a good case for the winter months, but the opposite would hold true for the summer months when the heat becomes a real issue and additional air conditioning may be necessary, etc... > Edit: also if it was a public school, wouldn't they be off for about 3 months over summer ? Not necessarily. Usually over the summer months (for a traditional schedule school as opposed to a year-round schedule like many public schools are these days) some of the staff is typically on campus monday-friday doing various administrative tasks, workshops, prepping for the next school session, moving classroom furniture, cleaning, etc... IT staff would be included in this, and therefore we can reasonably assume the sys admin was still running his systems.

nerd_stuff 11y ago

He lived in Arizona which is hot and a school full of space-heaters (humans) will probably run AC more often than heat. What grandparent commenter showed was the school district's numbers are plausible. I doubt the district entered into a legal battle without first consulting an engineer or two about the electric costs.

ArkyBeagle 11y ago
I wonder if anybody even so much as plugged a typical computer used into a Kill A Watt and compared with/without SETI running.
- holyoly 11y ago
  I have. I tested 3 models of HP that we had on campus which are kind of aging. Here's my results in Watts: HP 6000 Pro SFF - Core2Duo E8400 @ 3GHz - 100% CPU: 70, Idle: 26, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1, HP 6200 Pro SFF - Core i5 3470 @ 3.2GHz - 100% CPU: 83, Idle: 31, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1, HP 6300 Pro SFF - Core i5 2400 @ 3.1GHz - 100% CPU: 100, Idle: 30, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1, It's been a few months now, and I can't remember what I used to max out the CPU. It wasn't SETI @ Home, but it should give you a pretty good approximation. When it was off, it had Wake on LAN enabled, so it still drew some power. But it would fluctuate between 0 and 1.
  - ArkyBeagle 11y ago
    Neat! Thanks for that. That definitely supports the estimate of cost from running SETI. You wouldn't think it'd be that much, would you?
Natsu 11y ago
Speaking only for myself, in Phoenix we barely ever turn on heat, even in winter, whereas the AC is currently running and will be for another month or two yet.

cbhl 11y ago

Even if the machines only drew 50% of that at load, it would still be over $3 000 000. That's a lot of money.

rconti 11y ago

It's definitely worth pointing out, but his electricity estimate is so low that the numbers effectively work out for Tier 1 in the SF bay area. I'm sure a school is not in tier 1. But maybe they get beneficial commercial/educational/government pricing, I don't know. They may be off for 3 months over the summer. Which might mean they were actually off, or it might mean that they ran 24/7 and NONE of that time was for 'educational' purposes.

CydeWeys 11y ago

> PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts. Yes, it will draw even more than 350 Watts at full load. 350 is the output power, whereas incandescent lightbulbs are measured in input power. So a 350 watt power supply, depending on efficiency of the PSU anyway, is probably using around 400-500 Watts at the wall at full load.

vectorjohn 11y ago
But this completely misses the point. You can put a 1000 watt PSU in a computer and it won't draw 1000 watts at full load. That's just the max the PSU can supply. SETI is mainly CPU intensive so even if they had the absolute smallest possible PSU, SETI isn't going to cause it to produce the full 350 watts. And that's a pretty awful efficiency you suggest. It may be that bad, but I'd sure hope not.
- CydeWeys 11y ago
  SETI also runs (or did, from what I remember) a 3D screensaver. It's not doing nothing on the videocard, anyway, but I don't know how close to fully maxing out anything it gets. Talking about power load, though, I have a Kill-A-Watt pass-through power meter, and I have measured power at the wall exceeding the rated output power capacity of an 80% efficient power supply on a computer running at full load (running a graphically and computationally expensive computer game). A lot of PSUs are pretty inefficient. You can look up the stats. It wasn't until recently that you even had a lot of them earning the 80 Plus "bronze" rating, which is 80% efficiency. There's still plenty with worse efficiency than that. A decade ago, you're probably looking at 60% efficiency on average.