How much power do we use???

dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
edited October 2004 in Hardware
Got an electrician coming next tuesday to run seperate power from our meterbox to the games room where our folding farm is located.

He reckons 2 power points dedicated to our farm will be more than sufficient to run the 12 computers. I'm not counting the 2 notebooks as they will be powered from another point.

We have an APC 350 UPS and also now have 2 x 1200va PowerShield Defender UPS's.

APC: http://www.apcc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BK350EI

PowerShield: http://www.pps.net.au/products/ups.htm

What we are trying to work out is, how much power does the average computer use (folding). The only place i have found through Google that gave me some idea was here.

http://www.jscustompcs.com/power_supply/

We have H/Duty power boards which could take 6 computers each.
The plan is to plug one 1200va UPS into the direct feed sockets each and run the power boards from them. Then run as many computers as is viable from the boards.

This will take the strain from the rest of the wiring in the house, so the 2 screens and a small variety of powered USB hubs, etc would run off the 350 UPS.

Unfortunately we have been suffering from power tripping out with the farm, so by utilising the UPS's, with the additional rewiring we should be able to fold problem free (power wise).

If anyone has any info or idea of power usage, please let us know. If not, i will still go ahead with the plan outlined above.

Thanks

Jon

Comments

  • scottscott Medina, Ohio Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Lots and lots from the sound of it.

    Hi Jon and Sally :)

    First let me say I am no electrical engineer or even close. But Watts/ voltage=amps. So lets say in a worst case sceneio all your machines rebooted at the same time and all have 450 watt PSU and they are all loaded up with fans and lights. In theroy 450 divided by 110 ( here in the states )= 4.0 amps X 12 machines = 48 amps . wow!

    Now the chances of that happening are slim and the chances that your machines would actually draw all 450 watts are slim , But I would bet they could take 20 on a farm wide reboot.


    Time to take some stock options in the local electric company.



    Scott
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited October 2004
    Hi Scott. Here in OZ, we have 230-240V power. By your calc, does that mean the outcome is halved???

    IF that is the case and the total is more like 24 amps, the 2 large UPS's and the little one should be able to handle it.

    Only 2 computers have after market lighting. Sally's (ofcourse) and the desktop i play around with, though mine has them switched off.

    Sally has the one that would use most power. 5 x 80mm papst fans, 4 x H/D's, 4 x 512 DDR500 ram, 2 lights, 1 x Gigabyte 2004 GT, 1 x double layer dvd burner, 1 x Aerogate II and a fan in the PCI slot. A soundblaster card, quality graphics card with fan, TV card and possibly more. ;) If it was a car, it would have been used in "The Fast & the Furious", lol. ;D

    Sally has a Thermaltake V1000A case and the rest (eleven) are identical Antec Super LAnboys with 2 x 120mm fans. Most of these have Aerocool HT-101's or the Gigabyte 2004 GT's and no real extra's as they are strictly for folding.

    Based on the above info, we should be OK to go ahead as planned.

    Thanks for your input. Further replies will be kept shorter as these posts should give sufficient info. :)

    Jon
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    If those APC UPS have the USB or serial interface, then the APC PowerChute software will be able to tell you how much power you're drawing from that UPS. Based on that, you can figure out the actual power consumption of all your hardware and plan accordingly.

    EDIT:// I attached what the power consumption for my dorm setup is. This is what the power consumption for a dual Opteron 248 system w/ a 21" monitor and a 1.3GHz Celeron router/server looks like. I'm using an APC BackUPS XS1500.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • GnomeWizarddGnomeWizardd Member 4 Life Akron, PA Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    d00d where did u get that proggy? I wanna see how much stress i am putting on my apc
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    GnomeWizardd wrote:
    d00d where did u get that proggy? I wanna see how much stress i am putting on my apc

    The original came on a CD with my UPS, but you can get it off the APC website for free provided you registered your product.

    If that's a problem, PM me ;)

    -drasnor :fold:
  • mmonninmmonnin Centreville, VA
    edited October 2004
    Not all of them have it. My 725VA model doesnt have that. At least the wattage part of it.
  • MediaManMediaMan Powered by loose parts.
    edited October 2004
    DragonV8?

    This should answer your questions but in short...160-200 watts.

    Electricity isn't the easiest thing to explain in English...or Chinese...or Swedish.

    It is easier to explain mathematically.

    If we know that Amps x Volts = watts then if we know that the PSU is drawing 200 watts on a 120 Volt circuit then

    Amps = Volts/watts or Amps = 120/200 = 0.6

    So it's an average of 0.6 AMPS that the PC uses. House circuits are 15-20 AMPS

    Another way of looking at it is you know amps (15) and you know volts (120) so A x V = W or 15 x 120 = 1800 Watts. You also never max a circuit for AMPS. 20% less is safe.

    So you figure if you've got 1800 watts. Safe rule is that about 1500 is available to you. Now a 450 watt PSU won't draw 450 Watts...much less. Let's say that it's as high as 250 so if nothing else is using that leg (circuit) then 1500/250 = 6 PCs.

    Watch out for startup too. That'll spike so don't put them all on one switch and kick them all on at once else...poof...power breaker will trip.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited October 2004
    Um, is power in from line to boards actually DC??? If not, you get to figure out what the value in AC is, that is needed to produce as much DC as the computer needs. I pull about 300 Watts of AC out of the wall here per 3 GHz box.... Not including AC costs of power load needed to keep room cool.... Or the draw of the laser printer, scanner, ink jet printer, router, cable modem, a tib for the KVM, etc.
  • dragonV8dragonV8 not here much New
    edited October 2004
    Just taking a small break from rearranging all the wiring to the new feed straight from the meterbox.

    The electrician fed the new wiring from the box to 2 double wall sockets. The aircon, incidentals like modem, usb hub, wireless access point, printers, scanners etc, all feed off the normal house wiring (seperate circuit again). We have also had a power surge protection fitted today and it already had an earth leakage protection fitted some time ago.

    Since we now have more computers than the last time we posted some pics, we needed to do the above job. 12 computers in all, 6 per 1.2 va UPS. Sounds pretty close to your calc's mediaman, thanks for that. The reason for the 2x UPS's is to have sufficient time to shut the puters down the correct way should we have a total power outage in our area. I still have a 350 va UPS to use should i need to change things.

    Thanks for the replies guys......much appreciated.

    Now, before i get into too much strife with the Handbrake, best i get back to the job at hand. Sofar we only have 5 running out of 12. Did crank the 2 notebooks up pretty well straight away as that was the easy part. Still 7 desktops to sort with more KVM switch boxes.......................when does it ever end, hehehe. :rolleyes:
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