If you think you know what you electric bill will be this month, think twice. Mine was almost double what it was last year for the month of June. This is a serious consideration for anyone who is dontating more than 4 or so hours a day to Rosetta, or any BOINC program. My bill was a shocker, wait till you see yours.

---

It really depends on where you live.

Here in the TVA area we just got a 4.5% cut from TVA and local bills sould come down a little.

If you've been going 100+ F, then you have my sympathies. the cooling costs are probably what's eating your back pocket.

Our average bills have been running in the $200 range (more for larger homes) and we're ready for a break ourselves.

My machine's been going 24/7 and it's been pulling about what 2 100W bulbs pull. Plus the heat generated hasn't been what I would expect.

Just crunch what you can. I'm sure Dr. Baker doesn't want you to get soaked either.

Iced Tea Anyone?

---

I am in Anderson, South Carolina, USA. I had only one computer (270 watts) running last year at this time, and now there are four consuming about 800 watts total as measured with a Kill-a-Watt meter. The four computers used ~ 595.2 KWH in 31 days.

From Duke Power online services,

Electricity Usage..This Month..Last Year
Total KWH...........1,677......1,239
Days...................31.........31
AVG KWH per Day........54.........40
AVG Cost per Day....$3.17......$2.24

The bill was $106.40 with a Load Control Credit of -8.00 for a total of $96.40.

595.2 divided by 1677 times $96.40 means the four computers cost me about $34/month or $1.10/day.

The computer that I ran last year consumes 270 watts (60 less idling) or .3375 of the power used by computers. The new computers used $22.67 of the $34 total for computer use. My power bill would have been $96.40 - $22.67 = $73.70 without the addional computers. I used 41.28 KWH per day (adjusted for new computers) compared to 40 KWH per day last year. I was lucky last month. I'm afraid August will cost more because it is just getting warmed up around here.

$34 isn't much for a month's entertainment. All together now: "I spend more than that on _______________."

---

.. on a personalized tropical bouquet. :)

---

I'll make you feel a little better.
I'm in New Hampshire where the elec cost is 14.15 cents per KWH.Fourth highest in the nation.
My elec bill is running close to $325.00 a month running 4 machines 24/7 on Rosetta. The 4 machines have a 600 watt(tripple 300 watt server PSU),550 watt,480 watt and a dual 350 watt PSU's in them.
I have a teammate in Las Vegas that runs 8 machines and just got a $450.00 elec bill.
I see elec costs as the major hurdle to DC projects.
The new systems coming out with lower power usage cpus will be a help.
I know my dual xeon 3600's are rated at 110 watts each and the new conroe(core duo's) are rated at 65 watts.
There's a board out by supermicro that uses 2 sossaman(yonahs in xeon flavor) that is 31 watts each for the cpu's that I'm looking at as an alternative.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/XeonLV/E7520/X6DLP-EG2.cfm
That board runs app $279.00 and the 2ghz cpu's for it run app $450.00 each.
Either that or a single conroe 6600 in a good gaming board may be the best bang for the buck in terms of performance vs elec usage.
Try and stay cool, it was 98F here today.
Movieman

---

It's bad enough having to Pay for the Electricity but what I'm so Freaking Tired of is seeing that BOINC Can't Connect to the Internet & Would I like to try again.

There isn't a day that goes by that I don't see that Error on half my PC's, and the PC's are just sitting there doing nothing & eating up Electricity when there's WU's on the PC's but BOINC would like to know If I would like to Reconnect before it will Process them.

So I have to Shut down BOINC & Restart it again before it will Reconnect & any Projects I'm running that don't have Checkpoints the WU's start back at 0 Time again. So on top of just sitting Idle waiting for me to make a Decision the WU's are lost to, or at least have to be restarted ... It's enough to have me thinking of just chucking it all and saying the hell with it, it's not worth it anymore ... 0_o

Oh poor people: Try living abd crunching in Puerto Rico when after you get hit by the measured electricity cost you get hit by a 175% to 200% fuel surcharge. So your $60.00 measured electric bill becomes an $180.91 electric bill in the blink of an eye.

...Tired of is seeing that BOINC Can't Connect to the Internet & Would I like to try again.

Poorboy You've hidden your computers... I used to see this a lot, but with current BOINC version, seems to have resolved the problem. What version of BOINC are you running?

edit:
Just noticed this post

Please have anybody who is experiencing a BOINC Manager
connection failure to update to 5.4.11 as soon as possible.

---

Add this signature to your EMail:
Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/

I Upgraded all my PC's to v5.4.9 a few Days ago & that seemed to take care of the problem for a few days. This morning I Upgraded just 1 PC to v5.4.11 and went out in the yard for a few hours & when I came back in the Error was on that PC again.

But that may have had something to do with Zone Alarm wanting the OK for the new Version Connection. I okayed it & will have to wait & see if it gets it again.

Hey Poorboy, what is being disconnected from what? If the manager is being disconnected from boinc.exe (the daemon), it shouldn't cause any loss of work. It would just stop you from being able to see what's happening. If boinc.exe is blocked by ZA, then the work should not be lost either, but rather just sit there until it can get onto the net. I guess I need more clarification. what exactly is the error message you're seeing?

How's Michigan? Warm enough? I see a storm headed in your direction tomorrow.

tony

As far as I can remember the Message is BOINC Can't Connect to the Internet & Would I like to try again with a Yes No Option to click on.I've checked the Process Manager when I've seen that BOINC Can't Connect Message & nothings running. The Process Manager shows the CPU @ 99% Idle, with no WU's showing in the Process Manager either.

The only way I've been able to get WU's started again is to Exit BOINC & Re-start it again.

We had a good storm yesterday, even with Power Backups attached half my PC's kicked out because the Power was kicking on & off so much. I lost over 250 hours of ongoing WU's from the Rectilinear Project because they have no Checkpoints yet & the WU's reset back to 0 start time again. I've suspended any new work from there until they do get Checkpoints & Aborted the re-set WU's rather than go thru the same thng again when the next storm hits ...

Best as memory recalls, that message came into existence with 4.46 and I haven't seen it since the release of Major V5. So, I'm guessing you were using 4.46, 4.47, 4.48, 4.49, 4.50, 4.51, 4.70, 4.72 or some third party variant of those. If I remember right, click yes or no really made no difference whatsoever, LOL. I just don't remember losing work when that occured. Anyway, as you know boincmgr.exe communicates with Boinc.exe in a TCP loopback. With Versions higher than 5.3.31 it uses ports 31416, earlier than 5.3.31 used Port 1043 to listen on. They (boinc.exe and Boincmgr.exe) communicate with eachother via a loopback on the TCP stack (this is why firewalls are involved, even though this comm never leaves the puter, unless controlled remotely). Below is a pic of my cmd.exe when I typed "netstat -ao" and opened my taskmanager, with PID column shown. NOTE: this is what it should look like when connected as "localhost" not as it would remotely controlled.



notice how boinc.exe is "listening" on port 31416 (pid 3864). It is also communicating with Boincmgr.exe (pid 3368) on port 4603 in a loop back (see 31416 to 4603 and 4603 to 31416 is "established"? I've never used "remote control" so don't have an example of that, but if you compare one that's having troubles with a known good sample,you might figure out what's going on.

I've typed so much I'm getting confused.

don't know if this was helpful

tony

Additionally, Jord has been commisioned to try and find problems between ZA and boinc. He has this thread going on the Boinc message boards, he may have more info.

Jords ZA thread

I've been running BOINC 24/7 the past month for the first time...considering its the middle of summer and a slight rate increase, the bill was still a shocker...$259!

And I think my AC just broke...:O

---

Human Stupidity Is Infinite...

I've typed so much I'm getting confused.

don't know if this was helpful

tony

Tony, I was using v5.2.15 for a long time, but like I said I finally Upgraded to v5.4.9 a few days ago & noticed I wasn't getting the Can't Connect Message or Error. What caused the Message on the PC that I Upgraded to v5.4.11 yesterday I don't know other than it may have been the first time it tried to connect.

But at least with the v5.4.9 I didn't lose any work, I checked the Process Manager & the Wu's were still running so I just clicked the Message off & went from there.

So anyway I Upgraded the rest of my PC's to v5.4.11 this morning so they would all be running the same Version of BOINC, so far I haven't had any problems with it but will have to give it some time to see how it goes ...

So anyway I Upgraded the rest of my PC's to v5.4.11 this morning so they would all be running the same Version of BOINC, so far I haven't had any problems with it but will have to give it some time to see how it goes ...

good news, I guess, except all the work updating. LOL Remember 5.4.11 just came out yesterday. Unless it was tested under another name, I know it wasn't released to the alpha group as we're testing 5.5.10 at present. I.E it looks like 5.4.11 will be the only version of boinc I haven't run. Oh, and from the quantity of bugs being found, I wouldn't recommend anyone try 5.5.10.

tony

If you go to most of the Projects BOINC v5.4.11 is the Version they give you to download, so I'm taking that as they mean that Version to be the Recommended Version ... ???

And yes it is quite a hassle Updating all the PC's, thats why I stayed with v5.2.15 so long, but at least now I'm caught up to the latest Version ... Until tomorrow when they come out with a newer one haha ... 0_o