Well, I have a suggestion. Just send me those PC for the winter.
They will keep me warm and do the crunching.

I borrowed a consumption meter from my electricity provider and made some research.

First, here's my rig:

* MSI KT4 Ultra VIA Apollo KT400 (MS-6590)
* AMD Athlon XP 2100+ Palomino 1.73 GHz
* 2 x Kingston 512MB DDR PC2700 333 MHz KVR333X64C25/512
* Club 3D Radeon 9800 PRO AGP 128MB A-I-W
* MAXTOR Diamondmax+9 80GB DMA 133 7200 rpm 8 MB
* SAMSUNG SpinPoint V10200 - SV2044D (20.4 GB) 5400 rpm
* 300W power supply Sunny Technologies CO LTD


Power consumption:

5.8W power off
5.4W Windows loaded, standby in S3 state 1)
110W Idle 2)
187W Running BOINC at 100% CPU 3)
207W Playing Civilization_4 4)


1) S3 state uses actually less power than turning the computer off, because S3 state shuts down the network card, normal power off keeps the leds blinking. I also checked the S1 state standby and that uses 77 watts! Not very efficient.

2) This is after boot up and after the CD-ROM has shut down (it uses about 4 watts when not spinning, but ready to operate), 17 processes running. Using browser and mail program doesn't change this number noticeably since CPU usage increases only about 2-4% on average.

3) AMD Athlon XP 2100+ Palomino has thermal design point of 72 watts. This measurement is an average of a period of 16 hours of crunching.

4) I maxed all the graphics options to see how much juice my box really draws. It peaked at 212 watts.


So running BOINC in the background of normal operation increases the power consumption about 75 watts per hour on my machine.
end of report...

I had one of those AMD Athlon XP 2100+ Palomino 1.73 GHz's hot and toasty much more so than the later barton cores which run even quicker

I'm waiting for the AM2 3800+ dual core to arrive on the scene, the low power one. These will run at a 35W TDP that will give even better VFM crunching.

Power consumption is now "hot" on the CPU Manufacturer's minds and the Grid will benefit with increased efficiency as we go forward

I am happy I live in a chilly climate in a more than 100 year old house, Then I can really enjoy to switch on the computer. Why spend money on becoming a climate refugee(= tourist to a more temperate part of the planet) and travel by plain to warmer parts of the globe when you can use it to buy a new computer, crunch, and enjoy every Joule its putting out in exchange for the watts. Hi there up in Tromsö, Vadsö, Luleå, Anchorage and Murmansk ain't we got it good. Verchojansk and Barrow may be somewhat much of a good thing. May be you should try to sit on your 'puters the coming winter. To re-word a great thinker, "Crunchers of the Arctic unite". And luckily - there is still need for some nice, chopped wood.
Wood chopper