Folding (As a central heating replacement tool)

Shiny

I usually fold a lot more in the winter months as I can use
the PC to heat my living room instead of having to use those
pesky storage heaters.

I'm thinking of improving my "central heating[folding] system" with the
addition of a PS3. I have seen a few comments in other threads that it
was a "crater" after folding for a couple of days during the foldathon....

so...

How much heat does a 24/7 Folding PS3 give off and is it worth the
electricity cost in terms of heat and PPD?

Edit:
Or am I better off upgrading the graphics card or getting a 2nd hand pc etc....

C.D.

PS3 uses about 200W while folding. Take the cost of Kw/h as €0.18 and you will be spending €0.036 to generate 200W of heat in your room per hour.

I use a PC that generates about 300W p/h of heat to "heat" my room, but it takes2-3 hours to actually heat my room up from cold. So if you are serious about it, 24/7 folding is probably what is needed. To put it in perspective, most electric heaters would be able to operate in the 1KW+ range as that is the kind of energy needed to heat a room quickly.

Essentially, steal any of Flaccus' PCs and you'll have no heating worries ever again.

C.D.

@ edit: upgrading GPU might only lead to a 100W increase in power consumption. I'd also say the purchase price of a PS3 could be prohibitive, best thing to do would be crate a spreadsheet comparing points per € (including purchase price of stuff) and points per W to help make your decision.

zodac

I dunno about the heating prospects of Folding. I'm like a foot away from my computer and PS3, and I'm still freezing every night.

I'd definitely go for a new GPU though. Especially a GTS 450 or GTX 460. Excellent GPUs for PPD/Watt.

C.D.

I should mention I've had my PC folding/gaming since 10 this morning and my room is toasty while the rest of the house is freezing! Nobody else home so the heating has been off all day.

Solitaire

I wonder how good or bad the HD6850 is at folding? The reorganised shader cores (4 medium shaders instead of 1 large + 5 small) certainly work better at games but IIRC one of the reasons for that rehash was to make them more GPGPU-happy as well...

zodac

Solitaire wrote: »

I wonder how good or bad the HD6850 is at folding? The reorganised shader cores (4 medium shaders instead of 1 large + 5 small) certainly work better at games but IIRC one of the reasons for that rehash was to make them more GPGPU-happy as well...

Don't have any numbers on that yet. I wouldn't imagine much better than 5xxx GPUs though, since the problem is with the client. Stanford's client hasn't been properly rewritten for ATi since 3 series GPUs, so they're always going to be underpowered.

The closed beta, from what I hear, is looking very promising for ATi though.

Solitaire

Ooh! Will the new client work properly with APP/OpenCL at last?

zodac

Solitaire wrote: »

Ooh! Will the new client work properly with APP/OpenCL at last?

Yup, that's what they're saying.

Daegerty

Get a bunch of disused pentium 3's and 4's from the local dump and set them all to come on a timer at 5 or 6 in the morning off night rate electricity

cheaper than the oil and gives you F@H points although these are ultimately of no value to yourself

michael2121

i fold clothes at home too haha

thats a good concept heat your house while helping humanity. would it be classed as greener energy or would it still add to the carbon footprint ?

Daegerty

michael2121 wrote: »

i fold clothes at home too haha

thats a good concept heat your house while helping humanity. would it be classed as greener energy or would it still add to the carbon footprint ?

Twould still add. but i suppose you could have a room full of old computers that switch on at 5 in the morning till the night rate electricity runs out to warm up your house for the morning

What would be even better is if you could have your computers liquid cooled (you'd need 30 or 40 of them) and pump the warm liquid through the heating coil of your immersion heater. you could make a controller that will keep letting the liquid heat up as long as any CPU stays below 60 degrees or so although the water in the tank wouldn't get quite that hot

SouperComputer

Make a farm out of OC'd D805's. If that doesnt heat the room up, nothing will. If your first and foremost goal is to fold then using the computers to heat is gonna be really inefficient when you compare watts consumed V watts of heat generated. A multi-board rack with D805's and some sort of oil storage system could be interesting though.

zodac

That, or a couple of GTX 480s. Hell, my 9800GT is at stock clocks, and that still keeps me nice and toasty.