Saving energy while mining with a regular PC
Whether you are mining Gridcoin, ZCash, Monero or any other altcoin using a regular PC, mining can be costly and using vast amounts of electricity.
There are multiple guides on how to conserve system power, for example by undervolting system components or upgrading the power-supply to be more efficient. All these activities can indeed save you substantial amount of energy but there is another area which is often overlooked because the savings are considered to be very small.
Based on my personal experience and information collected across the internet, I have created an overview relating to hardware connected to your computer that is not in use while mining.
Most of it is common sense and can be implemented with little or no technical expertise. Furthermore it doesn’t require any investments either which is a nice bonus on top.
I have broken down the overview in 2 types of devices:
- External: Peripheral that is connected to a computer via a USB port or other connector. Obviously, they are very easy to connect and disconnect.
- Internal: Hardware that is fixed in the computer and connected via a cables to the motherboard. To disconnect them you need to first power-down your system, opening it up, disconnect both the data cable and power cable and closing the system again. This of course takes a bit more effort.
In the table below you will find the devices, their power consumption and saving you can achieve annually by disconnecting them. To put these savings in perspective, I have also included a column how long you could leave your computer running for “free” after disconnecting the devices for a year. This is based on an average computer consuming 250W per hour, knowing that a laptop will use less while a GPU rig will use much more.
What I found interesting is that even the smallest things, like disconnecting a keyboard, could save me 2.2kW annually (or €0.60 in electricity cost were I live).
I hope you will find the overview below beneficial and can implement some of the suggestions.
Thanks for reading and follow me for more BOINC & Gridcoin related articles.
Can you explain how you acquired the data? Did you use a device data-sheet or measure it yourself?
I took the device data-sheet on the web and checked per device a number products/brands. There are some variations in consumption per product which is why I have taken a rounded average.
That is not good. In datasheets they either state numbers too high, for reserve, or too low, to look better. Also current usage depends on load.
I understand what you mean but I took a few brands/products so it is already averaged (some will be higher and some will be lower).
The key message of this article is to think about devices that are not in use but still consume power so every saving, even the small ones are helpful. :)
Interesting data!
Keep on BOINCing!
Good article, of course the most efficient is if you are actually using the machine, and the mining is using the balance of resources not used by that activity.
I run my Gridcoin at 100% on CPU always and BOINC takes care of prioritisation. With Gaming it depends on the specific title, but I have been playing Sid Meiers Civilization Beyond Earth the last few days and I didnt need to suspend my GPU.
That is some great information to read. A lot of people have personal PC's and do not have the money or the know how to set up a mining rig. Having the ability to run boinc on a personal computer is the only choice.
The US where the electricity costs are high. The constant use can ad up fast. But any reduction in power consumption is a big help. Hopefully this will attract more people to the Gridcoin projects and help Science to solve numerous complex questions.
Saving energy is nice, but in case if you want to go the other way...
https://steemit.com/gridcoin/@vortac/gridcoin-gpu-mining-8-to-the-edge-and-beyond
Fully agree and I could have added your link to support this I guess. Anyway now you did at least... :-)
Your point is very valid though. A saving of only 4 watts can add up to 35 kilowatt-hours over a year. Had to calculate it myself, it seemed way too high (35 kWh for 4 watts, no way...) but it's 100% correct.
img credz: pixabay.com
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