Tips & tricks for saving power & keeping hardware healthy

[NoMoreQuarantine]

Power costs money and running hardware continuously at high temperatures and high fan speed will wear a system down. What options exist for an average folder to keep their hardware healthy and control their power bill? What tips & tricks do you use / know?

Mine:
Underclocking is the most obvious option. For AMD Zen 2 processors, they have eco mode that drops the CPU down a TDP tier. As a 3700X owner myself, a quick warning; at least for some Asus motherboards it will not play well with AMD Ryzen Master. Guides online will say to enable PBO to get it to show up in AMD Ryzen Master, do not do this. It will cancel out any power savings you would get from eco mode. Instead, enable it from the bios. If you cannot find it, you may need to update to a newer bios. It may not be controllable from Ryzen Master, but the tool should show it as active.


For GPUs, I have been experimenting with MSI Afterburner to control wattage by following this guide https://www.msi.com/blog/get-a-free-per ... oc-scanner, but instead of setting everything to full like it suggests, I reduce the power limit slider to where I want it. (extreme example in image)


Also, I don't know if this is optimal, but I like to make my fan curves circular. Originally tried to do this using trigonometry, but now I cheat and use paint

[jrweiss]

Good start.

You can significantly decrease CPU power and temp by simply turning off the Turbo boost in BIOS. A report in Maximum PC magazine found that some CPUs can use up to 4x TDP when in turbo mode.

I'm not sure your circular curve is a "good thing"... It will result in constantly changing fan speed, possibly promoting bearing wear. Do a bit of analysis to find a good constant fan speed for your normal loading, and another step or 2 for lower loads.

Also, don't run fans any less than about 30% max RPM. Most noise is in the last 10-20%, and they become very inefficient when well below their design speed. When setting fan curves, bias the speed reduction to reduce exhaust fans first, so you always maintain positive pressure. If all your intake fans are filtered, this will keep your case cleaner.

To help keep GPU exhaust away from the CPU, ensure the backplane slots on either side of the GPU are slotted, promoting hot air flow directly out the backplane - especially if the front intake fans blow directly across the GPU. If appropriate, ensure the HDDs in the front cage are positioned to impede air flow as little as possible.

[NoMoreQuarantine]

Thanks for the advice jrweiss. The idea of the circle was to make the most gradual line between two points. It actually works pretty well, but I like your idea better. I found that on average my fan ran at 44% or 1637 rpm and kept the GPU operating at an average of 55°C. I want to keep the temperature below 70°C. This is my "curve" now:

I also found the average speeds of my CPU and exhaust fans and adjusted then to fixed speeds. The CPU is stable at 60°C (CPU left, exhaust right or top/bottom if you're on mobile):

[Roadpower]

In the past I've taken to fiddling around with under the hood solutions to keep a processor from running at full tilt but after doing that enough times I decided to go with an approach that eliminates the fiddling. I got a large and very capable CPU cooler and a hybrid cooled GPU. No more fiddling around.

[pcwolf]

I run 24x7x365 and find by setting "ECO" mode in motherboard UEFI I can drop temps by 20 degrees with no discernable loss of PPD.

For NVidia GPUs, Google "nvidia-smi" and you can download the package from Developers NVidia. With this, you can set your max allowable watts and control your video card temps.

Currently my 3950X is at 45c, and RTX 2070 is 75c @ 150w limit.

[jrweiss]

My 3700X runs in the low 70s, with occasional peaks to 80C. Stock clocks, Turbo on (4.2GHz nominal while Folding), Noctua NH-D14 cooler, Folding on 12 threads. The 1050ti runs around 60C with its fan ~60%.

2x Noctua NF-S12A front fans; stock Lian-Li 120mm exhaust fan directly behind cooler.

[Paragon]

This is basically what my entire blog is about

Reduce GPU Power Limit
https://greenfoldingathome.com/2019/02/ ... wer-limit/

Use the latest graphics card architecture
https://greenfoldingathome.com/2020/05/ ... ed-review/

Use an efficient power supply:
https://greenfoldingathome.com/2019/11/ ... -is-money/

Find the efficiency sweet spot by undervolting
https://greenfoldingathome.com/2015/03/ ... undervolt/

[pcwolf]

Blog is nicely done, Paragon!

I have an RTX 2070 FE running in slot 0, it runs with a single 8 pin power cable from the PSU. I limit the power consumption with smi to 160w in order to keep the GPU temp ~75c yet still produces 1.2 million +/- PPD.

When I saw CPU Folding promises 20-50k PPD, I looked for and installed a second GPU and stopped CPU Folding at all. You are the only other Folder I have found to be using the GTX 1650. I bought and installed the identical Zotak 1650 OC because it is limited to 75w and draws power exclusively through the PCIe slot. The PSU is already putting that energy out ... what add another 6/8 pin cable?

The combination is returning a combined 2.0 million PPD. My CPU cores are running WCG/BOINC simultaneously, and Ryzen 3950X is stuck at 46c.

They would fight and CPU temps climbed ... until I discovered to steal ONE core from WCG and give it to FahCore_22. Everything settled down played nice then.

[HaloJones]

If the 2070 is doing 1.2m, and the whole thing is doing 2m, that means the 1650 is doing 800K?

[Paragon]

I love my 1650...I can drop the power on it in MSI afterburner and get the card to use about 40 watts total and still make 250K PPD. Not huge numbers in graphics card land these days, but not horrible either, and the best part is it's easy on the power bill in the summer.

[pcwolf]

HaloJones ... here are current quotes from running WUs. Varies +/- of course by Project and Percent computed

RTX 2070 Temp: 73c Fan: 54% Clock 1680 Mhz Power: 150w PPD: 1,661,407

GTX 1650 Temp: 61c Fan: 68% Clock 1875Mhz Power 65w PPD: 335,170