Author

Topic: Do You Mine? Buy a Kill-o-Watt Meter NOW...like RIGHT NOW! (Read 4132 times)

hero member
Activity: 490
Merit: 500
Had one for ages, I dunno why people mine blind to their electricity usage, those 1000w+ PSUs ain't cheap!

6x 40-45GH Technobit Hex16B (Bitfury chips x16 @ 540/900) = 260GH for just 415W at the wall and that's with cheap-o 83% efficient PSU.
full member
Activity: 213
Merit: 100
I use kill-a-watts and other such tools at work (datacenter).  By far the best watt meter is the Belkin Conserve Insight.  Easy to find, cheap, goes to 1800w, but the killer feature is that the display part is on a cord, not at plug level like the killawatt.  So you can put it on your desk and directly monitor the results of your OC'ing, undervolting, etc.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Belkin-Conserve-Insight-Energy-Use-Monitor/15120603

I've got two of those Belkins, they are awesome.  That was how I found out that when I overclocked my Avalon it was pulling 890 watts from the wall with the stock Enermax power supply.  I upgraded to a Corsair and now with the same overclock it only draws 730 watts.
legendary
Activity: 952
Merit: 1000
I agree! Every miner should have one. I brought mine into the office to set up our test rigs. It gets to a point where it's a game, putting together rigs and undervolting to get the best GHs/W or best KHs/W.
newbie
Activity: 27
Merit: 0
I use kill-a-watts and other such tools at work (datacenter).  By far the best watt meter is the Belkin Conserve Insight.  Easy to find, cheap, goes to 1800w, but the killer feature is that the display part is on a cord, not at plug level like the killawatt.  So you can put it on your desk and directly monitor the results of your OC'ing, undervolting, etc.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Belkin-Conserve-Insight-Energy-Use-Monitor/15120603
legendary
Activity: 4116
Merit: 7849
'The right to privacy matters'
Are you overclocking your Avalon?  Then it will run around 700 watts. 


and this is the biggest reason to have k-watt meters.  you can see if it pays to oc or if it does not pay to oc. this was really true with gpu mining of BTC. I quickly learned that under clocking hd7970's saved far more watts and margin of profit was very tight when btc was 8-12 bucks a coin.

 even no I under clock when I mine my lite coins.  I also found out that antminers the u-1 usb's use almost no extra watts to jump from 1.6 gh to 2.0 gh  after the 2.0 oc you kind of need to replace the  resistors and pull more power.. but the soft ware oc from 1.6 to 2.0 a 25 percent hash rate over clock uses under 10% power jump.
full member
Activity: 213
Merit: 100
Are you overclocking your Avalon?  Then it will run around 700 watts. 
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 100
To add to that tip, get one with a backlight. The non backlight ones are a pain in the ass if you can't get a direct view.
member
Activity: 64
Merit: 10
Couldn't agree more mate, if you're into mining or just not into spending crazy money on bills then hook up a meter to make your life a hell of a lot easier. It's well worth looking into. So for once, on this forum someone is talking sense! Don't ignore them!
hero member
Activity: 1246
Merit: 501
I have one that all my mining gear is plugged in to.  I also have a whole-house power meter (connects round one of the cables beside the meter), with that I can tell at a glace what miners are working.  Usually I drop about 300W when my ASICMiner Cube freaks (which is quite often).
legendary
Activity: 1456
Merit: 1018
HoneybadgerOfMoney.com Weed4bitcoin.com
I've seen people talk about them all the time and passing and thought it would be neat to have one, let me tell you, now that I have one,  I don't understand why anyone whose doing what we're doing doesn't have one.  It's like being blind to electricity usage and now being able to really see.  I took this thing out of the package a few minutes ago and now I'm trying it on Everything!

This laptop that I type to you uses ~ 24 Watts

The three stock Bitmain Antminer S1s I have running on an enermax 1500 PSU  ~ 1100 Watts

Avalon Batch 2 with 3 modules ~ 750 Watts!!!! 

Bitfury Full kit with a 700W PSU ~460 Watts (I'm hashing around 430 GH/s with that one [bumping it up to a 1000W psu later on tonight])

Tv on with medium volume ~ 238 Watts.

Up until now I had just gone off of the Avalon Wiki Stats thinking I couldn't be drawing in more than 460-470 Watts. 
Jump to: