FX 8350 - Does underclocking the CPU mean it uses less watts?

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Headhunter123

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Dec 13, 2016
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Hi all,

I've been inactive for a long time, my apologies!

I've been mining cryptocurremcy for over 2 years now and this year I started with a GTX 1070, it's profitable. (A lil bit) At first I did not have to pay electricity bills so everythig went straight into my pocket:) But now I do have to pay, and I know that a FX-8350 CPU is a very power hungry CPU. (I thought even in Idle state.) So what I thought was if I underclock the CPU, does it actaully use less watts? (Currently underclocked to 2.0 GHZ) I hope to get an answer!

Thanks for your time!

Jordi
 
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getochkn

getochkn

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Jul 2, 2006
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Idle it runs at like 1.8 or something anyways, so if the CPU isn't busy than undrrclocking isn't going to effect the power usage as it would be staying at 1.9 anyways. Any small usage though that is CPU drive can force it to spike up for a few seconds, but I don't think the power going from 1?8 to 4ghz for 2 seconds to load a webpage is going to have an impact
 
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Headhunter123

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Dec 13, 2016
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Sorry if this sounds stupid, but ehh... Any idea what it usses for watts in Idle?
 
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TMTOWTSAC

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You're suggesting he upgrade to Ryzen in his mining rig in order to save money in the long run? Only if the "long run" in this instance is about 30 years of operation before ROI. Using 20 watts less per hour 24/7 would save $17-18 per year.
 
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Headhunter123

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Dec 13, 2016
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Well look, as I said I'm not using the CPU for mining cause it's worthless.... But since FX processors are not very watt friendly from what I read. So what I'm trying to do is basically make the CPU do almost nothing in order to save power:)

Just to put it in perspective.. The power costs here in Holland are very high 0.23 per killowatt an hour if I'm saying that correctly. I went to the Nicehash calculator and saw that the electricity cost for 162 watts would be 326 euro's a year.(set the power limit of my GTX 1070 to 71% and with a cmd command it reports about 91.7/92 watts. Combine that with the 72 watts Idle as suggested by the website dudeman509 gave me and you get about 164 watts.

In total I earn (893.24 EUR) - (326.32 EUR) for electricity would leave (+566.92 EUR)

Now my thought where if I underclock and undervolt the CPU would that decrease the watts maybe to about 140-120? Tommorow I recieve my orderd watt meter so then I'll know for sure.

What do you guys think? Is that a good calculation/investment? And what about the watts of the CPU, is the target I'm looking for possible? (Currently undervolted my CPU already and set the max to 2.0 GHZ instead of the previous overclock to 4.3. The baseclock is 3.5 GHZ.)

Here's an image of the calculation:

https://postimg.org/image/rl5gkx09f/

UPDATE: made a mistake with the calculator I entered 162 instead of 164, apologies!

Thanks for the help guys!
 
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Headhunter123

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Dec 13, 2016
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Hi Here I am again! I bought a watt meter and currently testing with various settings. Currently my pc uses about 244-255 watts. Although I bellive that that's everything inside the pc right? (HDD, GPU, CPU, Mobo?) Still I would make about 46 euro's a month minus electricity leaves 23 euro's a month. so 276 a year.
So uh... Not exacrly much but anuthing is better then nothing I guess... Any thoughts guys? Thanks for the help so far:)

Here's a pic of the earnings page:

https://postimg.org/image/io1tveqwv/
 
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TMTOWTSAC

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If I'm doing the math right:

250 watts (rates in Holland) X 24 (hours a day) = 6000 Wh (6 kWh) / day

6kWh X .23 EUR = 1.38 EUR / day cost

1.38 EUR X 30 = 41.4 EUR / month cost

46 EUR (monthly hashing) - 41.4 EUR (monthly electric cost) = 4.6 EUR profit / month.

4.6 EUR (monthly profit) X 12 (months in year) = 55.2
 
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Headhunter123

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Dec 13, 2016
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Thanks man! Here's the wierd thing though that I can't figure out....
I went to this dutch website witch calculates the cost of electrcity I took the avarage of 200 watts since it spikes between 200 and 250. (Most of the time around 220 watts.) Here's a picture of the site:

https://postimg.org/image/te2ochr65/

If we then take a look at the nicehash calculator, (so that's not the previous page this is what I get)

https://postimg.org/image/3mu48npbf/

That's wierd right?Any ideas?

Anyway if 55.2 is correct, I might just stop cause for 55.2 euro's it's not worth it...
 
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Headhunter123

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Dec 13, 2016
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Hi everyone! Kind of had a little breakthrough!:) Noticed that the powersaving settings in my bios where off (Gigabyte 990x Gamiing) Put everything on accept CPU core boost. And undervolted the CPU a little 0.025- 0.075 V. After that booted into W7 (Lite version though). Used MSI Afterbuner to overclock the GPU a bit. If you really want to know, it's 28.9/29.5 MH/S of Daggerhashimoto instead of 25 MHS.(That is with the power limit set to 62-64 instead of 100.

All this results in 175-77 watts instead of 225-260 watts.

The intresting part is, that if I run the GTX 1070 at stock, the total watts usage is about 200 watts with about 24 MHS.

So uh... I guess I save about 20 to 30 euro's not much, but imn terms of watts it's a pretty cool achievement:)

So if you have the same or identical setup, I'd say give it a shot!

(Note though that I use a lite version of windows 7 and nothing else besides mining software, just so you all know!)

Windows 10 is a lot wors, it won't allow a very good overclock for me, and the total watt consumption is 188-190 watts.

(Lastly, don't mine straight BTC, mine altcoins, with the use of Nicehash for example.

If anyone has any more tips & tricks feel free to reply!

Have a great day all!
 
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