It depends. Your LEDs should be about 15” from the top of your plant(s). If your distance is correct, it could be that it’s getting too much light...
If it’s in your budget, buy one of these for your lights plug: https://www.amazon.com/Poniie-PN1500-Electricity-Electrical-Consumption/dp/B07VPTN8FZ/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=wattage+meter&qid=1620099441&sprefix=watta&sr=8-3
This measures the true wattage pull your lights are drawing from the wall. Different size tents have optimal wattage levels. I grow in a 4x4, and the ideal true wattage in there is 630w. I have 4 different COB LED panels and i run two at full blast (bloom and grow) and two with just grow switches on, which nets me a total 640w pull, which is pretty close.
The switches (bloom v grow) will not affect whether or not it’s actually flowering. That’s what the light cycle is gonna do. Or if it’s auto, it’ll auto.
Agree with the Kill-A-Watt or similar meter. I have this one. There will be a difference due to inefficiency of the PSU. A 650watt PSU with a 90% efficiency would draw ~722watts from the wall at 650W output. Less efficient PSU will draw more from the wall.
Use something like this at the outlet to figure out how much voltage you are actually pulling with everything on
It will fluctuate depending on what you're doing
I’m not mining, gonna use the 3080Ti for games and VR headset, etc., and the 1080Ti is just for additional displays.
I just bought this to see how much I'm currently pulling. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VPTN8FZ?psc=1&smid=A1QEY5X97UY4VH&ref_=chk_typ_imgToDp
If you search kill-a-watt on DuckDuckGo you’ll find a whole bunch of different types and price ranges
Depends on the dimmer. You can find cheap wattage testers online for about $25-$30.
Good for estimating power costs for your devices and testing actual power draw vs claims. I have some cheapo blurple lights I use for clones, but they claim 25 actual watts and are actually 8W. You can also get a lux tester for testing your luminosity from your light too. A lot of folks dial back the light during veg and early flower, and then crank it on the last 3/4 - 2/3 of flower to save power and reduce stretch.
I'm in US, but here are the ones i have.
I would search for a electricity usage monitor.
Poniie PN1500 Portable Micro Electricity Usage Monitor Electrical Power Consumption Watt Meter Voltage Amp Tester (110V, 1500W)) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VPTN8FZ/ref=cm_sw_r_u_apa_fabc_SE6FKZDVTT3XF00MEE59?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Not sure how much power the light diffusers and sound mixer are drawing, but everything else seems pretty mild. You’ll probably be fine.
If you wanted to be absolutely sure, you can purchase a meter that will tell you how much power you’re drawing (probably can get one on Amazon).
There are energy meters to know exactly how much tank consumes.
Even with AC in the fish room (major expense), bull goes up only 35-40% for my area.
Why would you continue to buy more lights without knowing what they are actually drawing for power? I have two COB LED lights from Amazon in my 4x4 that are advertised as 1500W, but draw 300W each, and they are plenty for my 4x4 tent. People here are going to tell you you need to do a lot of things different and a fair amount of those people are doing nothing more than parroting what they see other people suggest here. Don't waste your money by taking advice from these people and, instead, just take it into consideration and research it. You can get a watt meter, like THIS, for cheap on Amazon. Then, just plug your lights into it and it will tell you how much they draw.
Lights and hand held gadgets don't consume much electricity. You will find that large appliances are the culprits: fridges and dryers are the worst.
Get yourself an Electricity Usage Monitor to test each appliance - they don't cost that much. The monitor sits between the wall outlet and the appliance's plug. Leave it for a few days with each appliance to get a better read/idea.
Worst case scenario, get a outlet meter for the ACs
You need something like this:
So what you'll need to consider once you get to where you are is how much power you're pulling from the wall. The "hard" way to do this is to figure out how many watts each card is pulling, add whatever power the rest of the hardware is requiring (usually not that high, since CPU usage is generally pretty small in a mining operation unless you're using the CPU to mine (and if you are, stop doing that... CPU mining is grossly inefficient and generally a losing proposition)), factor that as a percentage of demand from the power supply, account for efficiency loss, and you'll come up with roughly how many amps you are pulling out of the wall.
The "easy" way is to pick up a Wattmeter and plug your rig into that and read directly how many amps you are pulling.
Consider the following: A standard household 110V circuit is rated at 20A. One might think that it's okay therefore to pull 20A out of a wall socket, but that might not necessarily be true. The idea of a 20A limit is that a: that load would be distributed across multiple points on the circuit and b: you're not pulling a continuous 20A. In a mining rig, you'd be violating both of those assumptions, so use caution and monitor closely once you get beyond say 10A. I have melted wall plugs pulling less than 20A. (a rough calculation of a 1000W power supply at full duty at 90% efficiency is 9.25A). The next thing to consider is how old your wiring is. If your house is older, your wiring might not be up to the most current code.
So, what can you do if you want to get more serious with your mining than you are now? I would suggest your first step is to think about how much you want to scale up your operation. My suggestion is to daisy chain no more than 3 GPUs to a PSUs. There are controller boards that will slave the PSUs together so one button controls all the PSUs, so running more than one from a logistical standpoint isn't a big issue. Anyway, once you have an idea how big you're looking to go, get in touch with a certified electrician and discuss with him what you're looking to do. An electrician is not cheap, but burning your house down isn't either. If you're looking to scale up, consider having him run a dedicated 240V circuit for your operation. A 240V circuit will pull less amperage through the wall than will a 120V circuit, and is much better suited to higher amperage operations with constant draw, which is why your electric dryer and air conditioning unit are on such lines.
The other thing to keep an eye on is your 12V power feeds to your cards and risers. At full duty, your cards are going to be pulling a lot of energy through those wires, especially the 3060. Try to avoid "splitting" power connectors on the 12V rail to accommodate the number of plugs you'll need, or you might find those yellow wires getting very, very hot. Inspect your rig at least daily and pay particular attention to those lines and connectors for signs of discoloration and/or deforming/melting plugs. If you see the yellow starting to brown, you're pulling too much through those wires.
Good luck, and have fun with this! It's a great learning experience, and you can make some cash on the side! Win/win!
Gamers nexus measures with a current clamp over the 12v CPU power cable on the motherboard.
I don't know how accurate this method is. I also don't know how accurate software power measurements are either.
https://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/3577-cpu-test-methodology-unveil-for-2020-compile-gaming-more
See near the bottom before the conclusion for their CPU testing methods.
What I use to monitor overall power use just a simple wall plug power meter. Like this one from amazon. Link to power meter from amazon.
That link seems to be a bit broken, at least for me. Fixed one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07VPTN8FZ/
This is the usage monitor if anyone reads this and is curious:
This can continuously monitor and total kwh. For only $20 it's not worth doing the math.
Something simple like this or something more elaborate? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07VPTN8FZ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_K6AEVY3DTH5R9WR3C3DQ
It will vary depending on the temperature settings. If you want to know specifics for a particular print, use something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Poniie-PN1500-Electricity-Electrical-Consumption/dp/B07VPTN8FZ/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=killawatt&qid=1617801432&sr=8-9
The one I have I bought more than 10 years ago, but it’s similar to this:
You can get one these to find out: https://www.amazon.com/Poniie-PN1500-Electricity-Electrical-Consumption/dp/B07VPTN8FZ/
yeah, that sucks.
Unfortunately I'm not sure if under volting your video card is going to make any meaningful difference in your systems overall power draw requirements.
You would have to get some sort of tool to give you actual power draw information based on different system configurations. And I'm not sure how reliable your results would be from any software based tools.
Something like one of these devices should provide you a realtime answer.
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