GPU Crunching - What setup works 'best', what does it cost, what comparison metric is best to use?

It is just unhinging purchase cost from a particular assumption of replacement lifetime. There is, to my mind, a direct analogy here to unhinging power consumption from the assumed local price of incremental power. Posting the two primary pieces makes it one step simpler for people to apply their own preferred assumptions for these two things (power price and replacement lifetime).

As to the choice of presenting it, vs. the inverse, they contain exactly the same information, so it is just a question of which people find instinctively more comfortable.

Lastly, as you probably noticed, this machine had two dissimilar GPUs, so I had a try at extending your format for that case.

While my specific case will be uncommon, there will be other people with hosts with two GPUs where one of the GPUs is an Intel one onboard the CPU chip. This may even get common in the future as more user hosts have modern Intel chips, and, perhaps, eventually the Intel drivers and the Einstein code make better music together than currently.

@AgentB

First and foremost, thanks for posting. This exercise needs to extend beyond a private conversation between just a few of us to be more useful to the hoped-for audience.

Still, I'll pose some questions and make some comments.

1. Why do you distrust the 430W system power consumption? What sort of measuring method does it come from, and why would you trust readings reported by the power supply more?

2. If you don't mind my asking, where do you live, with power prices much lower than US$0.25/kWHr, but component prices far above NewEgg prices? I understand that could describe many places--just curious of your case?

Comments:

The reason to use NewEgg prices is not to figure out what you personally paid, but rather to provide a level platform for comparison to help guide other users in selection choices. It really does not help them to know what you really paid, or reused.

The purpose in pricing a standard subset of total parts is again to help other users make comparisons. Adding in other components hurts the comparison purpose.

The lifetime question, for which I suggested 3 years but accepted Gary's 4 years is not meant to be a prediction of failure time, but an average practical replacement interval. Looking back in time, equipment much older than that is difficult to justify running as a system for the pure problem of the cost of power. Even with free purchase cost, a donated 6 year old system at this point would not compete with a retail priced new purchase of an efficient system. People who don't pay for their power and don't want to consider the consequences of consuming it may well have a different opinion.

Thanks for looking over the numbers

I just lack a little confidence of the accuracy, and it is this number which is the VIP one.

First problem is the actual meter readings, from an older SilverCrest meter - for example it would show 93, 98, 102, 94, 103, 89 which i have to take a guess at 97. I don´t understand why it fluctuates and the 430 is a guess at a average or the maximum. Seeing the PSU info might make it clearer/give confidence, and get it logged into a table. There is a discussion on a later Silvercrest model manual i found, about the power factor ¨cos phi¨(?) which is 0.85 displayed on the meter, where they say 1.0 is ideal and less causes the readings to be unstable. The total function might be better, to get a value i would need to run for quite a few hours as the total is in KWhr. This means it stays stable for that time, and this meter has a habit of needing resetting every now and then.

Second my rule of thumb says the card should use 450 itself at peak and the CPU + mobo + PSU must be at least 150, so say for 80% of that say theoretical 600W gets to 480W.

Thirdly - it´s gives a lot of heat and i´m comparing it to known radiator!

UK, sorry i should have mentioned or put it in my profile. There is quite a variety of tariff options with choice of supplier (reseller) and plans. To my surprise this morning, I received next years prices, and yes they went up! I may have to shop around for a new supplier or sell the 7990.

It´s worth looking here for a rough table on world electricity prices from 1 to 50c / KWHr seems the typical range!

Understood and wholeheartedly agree, if you are comparing component prices a standard point of reference is needed, and i certainly didn´t want to suggest others do so, but just wanted to highlight the typical variability in costs (in both directions and in both categories) with a real life example outside of the standard assumptions.

I thought that might help, see the variability in prices. I am sure others further afield will see different prices.

I can adjust the list to remove what non-standard components, and redo the numbers if that helps, i just listed what i needed to set it up and run a real example.

This is an interesting question and i misunderstood the term, the practical lifetime, as it will differ from place to place i guess. I guess you mean economically viable? If power costs are high and new, efficient equipment cheap, it will be shorter. If the reverse, then lifetimes will be longer.