[Beowulf] powering up 18 motherboards

[Alpay Kasal]

Hello all. I have a question about powering on motherboards simulataneously.

 

I have 18 identical mobo's right now with identical ram, cpu, and hard disk.
I hooked one up to a kill-a-watt and found that it draws 140-150 watts when
powering on, and stays level at about 90-100 watts afterwards. The problem
is that I am setting this up at home, where I only have 10 amp circuits (and
only a couple of them can be freed up). Correct me if I am wrong here
please.

 

1 mobo = 100 watts / 115 volts = .87amps each mobo while steady on

1 mobo = 150 watts / 115 volts = 1.3amps each mobo while turning on

 

I won't include the rest of the math, but needless to say, it'd be a pain in
arse to turn on the room in piecemeal without tripping a circuit breaker. My
questions is :

 

Will a heavy duty UPS aid in getting me through powering up the room? I
don't mind splitting up the 18 machines with 6 outlet surge strips. Any
advice?

 

Thanks.

Alpay Kasal

 

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