[Beowulf] power usage, Intel 5160 vs. AMD 2216

[Alan Louis Scheinine]

> Vendor A estimates that at peak load a compute node with two AMD 2216s,
> 4 GB of 667 DDR2 RAM, a hard drive, and an IB board will draw 265 watts.
> Vendor B estimates that such a node will draw 450 watts.
> 
> Vendor B also estimates that a similar machine with two Intel 5160s will
> draw 550 watts at peak load.
> 

    450 watts would be the specification for the power supply.  Because
of the typical way of describing power supplies the 450 watt version
would probably not give clean power nor last long at 450 watts continuous.
The typical and perhaps even the maximum power drawn of the computer with
two CPUS, memory a a few hard disks would be about 265 watts.

    Perhaps in other fields of equipment the specs for a power supply are
defined so that a maximum power drawn of 256 watts could be met by a power
supply of of 270 watts -- I don't know.  But in the commercial-consumer field
of PC's it is typical to see specs of 400-600 watts for a power supply
intended for a 2 or 4 CPU board whereas we have measured something near
265 watts for a dual Opteron computer.

best regards,
Alan Scheinine
-- 

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