Hi Everyone,
I want to make a small makeshift computer farm that will be powered by solar panels. I just started running Prime95 to find the next largest prime number but hate the idea of paying for power for no purpose. Plus it would be a fun project.
The big picture is to get 3 340 Watt solar panels (max 37.8 V each) then connect as many computers as possible. Each computer will have a DC to DC power supply with cheap motherboard, cpu, and hd.
I'm thinking of just using a particle board to attach all the components and a big fan blow through the components.
So when the sun is shining the computers will auto boot and run Prime95. If the sun doesn't shine the computers won't do anything; obviously reliability isn't on top of the list.
Any feedback on the idea is appreciated it. Would I need to worry about solar panels producing too much volts to fry the DC power supplies?
Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
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Rain? weather? Bugs? I hope you plan to put this stuff inside right.
I dont think youll have a problem power wise.
youll have just under 120v peak and 9 amps which is pretty close to wall socket power. that is if you run the solar panels in series.
do you plan on running this farm 24/7? if you do you will need batteries for when the sun goes down.
You may also want to consider a wind turbine in your setup as well so you can have atleast some power generation happening when the sun is down, just to try to keep your batteries more charged during the night time.
Much like bitcoin mining, using a general purpose computer to do prime number research is a joke.
That being said, having solar to offset your power consumption is a nice thing. A 1000w setup could seriously offset your power consumption every month. Tie that shit into your electric system.
That's good news. It will be outside but shielded from water and bugs.
I would agree but I don't have $$$ to dump on super computers. The guy that discovered the last two prime numbers works at a university that allows him to Prime95 on 800+ computers to run at night. So the odds are not on my side :-(.
On the side note. I'm hoping to install solar panels on my house to offset 100% of my usage. Can't wait for that.
Computers outside is not a good thing. You're going to need an air intake and well sorry to say but bugs rain dirt and the likes are going to get in. To be honest you're better off putting those on your roof and setting up these computers in your house and have them on a timer switch from the wall you only run them while its day and no one is home using power from the solar. sure it's not cool but it's better in the long run and you'll pull your hair out less.
Am I doing my math correctly? If I have 1020 Watts generated by 3 panels and each computer uses 300 watts at full load; I can only have 3 computers max? Am I missing something? I was thinking I could have more computers than just 3.