Quote Originally Posted by STMahlberg View Post

The price for this new rig would be ~$500. Now for the big issue that is really preventing me from doing all of this... the cost of the power. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, it costs be $107 a month to power what I have running now. This new rig would push that higher even though I would be eliminating my other 2 rigs. Spending $1200+ a year on power for something that only gives me imaginary internet credits is a lot of money. I like doing the whole crunching thing but like I said, I have other projects that could really us that money.

Thus my quandary...
Actually!

ok 3 rigs costing you $107/month right now. If you put all your GPUs into a single rig, retired the other 2 rigs, you'd actually be paying less than that. A noticeable amount less. By using 1 rig, you eliminate having to power 2 southbridges, 2 northbridges, 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives, 2 sets of RAM, however many fans are in the 2 rigs, and, the biggest chunk of them all, it's 2 CPUs you no longer have to power. Also, the 1 rig will create less heat, saving additional money on home cooling (though requiring more heat in the winter). I'm betting by combining everything into 1 rig, you save at least 30% per month off that bill. Maybe 40% since you're tossing dells