How do I know how many amps my eqt draws?

[Tommy L]

Im moving to a new studio and my landlord needs to know how many amp service I would need.

At the moment I work from home and put all my equipment onto 2 circuits (kitchen and 3rd bedroom). I think both are 15 amp, giving a total of 30 I assume. I really have no idea about this stuff.

 

Its a high rise building, its union, so doing electrical work needs to be right first time because its VERY expensive to get the work done.

 

I have 12 nodes, 1 server, 2 x workstations, 1 printer, 4 monitors, 2 desk fans, 2 lamps. Ill also need to plug in things like phone charger, etc.

 

Will 30 amp be enough?

Is there a way I can figure this out per item?

 

Any help much appreciated.

[Scott Dombrowski]

I am not an electrician, so this is some back of the envelope maths here: power (watts) = volts * current (amps). Line voltage in the US is 120VAC, and I think that breakers are usually of the 15-20 amp variety. So with a 20A breaker, you'll have 2400 watts of power to work with per circuit. Fans, lamps, and monitors are more constant for wattage. Render nodes and workstations will be more variable depending on what they're doing, so the most accurate way to figure out what you need is to get one of these and measure your computers when they're rendering. You can calculate a theoretical maximum by adding up the rated wattage outputs of the power supplies. You'll likely not be pulling 500 watts from a render node that has a 500 watt PSU though, so that number will be pretty conservative. The kill-a-watt will give you a more accurate number. If it were me, I'd probably ask for two dedicated 15 or 20 amp circuits. 40 amps total is most likely overkill, but it's better to have that now and not need it than to start popping breakers when you're up against a deadline.

 

Not that I've done that.

 

Ok, I've done that, but I was "borrowing" 70 workstations that were being provisioned for the new lease cycle here in the office and they weren't properly spread across the different circuits in the room where they were being set up. Oops.

[Dimitris Tolios]

Scott broke it down nicely.

I would follow his advice, but scale up for contingencies - what if in the future you double your rendering nodes or double your rendering node density? (e.g. from 12x 6-core nodes, you go to 10-12x 2P nodes etc).

 

You know better than as what are the chances of that happening in the length of time this TI needs to last you.

[RyderSK]

I was gonna write 30 will be more than fine, but didn't cross my mind how that works with american voltage being half of ours :- ).

Nice to read Scott's breakdown of this.

I had 24A in old apartment and the only trouble I had was from electric oven and washing machine running consequently with few computers which would lead to crash. Did not make me happy as I always forgot about it, put chicken in oven while washing and rendering and bam..blackness.

[Dimitris Tolios]

You are lucky...the breaker I have my PCs on is shared with lots of equipment...

Usually the last-"blackout"-drop comes when my better half plugs her 1200W hairblower in that lil plug over there to do her hair while watching TV and more than 2 PCs are running @ 100%...I was in the verge of building a lil node rack at some point - would be fun trying to find which plug(s) in my house would actually support it safely...