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Comment by chronogram | Hacker News Reader

That's still not much for wiring in most countries. A small IKEA consumer oven is only 230V16A=3860W. Those GPUs and CPUs only consume that much at max usage anyway. And those CPUs are uninteresting for consumers, you only need a few Watts for a single good core, like a Mac Mini has.

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> And those CPUs are uninteresting for consumers, you only need a few Watts for a single good core, like a Mac Mini has.

Speak for yourself. I’d love to have that much computer at my disposal. Not sure what I’d do with it. Probably open Slack and Teams at the same time.

> Probably open Slack and Teams at the same time.

Too bad it feels like both might as well be single threaded applications somehow

I could use KVM and open a bunch of instances of each.

So Europe ends up with an incidental/accidental advantage in the AI race?

In residential power delivery? yes

In power cost? no

I'm literally any other way? also no

Consumers with desktop computers are not winning any AI race anywhere.

All American households get mains power at 240v (I'm missing some nuance here about poles and phases, so the electrical people can correct my terminology).

It's often used for things like ACs, Clothes Dryers, Stoves, EV Chargers.

So it's pretty simple for a certified electrician to just make a 240v outlet if needed. It's just not the default that comes out of a wall.

To get technical -- US homes get two phases of 120v that are 180 degrees out of phase with the neutral. Using either phase and the neutral gives you 120v. Using the two out of phase 120v phases together gives you a difference of 240v.

https://appliantology.org/uploads/monthly_2016_06/large.5758...

Even more technical, we don't have two phases, we have 1-phase that's split in half. I hate it cause it makes it confusing.

Two phase power is not the same as split phase (There's basically only weird older installations of 2 phase in use anymore).

Yeah that's right. The grid is three phases (as it is basically everywhere in the world), and the transformer at the pole splits one of those in half. Although, what are technically half-phases are usually just called "phases" when they're inside of a home.

Relevant video from Technology Connections:

"The US electrical system is not 120V" https://youtu.be/jMmUoZh3Hq4

That's such a great video, like most of his stuff.

Well yes its possible but often $500-1000 to run a new 240v outlet, and that's to a garage for an ev charger. If you want an outlet in the house I dont know how much wall people want to tear up and extra time and cost.

Sure yeah, I was just clarifying that if the issue is 240v, etc, US houses have the feed coming in. Infrastructure-wise it's not an issue at all.

> So it's pretty simple for a certified electrician to just make a 240v outlet if needed. It's just not the default that comes out of a wall.

It'd be all new wire run (120 is split at the panel, we aren't running 240v all over the house) and currently electricians are at a premium so it'd likely end up costing a thousand+ to run that if you're using an electrician, more if there's not clear access from an attic/basement/crawlspace.

Though I think it's unlikely we'll see an actual need for it at home, I imaging a 800w cpu is going to be for server class CPUs and rare-ish to see in home environments.

I don't think many people would want some 2kW+ system sitting on their desk at home anyways. That's quite a space heater to sit next to.

Also the noise from the fans.

I should look at the label (or check with a meter..), but when I run my SGI Octane with its additional XIO SCSI board in active use, the little "office" room gets very hot indeed.

> and currently electricians are at a premium so it'd likely end up costing a thousand+

I got a quote for over 2 thousand to run a 24v line literally 9 feet from my electrical panel across my garage to put a EV charger in.

Opening up an actual wall and running it to another room? I can only imagine the insane quotes that'd get.

I kinda suspect there’s a premium once you mention “EV vehicle”, since you’re signalling that you’re affluent enough to afford an EV and have committed to spending the money required to get EV charging at home working, etc. (Kinda like getting a quote for anything wedding related.)

I’m getting some wiring run about the same distance (to my attic, fished up a wall, with moderately poor access) for non-EV purposes next week and the quote was a few hundred dollars.

the trick is to request 240v outlet for welder. it brings price down to 400 or so.

running to another room will be done usually (at least in usa) through attic or crawlspace. i got it done a few months ago to have dedicated 20A circuit (for my rack) in my work room. cost was around 300-400 as well

Labor chargers alone are going to be higher than that in Seattle. Just to have someone come out on a call is going to be 150-200. If it is an independent electrician who owns their own business, maybe 100-150/hr, if they are part of a larger company, I'd expect even more than that.

Honestly I wouldn't expect to pay less than $1000 for the job w/o any markups.

i live in bay area. i have some doubts that seattle going to be more expensive.

Handy man prices around here are $65 to $100/hr, and there is a huge wait list for the good ones.

I've gotten multiple quotes on running the 240v line, the labor breakdown was always over $400 alone. Just having someone show up to do a job is going to be almost $200 before any work is done.

When I got quotes from unlicensed people, those came in around $1000 even.

in bayarea subreddits there are multiple posts talking about EV charger vs welder outlet and how it drops price from 2000 to 500 or so (depends on complexity).

another thing, which is good long term is to a find a local electrician (plumber, etc) who doesn't charge service calls and have reasonable pricing.

no idea about handyman pricing. never used any. for electrical/water/roofing i prefer somebody who is licensed/insured/bonded/etc

If we're counting all the phases then european homes get 400V 3-phase, not 240V split-phase. Not that typical residential connections matter to highend servers.

It depends on the country, in many places independent houses get a single 230V phase only.

In the Nordics we're on 10A for standard wall outlets so we're stuck on 2300W without rewiring (or verifying wiring) to 2.5mm2.

We rarely use 16A but it exists. All buildings are connected to three phases so we can get the real juice when needed (apartments are often single phase).

I'm confident personal computers won't reach 2300W anytime soon though

In Italy we also have 10A and 16A (single phase). In practice however almost all wires running in the walls are 2.5 mm^2, so that you can use them for either one 16A plug or two adjacent 10A plugs.

In the Nordics (I'm assuming you mean Nordic countries) 10A is _not_ standard. Used to be, some forty years ago. Since then 16A is standard. My house has a few 10A leftovers from when the house was built, and after the change to TN which happened a couple of decades ago, and with new "modern" breakers, a single microwave oven on a 10A circuit is enough to trip the breaker (when the microwave pulses). Had to get the breakers changed to slow ones, but even those can get tripped by a microwave oven if there's something else (say, a kettle) on the same circuit.

16A is fine, for most things. 10A used to be kind of ok, with the old IT net and old-style fuses. Nowadays anything under 16A is useless for actual appliances. For the rest it's either 25A and a different plug, or 400V.

Let's rephrase: 10A is the effective standard that's been in use for a long long time, if you walk into a building you can assume it has 10A breakers.

On new installations you can choose 10A or 16A so if you're forward thinking you'd go 16 since it gives you another 1300 watts to play with.

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