Cheap folding machine

Delboy · 12 Oct 2008 at 14:17

I need help spec'ing a machine (mb, ram, psu, 2 x gpu & a cpu) that will sit on a shelf and crunch. How little do you think i can spend and still get decent ppd?

verbal · 12 Oct 2008 at 15:15

This is close to what I got:

Socket 939 SLI motherboard = £35
AMD A64 3200+ = £20
Heatsink = £10
1Gb RAM = £17
2x 8800GT 256mb = £92
PSU = £40

Total = £214

This would get you 9800ppd and therefore you would be one of the top 5 top producers on the team.

theheyes · 12 Oct 2008 at 18:58

Operating system?

rich99million · 12 Oct 2008 at 19:21

verbal said:
This is close to what I got:

Socket 939 SLI motherboard = £35
AMD A64 3200+ = £20
Heatsink = £10
1Gb RAM = £17
2x 8800GT 256mb = £92
PSU = £40

Total = £214

This would get you 9800ppd and therefore you would be one of the top 5 top producers on the team.

Would you be better off with an X2 CPU? One core to feed each GPU? Unless you already have a spare Vista install I guess? :confused:

Delboy · 12 Oct 2008 at 20:10

Ok, i've managed to snap up the following:-

Asus P5E x38 Mb
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200 LGA775 2.66Ghz
Kingston 2 Gb DDR 800
2x GeForce™ 8800GTS PCI Express 320Mb
PSU

All for about £250 from a certain auction site.

What PPD should I expect? Can't wait to build it and find out!

Delboy · 12 Oct 2008 at 22:17

If i don't want a hard drive, how do i run xp from a usb stick? What size? Do you go through the normal install and just pick the usb stick as the destination for XP?

rich99million · 12 Oct 2008 at 22:39

Delboy said:
If i don't want a hard drive, how do i run xp from a usb stick? What size? Do you go through the normal install and just pick the usb stick as the destination for XP?

Nothing like as simple as that according to this guide - http://www.ngine.de/article/id/8

You may be able to find an image ready to go though I guess :confused:

magman · 12 Oct 2008 at 23:03

There's also a good chance that XP will kill a USB stick over time. Flash memory has a limited life and the Virtual Memory system in Windows writes to the disk lots and lots.

I suppose they are cheap enough that you could throw them away every few months, but it would be a bit of a lottery to find out which makes and models have the best life for a particular cost.

oceaness · 14 Oct 2008 at 08:21

magman said:
There's also a good chance that XP will kill a USB stick over time. Flash memory has a limited life and the Virtual Memory system in Windows writes to the disk lots and lots.

I suppose they are cheap enough that you could throw them away every few months, but it would be a bit of a lottery to find out which makes and models have the best life for a particular cost.

And considering how cheap a small hard disk is now it's of negligible benefit.

Grimgoth · 14 Oct 2008 at 11:43

maybe he's thinking of how much power he will save not having to power up a hd all the time compared to a usb key. but then, running two graphics cards.... hmm....

oceaness · 14 Oct 2008 at 13:14

Grimgoth said:
maybe he's thinking of how much power he will save not having to power up a hd all the time compared to a usb key. but then, running two graphics cards.... hmm....

Yes the power consumption would make a difference, a HDD consumes about 20 watts when its working flat out, which it wouldn't be doing. But I think the cost of constantly replacing a USB stick would be greater than the electricity cost of a HDD.

Delboy · 14 Oct 2008 at 16:17

oceaness said:
Yes the power consumption would make a difference, a HDD consumes about 20 watts when its working flat out, which it wouldn't be doing. But I think the cost of constantly replacing a USB stick would be greater than the electricity cost of a HDD.

Yeah, i'm probably going to see if I can get a cheap small sata drive. I've got permission to run this rig in our test lab at work in the corner (nicely air-conditioned as well so gonna run it as fast as poss

)

What PPD do you reckon it will bring?

oceaness · 15 Oct 2008 at 12:51

Well the two 8800's should probably manage about 4-5k each depending on the WU.

You going to over clock the E8200?

It's basically half my Q9450, which OCed to 3.4Ghz currently pulls about 6 -7k with two Linux SMP clients running in VMware depending on WU's. So if you run the same setup you should be able to manage 3 - 3.5k give or take.

Obviously knock a load of points off if your gonna be running the Windows SMP client and forgot about running a CPU client entirely if your gonna be running XP, as each graphics card will sap a whole core unless you use Vista.

Delboy · 25 Oct 2008 at 15:09

Do you reckon I can run 3 8800 GTS off a single core duo processor or will it not be enough the feed the GPUs? (i.e. only 2 cores therefore only 2 GPUs).

The reason I ask is a mate is getting rid of a mobo with 3 PCIEx16 slots and I feel the need to buy it off him

Trouble is I wasn't able to get the E8200 I wanted and brought a cheap Core 2 Duo instead.

A.N.Other · 25 Oct 2008 at 15:25

Give it a go and tell us

You can always stick it in the MM if it doesn't work

rich99million · 25 Oct 2008 at 17:46

Delboy said:
Do you reckon I can run 3 8800 GTS off a single core duo processor or will it not be enough the feed the GPUs? (i.e. only 2 cores therefore only 2 GPUs).

The reason I ask is a mate is getting rid of a mobo with 3 PCIEx16 slots and I feel the need to buy it off him Trouble is I wasn't able to get the E8200 I wanted and brought a cheap Core 2 Duo instead.

Depends on the OS - if you're using Vista it should be fine I'd think - if it's XP you probably won't get much better than with 2GPUs as under XP it generally uses a whole core of the CPU

Delboy · 25 Oct 2008 at 19:26

rich99million said:
Depends on the OS - if you're using Vista it should be fine I'd think - if it's XP you probably won't get much better than with 2GPUs as under XP it generally uses a whole core of the CPU

It's under XP, but I have a spare vista 32.