Folding@Home Rigs?

Jamiman

Jamiman

Jamiman

Associate
Joined
16 Oct 2010
Posts
618
Location
Nottingham
Hi all,

gonna badger my school (which has more money than sense) to make a valid contribution to science by seeing if they will fund me for some folding rigs.

If so, what's a better choice?

Some i7 2600k's on their own, or i7 2600k's with some high end GPU's?

Will the GPU client negtively impact on the CPU to reduce the overall PPD?

What about multi GPU's?

Cooling wise, would i better off W/C and going for big overclocks, or having smaller overclocks on air with more machines? All depends on how much cash they can spare really.

Also, does the GPU client come straight away with the flashy folding image thing?

If so, i'll do one machine with that, and have that displaying so the head can see what he's paying for.

Also, can i set it off with 1 monitor/kb/mouse, then remove the kit and use it for the rest of the machines? Or does each machine need it's own monitor/KB/mouse?

So many questions :D

thanks in advance.
 
Hey great stuff if your school agrees

There are a couple of quad opteron G34 socket server builds on here which would be the most efficent in terms off PDD/watt if the money is there, the costs are probably comparable to 2-4 i7 rigs (depending on what cpus you put in) but much higher PPD, Baba and Biffa both have this set up.

If not i7s with linux (native or vm) running big adv is probably your best bet.

You could get a 4 slot mother board and load it up with high end GPUs but it will cost a lot and use more power for not much more gain.

I would go for more machines on air, as long as they don't mind the noise the slight increase in performance for a higher overclock is probably not worth the cost and effort of water cooling.

You can use 1 keyboard / mouse / monitor for all. If you are CPU folding once you set them up you can just remote in (you can't remote in when running GPUs though)

Sorry quite a quick reply from me as have to go out now but there are a few options depending on your budget :)
 
Ok, thanks for the info :)

So if i can get the cash, one of these Opetron G34 builds would serve me better than that money into i7's?

I guess i'll have to see if they are willing to fund me through it, and if so, how much.

Guess i need to pitch my sales right so they will maximise my funding :D

Some minor googling showed me that Opetrons are like £200 each for 2Ghz 8 cores, and the cheapest Quad board i could find was £600!

So that means that it's £1400 for CPU's and Motherboard. Then @ 1GB/core, that means i need 32GB DDR3. With RAM @ 4GB for £20 that i've seen, that gives us £160 for RAM.

Then i can probabally find a Hard drive somewhere, doesn't need to be huge for Linux really.

I'm guessing i'm gonna want to run a 700W PSU really. Decent brand for them is around £90. Not too sure on this one.

Case wise, I could mount it on a board and put it on display in a well ventilated Glass display cabinet. Might add some fams to the case to keep it going.

Or i could just design and build one from clear Acryllic, and Get some clear LED Fans for it. That way i could make it into fan city! xD More seriously though, i could make some air channels for it, so one fan blows air down channels voer 1 CPu, then there's 3 other channles to do the same thing for the others. Might give some nice airflow if done correctly.

Coolers: Not too sure on this one, Don't think the stock ones are really adequete for full time load.

So that leaves me with:

Board: £600
CPU's: £800
RAM: £160
PSU:£90
Coolers: ?
Case: ?
Fans:?

So really for one machine i'm gonna be looking at around £1800 or more.

I hope i could get the school to fund a venture like this, even if they are willing to give less i could just lower the specs....perhaps go for a Dual CPU build or something.


Money like that could probably fund me 3 2600K builds if i did it correctly...and it wouldn't be much more to get 4 out of it....are you sure this would beat those? although i guess 32 cores @ 2ghz is better than 12/16 cores @ 4ghz?

This is so bloody confusing :D
 
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I'd be surprised if a school would fund such a venture, they'll want to know what tangible benefits it brings to the school.
 
My school are obsessed with things like this, especially sciency.

And hey, i'd rather ask em and have a plan at the ready if they agree than not ask at all :)

I can put it along the lines of them being on the front lines of scientific discovery or something.
 
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