Garage Cruncher

BrownSparrow

BrownSparrow

BrownSparrow

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Joined
29 Nov 2004
Posts
303
Location
Omnipresent
Hi,

I was after some thoughts and words of advice.

My folks have said i can stick a machine in their garage for folding duties, we have friends and family that are afflicted by some of the conditions that folding is working on so they are happy to cover electricity costs.

I'm on a budget however and i haven't got any old machines with a PCI-e capable board. So, i was thinking along the lines of getting one of the cheaper pre-built overclockers systems (or building a cheapo one myself) and slapping a GTX460 in it.

I'm aware the psu's in the cheaper builds might need upgrading, but if you could build a single 460 system for between £300 - £400, do you think it'll be worth the expenditure? Could you/would it be worth while running an smp client as well on a core2duo or lesser cpu?

Thanks
 
Well i've had a look at a couple of options, i'm a little out of touch with components, so i might not have the correct memory etc. I have the PSU, dvd drive, and i think i've got a spare hard drive lying about. Let me know what you think..

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Are they easy to OC? Bit of a noob on that front, both for cpu's and gpu's. I also worry about stability when people start talking about oc'ing - its going to be left alone for long periods so i want as little admin as poss.

Thought all the modern boards had video on them these days, missed that!

Is the freezer 7 pro not up to the task then?
 
One thing i haven't factored into the build is the cost of an OS, there isn't an smp client for linux is there?

miniyazz, got your email, i'll reply when i get home. Where are you in the country?
 
Good news for the foldy cause! I should have a second hand i7 (clocked to 3.65 i believe) and mb heading my way today for the garage folder, yay!

I'll be ordering the case, fans, etc tonight. I need to order a graphics card as the mb doesn't have one on board, so question is do i order a shiny gtx460 to go in it, or do i get a cheapo card and keep the folding strictly on the cpu so all the cores can be used for bigadv's? What will produce more ppd, bigadv's on a single i7 cpu, or a gpu + smp on the cpu?

Over to you origami oracles!
 
Been putting the new machine together tonight, should be able to finish it off tomorrow.

Apologies for the quality of the phone pics.

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Soon my pretty, soon :)
 
Ok guys, i finally built the garage cruncher and have installed Windows 7 64. It's an i7 860 running at 3.65 with 4GB ram.

I'm going to run the SMP (not bigadv) client and a gpu client on the GTX460. My question is what combination of client types will i be best off with?

I run the command line client for smp and the systray client for gpu on my main rig and that seems to work ok. But what should i go for on this dedicated cruncher?
 
To be honest Biffa, i was wrestling with the choices. I decided to go with smp + gpu as i'm not an experienced overclocker and wanted stability and reliability as the box will sit in my parents garage. From what i read, bigadv's need a little more tlc than i plan to give this box, so I will add more gpu's in time which will out-ppd a bigadv setup (i hope), whilst still being relatively reliable.

Next year, depending on finances, i might make build a bigadv i7 box. For now this box will give me a reliable (again i hope and prey!) introduction to bigger numbers.
 
We have lift-off!! :D

HFM reckons just over 26k PPD with the first 2 wu's, and temps are ok - 66-69 for the four cores on the cpu and 57 for the gpu, all on air and in my nice cosy study with my main rig. Should be a little better in a nice cold garage! :)

Its early days but i'm happy so far!

Fold on team 10!!!!!
 
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