Associate
Hey guys,
So i've been running BOINC for a couple of months now and I've decided to build something that a. I can leave on 24/7 and b. is good value for money and scalable
The purpose of the project is not about maximum computing performance. While I like the idea of using GPU's for crunching they are very noisey and draw a lot of power, I don't want to go down the watercooling route because its not something that interests me. I want to be able to contribute but in a way that suits me which means cheap and quiet...ish so I give you the case:
The Ikea Helmer
For me it was the obvious choice, it was £25 and can hold six computers, I don't think you can get better value for money in that respect.
Motherboard wise i've gone for the Asus P8H61-MX it's main pro is that it fits nicely inside the helmers drawers and its got onboard VGA for initial config. I've initially bought 3 at £26 each refurbished, as I don't need any of the gubbins that come with the retail board I figured this was a good way to save money.
RAM wise i've gone for one 4 gig stick in each board, managed to get some off ebay for £11 each which I thought was a steal and I am able to expand in the future.
PSU's are from an OcUK competitor at £13 each, 400w should be enough as there will be no HDD or optical drives in the setups. I figured that 400w should leave plenty of headroom as they are cheap I didnt want to stress them too much.
The reason I have only bought 3 of everything as I already have 2 matx bundles sat doing nothing, an E6600 clocked at 3.4ghz and a Q6600 running at 3.4Ghz. The last drawer I thought I would leave spare for the time being.
I won't go into too much detail on the logistics of the build as it has been covered a few times online here: https://sites.google.com/site/woojay/helmer
and here:
http://helmer.sfe.se/
I will either be going down the DRBL route or booting from micro usb sticks but either way there will be no hard drives. They'll be running linux which is good as I am most comfortable with it.
The only question I have really is what CPU's to go with? Looking at a few cpu tables the G620 looks like a cheap start but I thinking that performance is going to be pretty shoddy? The other option I had considered was the i3 2120, the main plus with this is the hyperthreading, just wondered what people thought?
All the parts are in the post, I have the case so you will see a few updates from me this week. I am currently at home recovering from an operation so it gives me time to build the beast.
Thanks for reading
B
So i've been running BOINC for a couple of months now and I've decided to build something that a. I can leave on 24/7 and b. is good value for money and scalable
The purpose of the project is not about maximum computing performance. While I like the idea of using GPU's for crunching they are very noisey and draw a lot of power, I don't want to go down the watercooling route because its not something that interests me. I want to be able to contribute but in a way that suits me which means cheap and quiet...ish so I give you the case:
The Ikea Helmer
For me it was the obvious choice, it was £25 and can hold six computers, I don't think you can get better value for money in that respect.
Motherboard wise i've gone for the Asus P8H61-MX it's main pro is that it fits nicely inside the helmers drawers and its got onboard VGA for initial config. I've initially bought 3 at £26 each refurbished, as I don't need any of the gubbins that come with the retail board I figured this was a good way to save money.
RAM wise i've gone for one 4 gig stick in each board, managed to get some off ebay for £11 each which I thought was a steal and I am able to expand in the future.
PSU's are from an OcUK competitor at £13 each, 400w should be enough as there will be no HDD or optical drives in the setups. I figured that 400w should leave plenty of headroom as they are cheap I didnt want to stress them too much.
The reason I have only bought 3 of everything as I already have 2 matx bundles sat doing nothing, an E6600 clocked at 3.4ghz and a Q6600 running at 3.4Ghz. The last drawer I thought I would leave spare for the time being.
I won't go into too much detail on the logistics of the build as it has been covered a few times online here: https://sites.google.com/site/woojay/helmer
and here:
http://helmer.sfe.se/
I will either be going down the DRBL route or booting from micro usb sticks but either way there will be no hard drives. They'll be running linux which is good as I am most comfortable with it.
The only question I have really is what CPU's to go with? Looking at a few cpu tables the G620 looks like a cheap start but I thinking that performance is going to be pretty shoddy? The other option I had considered was the i3 2120, the main plus with this is the hyperthreading, just wondered what people thought?
All the parts are in the post, I have the case so you will see a few updates from me this week. I am currently at home recovering from an operation so it gives me time to build the beast.
Thanks for reading
B
