Price/Performance thread - *Guide to building best value SETI cruncher*

metz2000

metz2000

metz2000

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25 Mar 2003
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Right then. I thought I'd set up a thread that would list the most current components for the best price/performance ratio.
The only catch is that the system has to be ideal for SETI and the base unit (i.e no mouse/monitor/kb) has to weigh in at less than £250.
This can be updated over the months and I'll post the best system for someone who wants to build a cheap (£250 :eek: ) SETI cruncher...
Feel free to come up with useful suggestions for dedicated SETI machines (e.g. It doesn't need a big HDD, just a fast one).
(I want to build the 'best' price/performance system myself for SETI use soon)

The April 2003 best system looks as follows:
(Quote all prices with VAT please for consistancy)

CPU: AMD XP1700+ (incs Cooler) £42
Motherboard: PC Chips M841LR £45
RAM: 128 MB PC2100 DDR CL2.5 £12.50 (Linkage removed...)
HDD: Small (2 - 4Gb) disk, 2nd/h ~£10
Case*: ATX Midi Tower (including a 300W PSU) ATX12V £29 - PM me for details.
PSU: Liteon 300w £8
CD*: Relisys CD 56x £13 - accepts CD-R and CD-RW, ok for Linux ppl :)
FDD*: Generic, approx £6
GFX card: (not necessary... it's on the mobo)
LAN/NIC: (not necessary... it's on themobo)

*If wanted/optional...

TOTAL: ... calculating...(so far = £117.50 for core system, {£157.50 including optional components - minus the original PSU as this is included in optional case ;) })

Mouse, Keyboard and Monitor not included. Options are to use VNC or a KVM (keybd, vid, mouse) switching unit.

If I've missed anything let me know. If we try and get the best system done every month then ppl will have a great reference point. It'll help many build SETI farms hopefully. That's my medium/long term goal. :)


It might be an idea to have a system that Linux can run on.
 
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Post should be formatted as follows:
=========================

HDD:
WD Caviar High Performance IDE: just over £40... SPEC

UNIQUE Product code: WD200BB
 
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Couple of points

Case - don't need one at all, nekkid racks (oh er missus;)) are much cheaper

PSU - with a bit of soldering can be used to power more than one CPU

CD - only need the one between all the systems for installing stuff

GFX - see above, can run the system headless once its set up (dont think you can do with with doze/VNC - but you can with 'nix)

HDD - may not need one with 'nix as you can boot over the network

FDD - dont need one at all

I think that about covers it - you might also want to think about running costs, i.e. how many WUs do you get out for each watt of juice you put in?

:)
 
Originally posted by PurDunamis
I think that about covers it - you might also want to think about running costs, i.e. how many WUs do you get out for each watt of juice you put in?
Click to expand...

Good shout. Can we keep a case involved for simplicity? I wanted to list all core components so ppl can pick and choose.
 
This is what I'd get:

AMD Athlon "Thoroughbred" XP 1700+ (O/C'd) OEM £42.00
2 X TwinMOS 256MB DDR PC3200 CAS2.5 £66.70
Epox 8RGA+ nForce2 (Socket A) Motherboard (MB-022-EP) £99.90

Total £245.10 (INC VAT)

The AMD is pretty much overclockable to 2.3Ghz minimum
Two sticks of memory for DualDDR speed and 200Mhz FSB/Mem
MB does dual DDR, and has onboard LAN and Graphics.

The only other thing you need is a hdd and borrow a CD-Rom for installation purposes. Or as Purdannis said, if its going to be a farm you can share a CD.

HDD as small and cheap as you can get/borrow/buy, 1.2GB or so should be fine for 2000 or NT Workstation or Linux, although if I was going Linux I'd just use boot floppys and skip the hdd.
 
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That HDD £40
MSI KT4V-L £65
XP1700+ Tbred £42
DDR400 256Mb £39.19
PSU £25
Cheap Graphics £7
Cdrom(if you dont have a spare one) £15
HSF to take 2Ghz+ £10

total. £243.19
 
value for money? Well this is what I'm running and must be hard to beat.

Motherboard: PC Chips M841LR £45 (new)
CPU: AMD XP2100+ (incs Cooler) £76 (new)
Ram: 128Mb DDR PC2100 £15 (new)
PSU: Liteon 300w £ 8 (new)
Hard Drive: 1Gb Quantum Fireball £ 8 (S/h)

Total: £152.00

Use Cheepoman Bios and o/c to 142fsb stable
Does a Wu in 3 hours 30mins

I have 8 doing 54 wu a day.

Regards, ProSpec
 
This is what I have currently floating around being used on 2 caseless crunchers right now, these 2, and my main system hosting a 2400+ currently churn out over 20 a day from just this one room.
  • First cruncher
  • Epox 8K3A
  • Athlon 1800XP @ 1.7Ghz
  • 256Mb of PC2100 bought for £15 @ 150Mhz
  • Matrox MGA for use with VNC
  • 4-port NIC/HUB PCI card which joins the local net for seti
  • 500mb HDD (win98SE ministall)
  • Second Cuncher
  • Asus A7V-E
  • Athlon 1400 @ 1450
  • 256Mb PC133 @ 145
  • Unknown PCI GFX (thx diogenese)
  • PCI Network Card
  • 500mb HDD (Again Win98SE)

These are both powered by a 350W Antec PSU modded with a Papst fan so i can sleep at night, one is using a Switech cooler and the other some dodgy Coolermaster effort.

IMO anything above 256Mb of ram for a seti cruncher is needless and silly. When is anything over 150 going to ever be used on a system designed with a sole intention of crunching?

Arnie
 
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Originally posted by ProSpec
value for money? Well this is what I'm running and must be hard to beat.

Motherboard: PC Chips M841LR £45 (new)
CPU: AMD XP2100+ (incs Cooler) £76 (new)
Ram: 128Mb DDR PC2100 £15 (new)
PSU: Liteon 300w £ 8 (new)
Hard Drive: 1Gb Quantum Fireball £ 8 (S/h)

Total: £152.00

Use Cheepoman Bios and o/c to 142fsb stable
Does a Wu in 3 hours 30mins

I have 8 doing 54 wu a day.

Regards, ProSpec
Click to expand...

except to replace the 2100+ by an 1700+ and get almost the same performance out of it for a £25 saving or so!
 
Originally posted by [ASSE]Arnie01
IMO anything above 256Mb of ram for a seti cruncher is needless and silly. When is anything over 150 going to ever be used on a system designed with a sole intention of crunching?
Click to expand...

I find on my dedicated SETI box that never more than 60Mb is used. Would it be safe to say then that people could be safe using 128Mb? That would certainly bring the cost down further. If bought in a single memory stick then it would allow for future growth anyway.


---
People, keep the ideas coming. I will add to the bit at the top later.
 
Originally posted by ProSpec
value for money? Well this is what I'm running and must be hard to beat.

Motherboard: PC Chips M841LR £45 (new)
CPU: AMD XP2100+ (incs Cooler) £76 (new)
Ram: 128Mb DDR PC2100 £15 (new)
PSU: Liteon 300w £ 8 (new)
Hard Drive: 1Gb Quantum Fireball £ 8 (S/h)

Total: £152.00

Use Cheepoman Bios and o/c to 142fsb stable
Does a Wu in 3 hours 30mins

I have 8 doing 54 wu a day.

Regards, ProSpec
Click to expand...

Now that's a good price/performance system. Good work s'ah, more of the same please ppl. :)
 
What competitor? Sorry, I'm new to the scene.
EDIT: I'm I better of just putting the prices in as a rough guide and letting ppl find the products themselves (or PMing me for details)?
 
Easy ways to lose your account. None of us would want to see that happen matey.:)

/edited due to someone being smart enough to listen.:)
 
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Originally posted by MDPlatts
except to replace the 2100+ by an 1700+ and get almost the same performance out of it for a £25 saving or so!
Click to expand...

I've got 3 x XP1700+
2 x XP1800+
1 x XP2000+
2 x XP2001+

Very little difference in time between them, all O/c the same fsb, very difficult to get 147 fsb to be stable. Much better to use cheepoman bios settings rather than Speedfan or similar program.

Regards, ProSpec
 
My single CPU crunchers are all using 128 MB sticks of RAM, no more needed. I'm only using 256MB sticks in the dual machines.

CPU's best value for money atm must be the 1700 T'Bred.

My farm is based round the shuttle AK31 ver 3.1 which though has on board nothing, allows fsb adjustments up to 166, vcore and ram volts adjustment too. Currently have a Pally 1900 at 10.5*162 with AGP card and PCI NIC all OK does a WU in average 3 hrs 15 mins (thanx Jaydee007).

I've managed an XP install with a SETI drive on a 1.2 GB HDD, but it's a lot easier on 2GB drives with 50MB for SETI Cache;)

Incidentally when I tried to install Win XP with SP1 included, it said I needed minimum 1017MB, My older OS's fitted on smaller ones than that (managed to get win98 on a 105MB HDD too).

Mine all run w/o keyboard and mouse and are admin'd via vnc.

HTH
 
Originally posted by ProSpec
I've got 3 x XP1700+
2 x XP1800+
1 x XP2000+
2 x XP2001+

Very little difference in time between them,
Click to expand...

ProSpec, do you reckon I should stick with the 1700+ for the main list up top if there is little difference in performance...?
 
Originally posted by metz2000
ProSpec, do you reckon I should stick with the 1700+ for the main list up top if there is little difference in performance...?
Click to expand...
You could get about 100-200Mhz more out of the 2100 in most cases when overclocking, but in some cases the 1700 can overclock to the same speed.

Check out the overclocking forum. There are lots of very long posts about both of these chips if you're willing to look off page 1.

Arnie
 
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