Spec me a Folding Box :)

[theheyes]

Okay guys I was thinking of building a new PC and would appreciate any input.

Basically the new box is going to be used for video encoding and folding@home. Obviously this build is going to place heavy emphasis on CPU power and I was thinking of building it around the new Q9450. I would also like to keep the cost below £450 if possible but there is a little room for movement.

So, in a nutshell:

• A good CPU (although waiting to pick up a Q6600 on the cheap is an option)
• Needs to be power efficient as possible (onboard graphics, 2.5" HD maybe)
• Make savings on other components in order to keep costs down (cheapest case possible)

I'm also open to the option of a mild overclock but nothing to the point that is going to push the price of the other components up. A couple hundred Mhz would do fine.

Thats about it really. The hard drive doesn't need to be massive. It needs one optical drive. I already have a wifi card to go in. It will be running Linux so no additional OS cost. I'll also say at this point it needs to be a complete build so no nailing a naked motherboard to a shelf.

I look forward to hearing some suggestions.

P.S. I was going to post this in General Hardware but I figured you guys would better understand the CPU power emphasis.

 

[Yeggstry]

I don't think you're going to get a new machine for £450 and include a Q9450 in that when the price is £260 alone The spec I'm gathering together that I've got in my sig is about £870, although I am planning on overclocking and i am future proofing as well

 

[booyaka]

not sure how the new Q9450's are at folding - i'm guessing they are obviously better than the Q6600 but you can hardly go wrong for £150 with the G0 Q6600.

I'm pushing nearly 4k ppd with a overclocked Q6600.

Personally value for money the Q6600 for me. £150 (also should easily do 3ghz with literally bumping the FSB to 333mhz and a tiny touch on the voltage)

4gb of ram - £50/£60 (saving could be made with 2gb) - i've got the geil Black dragon stuff and it's excellent value for money stuff.

£20 for optical drive.

Hard drive wise - depends on what size you want. 500gbs are around the £60 mark and great value per gb

Motherboards - not really up on which ones have on board gfx - either that or get any P35 board (Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3L Intel P35 - £65) and a cheap pcie gfx card for like £15/£20 (loads on members market)

Antec NSK 4480B Mini Tower Case (Black) - 380W Earth Watts PSU - £55 - basic and with psu already should be fine.

That's about £430 if you include 4gb and Q6600 and a cheap pci-e gfx card.

 

[Silent Bob]

Here's what I'm running as my 24/7 folding box:

Q6600 @ 3GHz
Gigabyte P31 motherboard
2x 1GB PC6400 ram
4mb Nvidia riva 128 pci video card
3x 500gb sata drives using raid 5

At the time it was cheaper to get a full size atx motherboard and have found in the past that they are more overclock friendly than matx boards with onboard video and the pci video card uses very little power as it doesn't even need a heatsink. Also went for the P31 based motherboard as it clocks just as well as a P35 but it doesn't like having all memory slots filled when overclocked and has a few less features. Make sure you get a good quality efficient power supply as there's no point making all the effort to get low power components and then getting a rubbish power supply which will undo it all.

 

[jak731]

Your basket
Product Name Qty Price Line Total
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM (ST3160815AS) £30.99
(£36.41) £30.99
(£36.41)
OcUK GeForce 8400 GS 256MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail £20.99
(£24.66) £20.99
(£24.66)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK) £20.49
(£24.08) £20.49
(£24.08)
Pioneer DVR-215BK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM £17.99
(£21.14) £17.99
(£21.14)
Antec NSK 4480 Mini Tower Case (Silver) - 380W Earth Watts PSU £39.99
(£46.99) £39.99
(£46.99)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - OEM £127.99
(£150.39) £127.99
(£150.39)
OcUK Value IG31A-CFS Intel G31 (Socket 775) PCI-Express DDR2 Motherboard £40.99
(£48.16) £40.99
(£48.16)
Tuniq Tower 120 CPU Cooler (Socket 478/754/939/940/AM2/LGA775) £27.99
(£32.89) £27.99
(£32.89)
Sub Total : £327.42
Shipping cost assumes delivery to UK Mainland with:
City Link Parcel Next Day (Delivered Mon-Fri)
(This can be changed during checkout) Shipping : £10.95
VAT is being charged at 17.5% VAT : £59.21
Total : £397.58

just within your budget,

 

[Mattus]

Don't use a 2.5" HD if you want to do video encoding. You won't save much power, and if you're working with high-quality video it'll be sloooow.

 

[theheyes]

Hey guys thanks for the replies. So you think its worth skipping over the onboard graphics to get a board that clocks better? I'm willing to consider a cheap PCI card, its a shame I have a spare x1950Pro doing nothing but its overkill for this box and just idle watts down the drain.

IRT Yeggstry, I've seen the Q9450 for £218 on another site and I was willing to throw a little more money at the build to stretch to the better processor.

I'll have a look at that Antec case it seems a good deal. booyaka, are you running 2 clients to get that ppd? I was also thinking I could get away with 2GB RAM.

Silent Bob - good call on the efficient power supply.

jak731 - thanks for your time that looks like a good spec. I will have a think about it over the next few days.

If anyone else has any input it is all welcome.

 

[theheyes]

Don't use a 2.5" HD if you want to do video encoding. You won't save much power, and if you're working with high-quality video it'll be sloooow.

Yeah that is a good point. Time isn't really of the essence as it will be mostly batch stuff I leave running overnight. There's not a lot of different in wattage between the two drives though so I might just stick with a regular size one.

 

[booyaka]

I'll have a look at that Antec case it seems a good deal. booyaka, are you running 2 clients to get that ppd? I was also thinking I could get away with 2GB RAM.

aye - 2gb will be fine but if video encoding 4gb would be useful. yeah - running 2 x win smp clients to get that. Pretty much flat out 24/7 at the moment - hoping for my best week ever this week in the news as (touches a huge lump of wood) it's been 7 days @ 24hours

 

[theheyes]

Okay guys I have been thinking about the build and have narrowed it down to the following:

Hitachi Deskstar 7K160 160GB SATA-II 8MB Cache - OEM
(£31.71)
OcUK GeForce 8400 GS 256MB DDR2 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
(£24.66)
Intel Core 2 Quad Pro Q6600 "Energy Efficient SLACR 95W Edition" 2.40GHz (1066FSB) - OEM
(£157.44)
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2 (OCZ2P800R22GK)
(£24.08)
Pioneer DVR-215DBK 20x DVD±RW SATA Dual Layer ReWriter (Black) - OEM
(£19.96)
Antec NSK 4480 Mini Tower Case (Silver) - 380W Earth Watts PSU
(£46.99)

I need advice on the motherboard and cooler. I am going to spend a little more on a P35 board and would like someone to recommend me one. If I could overclock the CPU to 3Ghz I would be well chuffed.

I won't be overclocking beyond 3Ghz so would an Arctic Freezer 7 Pro suffice to keep the temps reasonable instead of the more expensive (and larger) Tuniq Tower?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Cob]

If you can wait for the Q9450 then do so. The 12mb cache and SSE4 should make it worth the wait for both FAH and video encoding).


As for a motherboard, if you do go for the Q6600 and only want 3ghz out of it, then a cheap P35 will do the job. Something like the Abit IP35-E will do the trick.

If you do wait for the Q9450, then wait til it appears before deciding on a board (tho the Abit I've mentioned should be fine).

Cooling wise, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro should be fine for a Q6600 at 3ghz. And it should be more than enough for a Q9450 too.

 

[theheyes]

Thankyou very much Cob.

I did think about the Q9450... very tempting. I was considering waiting anyway to see if they shaved some off the price of the Q6600 at least.

I decided I'll probably go for the slightly more expensive Abit IP35 board for the RAID controller because theres a faint whisper in the back of my head thats saying I might use it for backup purposes in future.

The grand total so far is £405 with the Q6600. I've seen the Q9450 advertised for £219 on another site so that would bring the total up to £467 which is just slightly over budget.

Decisions decisions...

I think I'll probably end up with the Q9540...

 

[Cob]

I'm waiting for a good 4 weeks after they are released before getting a Q9450 (tho I was planning on them being on sale by now). Their price should drop a bit by then (I paid £380 for my Q6600 on release day and it was down to £320 within a month).

 

[Berserker]

So that's why you're slacking so much. I dunno - give you loads of credit and what happens next?

 

[Cob]

So that's why you're slacking so much. I dunno - give you loads of credit and what happens next?

True.

I sold my Q6600 waaaaaaaaaaay too early. It was looking like the Q9450 would appear at any time, and the prices of used B3 Q6600's were dropping like a stone. But they bottomed-out pretty soon after I sold mine (got £120 for mine at auction, and they started going for £85 in MM a couple of days later. You'll be hard pressed to find a B3 as cheap as that atm).

 

[theheyes]

Oooooh more waiting!

I might have to buy the other parts and maybe borrow a CPU to keep it warm until the price drops!

 

[MartinBen]

I was wondering if it was worth getting 2 x Xeon E5420's for a folding rig?

 

[Cob]

I was wondering if it was worth getting 2 x Xeon E5420's for a folding rig?

Hell yeah.

 

[MartinBen]

OK - was thinking of pairing them up with a Supermicro X7DWA-N mobo but OCUK don't seem to sell them

Also need FB-DDR2 DIMMS but prices seem quite low at moment.

Just wondering what sort of O/s I would need as I think I read Win XP Home only supports 1 cpu whereas Windows will see this rig as 2 cpus

 

[HeX]

Wouldn't an ATi card be better for a folding rig?