Why do you guys fold/crunch?

[Makhaira]

Just been browsing this forum for the first time and wondering what motivates the majority of you guys. As far as I can see there are going to be two camps, the ones who are inherently competitive and just care about how they get higher on the leaderboards with uber rigs, and those who are looking to put their machines to charitable use and foot the electricity bill themselves (and several hundred pounds to build a specific machine for it in some cases!).

Intrigued to hear what makes you guys tick!

Regardless, kudos to you guys for what you're achieving, both technically and in terms of charity!

 

[FluffySheep]

I'm a bit of both - I built my main PC from scratch, not an uber, but as a cheap but powerful (CPU at 30% above stock helped!) while searching for ET.

I started in 1998ish and haven't given up since

FluffySheep

 

[dekez]

Everyone has different reasons, these are 3 main reasons why I do distributed computing.

1) The science - by doing this you are actively contributing to help find cures for diseases, space research, predicting climate change etc. Some people give money to charity, I prefer this as it's hands on and I also enjoy the other 2 reasons.

2) Community - you won't find a friendlier part of the forum than here, there is some great banter and competitiveness as we try to move up the ranks within the team and banding together as a whole to take on other teams and compete in events.

3) The gear - There are very few things that actually need you to build a top of the line system, by crunching you really are making the most of your machine - how many people on here have i7s to browse the web and play the odd game? With DC the challenge is to build the most cost effective powerful crunching machine that is stable 24/7, even under constant load. I love building rigs and this gives me a good reason too.

edit: It can be expensive as you want it to be, some people just use there spare cpu cycles while they've got the machine on for other tasks which they would have done anyway. The more enthusiastic among us will build dedicated rigs, but there is no minimum level, anyone can contribute any amount.

Those be my reasons

 

[loudbob]

Ditto

 

[Marine Iguana]

What Dekez said

 

[ToxicTBag]

I do it for the camaraderie never met a nicer bunch of peeps ever.
The cost well i don't drink i don't do the other so .....hey wait a minute i don't do much of anything... its a noble cause is folding and crunching, true the crunching may be a bit "far out" for most but i love taking long bets.

Can be fun, but if it got too competative don't think i would enjoy it as much although we all like to needle each other now and again its never malicious or anything other than good banter.

Seti till i die ...

 

[Biffa]

There are a myriad of reasons to run folding@home, one of the strongest seems to be for personal reasons, perhaps a family member has died or has a disease and they feel they want to contribute something to the medical research that may one day help to find a cure.

But me, I just do it for all the hot chicks.