4 x Xeon 7350's... What to do?

[vanqu1sh0939]

I have recently acquired 4 x Xeon 7350's and 64GB of ram (read: free) but do not have a motherboard to get the system up and running. Should I even bother looking for a board that could run these 4 chips and have PCI-E for at least 2 GTX570's?

Or would I be better off selling these parts and building something else entirely based of an i7 setup? The X7350's are 130W chips and put off a lot of heat. I'm looking to get as much PPD but without much heat (my apartment A/C can't keep up).

Sorry for the n00b questions, just started folding yesterday.

 

[mrbigshot]

ppd looks good on them, 58k or so using the old points system. doesn't look like there worth anything if you do sell them. there's one on ebay with 23 hours left and its $22. i would sell them for what you can get and go with a i7 setup, less ppd but 75% less power draw.

 

[Pocatello]

... just started folding yesterday.

Welcome to the team!

Glad to have you folding with us!

Most all of us are friendly and helpful.

Let us know if you need anything.

 

[musky]

These things would be power hogs for not a ton of ppd. Also, 4p socket 604 boards look to be pricey on eBay ($300 or more.) They may actually be worth something assuming they are not ES versions - they are one of the fastest processors in that generation - they are actual 2 x C2Ds to make up a quad core proc. Interesting chips, but unless you find a steal on a 4p board, i don't think they are going to be worth running for you.

 

[Kendrak]

Welcome to the team!

Solid advice so far, so I will just say welcom!

 

[jfb9301]

welcome to the team.

Solid advice so far. If those go into a 4P board, skip the 570s, unless you have a superhumogous power supply. even if these pulled current comperable to 4 C2Q instead of 8 C2Ds, the 4 CPUs could pull in the neighborhood of 600W, and 2x 570s is another 600W or so.....makes for entry level of 1200W and that's maxed out.... no drives no fans no nothing else....

Trust me, I have 2 570s, a 460 and a i7 970 in one case, and the rig is currently pulling 1170W from the wall. (more on that in another thread).

now if they are 130W per cpu and you find a 2 CPU board, it might be worth it for that as a dedicated CPU box, build another single cpu box for the 2 570s and either sell the last one or keep it for a spare.

 

[R-Type]

Welcome to the team, another of our members (NobleX13) likes to play with golden age server tech as well and may be able to point you in the right direction to bring these things online.

 

[Untitledone]

I would like to find out what those 4 put out together.... Thats higher clocked than a Q9550, and there are 4 of them. I think it might actually be worth it... probably going to pull 600 watts from the wall, but you may see like 100k ppd out of that thing...

 

[Haitch]

Taking the TPF of a dual E5440 ( Dual quad @ 2.83GHz) http://www.fahbench.net78.net/AllDataCPU.php?cpu=Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5440 @ 2.83GHz - and halving the TPF for a quad 7350 - I'd estimate a TPF of around 15:30 on a 6900, which gives a PPD of around 80K - not to shabby ....

H.

edit: And looking at the Database - that machines TPF have recently gone down the toilet - time to see what's up with that machine .....

edit2: And I cant get in to remote it There's 30K ppd out the window until I can access it again

 

[Untitledone]

See I wasnt too bad at guessing!

 

[NobleX13]

Well, I guess that's my cue to chime in! I will add something meaningful to this thread tomorrow, when I'm not dead tired.

 

[sfield]

Many of the intel 4p motherboards have a large number of PCIe slots. 11 PCIe slots in several systems I've seen, and these tend to be EFI based bios systems, so the usual limitations around number of adapters tends not to be an issue. Not sure about the systems built around the chips you've referenced.

Rather than CPU folding, you could (possibly) go hog wild with GPUs, likely with just a single CPU installed...

I have recently acquired 4 x Xeon 7350's and 64GB of ram (read: free) but do not have a motherboard to get the system up and running. Should I even bother looking for a board that could run these 4 chips and have PCI-E for at least 2 GTX570's?

Or would I be better off selling these parts and building something else entirely based of an i7 setup? The X7350's are 130W chips and put off a lot of heat. I'm looking to get as much PPD but without much heat (my apartment A/C can't keep up).

Sorry for the n00b questions, just started folding yesterday.

 

[R-Type]

Taking the TPF of a dual E5440 ( Dual quad @ 2.83GHz) http://www.fahbench.net78.net/AllDataCPU.php?cpu=Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5440 @ 2.83GHz - and halving the TPF for a quad 7350 - I'd estimate a TPF of around 15:30 on a 6900, which gives a PPD of around 80K - not to shabby ....

Not to mention it could run the big-bigadv units and very likely break over 100k there. I say definitely bring it online, it should be well worth it (particuarly compared to gpu folding). Plus, I imagine you will confidently be able to say you have the only Core-2 era hardware crunching on 6903/4 units.

 

[Untitledone]

That is another good option! 11x GPU would be interesting... 11 GTS 450's :O... wait... the CPUs would be close to that but double the power. Any other GPU's would cost a pretty penny to say the least.

 

[Untitledone]

Not to mention it could run the big-bigadv units and very likely break over 100k there. I say definitely bring it online, it should be well worth it (particuarly compared to gpu folding). Plus, I imagine you will confidently be able to say you have the only Core-2 era hardware crunching on 6903/4 units.

That is actually pretty bad ass... I haz core 2 hardware on bigbeta! 16 cores, 2.93ghz. sounds like no slouch to me even by today's standards...

 

[nwrtarget]

I have a couple of DL580 G5's here at the office that use four each of that same CPU. I haven't gotten to fold on them lately so I can't tell you what PPD they will give on 6903's but it was 80K+ PPD on old bigadv before the point changeover. If you search the forums here I have posted TPF's for that system just make sure you don't look at the DL580 G7 TPF numbers as those were FASTER (like 300K+ PPD).

With all four going it can fold 6903's and as such you should be around 90K.

 

[vanqu1sh0939]

Wow! Didn't expect such a large response.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! You rock!

I spoke to a friend who works in IT at a different company who has a Dell branded motherboard that is socket 604 that he may be able to part with. Is it worth using the Dell board? This board in question is a 4 socket system but has no PCIE for GPU's. It only has a couple PCIE 4 slots.

Is anyone able to direct me to single or double socket 604 boards with several PCIE slots? Ideally the board would have at least 4 slots for GPU folding. May build either two double CPU systems or 4 singles. I hate to part with these four Xeons and the memory as they were free and I can't sell them for much anyway, may as well use what I have.

I'm not a decently tight budget for the next couple of months (saving for a down payment on a house) so anything I can use or build with what I already own is a huge plus.

Right now I'm folding with 4 x i7's, 3 x G80 series cards and a GTX580. Hope to have another i7 running by the weekend. A friend is also donating his Q6600 and 8800GTX which should arrive early next week.

 

[musky]

I think you should skip the GPU folding on this machine. It kills ppd when running bigadv/bigbeta.

It depends on the price of the Dell board and whether you would need a special PSU or anything else proprietary to run it. I wouldn't be afraid of it assuming it works. That might be the hot setup for this thing.

If you want to run GPUs, run them on a machine that doesn't fold (or folds fairly poorly) with the processor.

 

[Kendrak]

What musky said.

Also, you may have just found your new fall/winter home heating soulution!

 

[nwrtarget]

I have seen my home i7 put out as much heat as that DL580 G5 does when folding.

There isn't much incentive to fold on only two of these CPU's if you are going to use them you need a 4 socket board. Seriously consider that Dell board and like those guys said just make sure you can make it run.

 

[vanqu1sh0939]

What musky said.

Also, you may have just found your new fall/winter home heating soulution!

Yeah, I just wished I lived some place cooler. In Phoenix Arizona, today's high is supposed to be 118 F

 

[vanqu1sh0939]

I have seen my home i7 put out as much heat as that DL580 G5 does when folding.

There isn't much incentive to fold on only two of these CPU's if you are going to use them you need a 4 socket board. Seriously consider that Dell board and like those guys said just make sure you can make it run.

I'm gonna try the Dell board for a 4 CPU build. He has the dual power supplies for this board as well. Still working out price.

Any idea on cooling for this? As I'm in an apartment I'd like to keep the noise as low as possible and the Dell board has these proprietary fan connectors and no adjustments in the BIOS for fan speed or an acoustic mode according to the seller. I have a decent amount of room so larger diameter fans are the way to go but most of what I'm finding for air cooling involves extremely high RPM 60 and 80mm fans. Air cooling is a definite, no water for now.

Perhaps this: http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...=24534&zenid=ad5e80611b9692b5843fd0fa9219c4c9 ? Although 4 of these is sorta pricey.

 

[Pocatello]

I would use some 140 mm Yate Loon fans. You might have to modify some wiring to get them to work. I would run them at 100% all of the time. They are effective and quiet. Additionally, they are only about $6 apiece.

 

[musky]

I'm gonna try the Dell board for a 4 CPU build. He has the dual power supplies for this board as well. Still working out price.

Any idea on cooling for this? As I'm in an apartment I'd like to keep the noise as low as possible and the Dell board has these proprietary fan connectors and no adjustments in the BIOS for fan speed or an acoustic mode according to the seller. I have a decent amount of room so larger diameter fans are the way to go but most of what I'm finding for air cooling involves extremely high RPM 60 and 80mm fans. Air cooling is a definite, no water for now.

Perhaps this: http://www.performance-pcs.com/cata...=24534&zenid=ad5e80611b9692b5843fd0fa9219c4c9 ? Although 4 of these is sorta pricey.

Welcome to the world of server hardware in the home...

These look promising if you can find 4 for a reasonable price - I would guess you could rig a nice quiet fan on it somehow. It is an Intel part, so they should be around. It is just a fairly tall heatpipe cooler, so it should cool pretty well.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Dual-...391?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aa81c04a7

 

[jebo_4jc]

those noctua coolers are fantastic, but pricey. Here's the slightly smaller option for $15 less, which translates to a $60 savings.

http://www.coolerguys.com/840556088165.html

 

[R-Type]

How is retention set up on skt 604? If it is some variant of their standard 4 corner model that they have used for most recent sockets then you should be able to modify a large variety of HSF's to work with it.

 

[vanqu1sh0939]

Well I got it up and running. Folding away. Right now with project 2684 I'm getting about 45,855 PPD. These X7350's are at default speed of 2.93GHz each.

Does this sound about right for PPD? I hope its worth the mind numbing noise and high power consumption, currently using stock Dell high speed 92mm fans to keep them cool. Going to work on a better, more silent solution.

 

[Kendrak]

2684 are the slowest of the -bigadv.

I figure you will get ~55k out of 6900s

 

[musky]

What OS? I assume some Linux variant. Are you running tear's kraken wrapper? If you don't know what that means, that is fine...that is why we are here...;-)

 

[R-Type]

What OS? I assume some Linux variant. Are you running tear's kraken wrapper? If you don't know what that means, that is fine...that is why we are here...;-)

I agree it sounds low, as musky said you're in good hands tweaking wise.

 

[vanqu1sh0939]

I'm actually running Server 2008 R2. I still new to all of this so I'm running the FAH GPU Tracker V2.

I assume there is a much better alternative?

 

[musky]

Try this:

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1601608

That should get you about as good as you are going get with that machine.

 

[R-Type]

Yes, Musky's guide posted above should improve your ppd by 20-30% on the same units while also allowing you to fold the 12 core minimum linux only 6903/6904 units. I think you may break 100k ppd yet with this machine.

I wish Apollo was still around to see someone actually run more obscure core 2 hardware than his damned skulltrails.

 

[vanqu1sh0939]

100K PPD would be great. Downloading Ubuntu now via torrent. Will start the install tomorrow morning sometime.

Thanks again for the help and patience with my n00bness.

 

[Activate: AMD]

thats what I love about this place, people show up with some interesting hardware

good luck with the linux install, musky's guide is pretty much idiot proof!

 

[vanqu1sh0939]

Alright, Couldn't sleep. Kept waking up thinking of my PPD

Got Ubuntu, F@H and "The Kraken" wrapper. Didn't actually take too long even though I've used Linux like 3 times ever. Too tired by this point to do anymore but will work on things, more in the morning.

PPD is at 133,000!?! Can this be correct?

Working on a 2686 WU right now. Was hoping for a 6903/6904 unit.

 

[musky]

Alright, Couldn't sleep. Kept waking up thinking of my PPD

Got Ubuntu, F@H and "The Kraken" wrapper. Didn't actually take too long even though I've used Linux like 3 times ever. Too tired by this point to do anymore but will work on things, more in the morning.

PPD is at 133,000!?! Can this be correct?

Working on a 2686 WU right now. Was hoping for a 6903/6904 unit.

Keep in mind that we don't know ppd on that machine - it is the first 4p 604 I recall seeing around here. 133K doesn't surprise me though. Those are relatively fast processors and you have 16 physical cores. The only thing to really check is if you are loading up all your cores to 100%. You may want to play with is BFS versus CFS, but it sounds like you are very close to have it optimized now.

 

[Untitledone]

I called it man, I knew this was going to be a 100K PPD+ beast. Will look forward to the points results, and definitely anticipating the 6903/6904 output.

 

[jebo_4jc]

133k would surprise me but i hope its true!

 

[R-Type]

Alright, Couldn't sleep. Kept waking up thinking of my PPD

Got Ubuntu, F@H and "The Kraken" wrapper. Didn't actually take too long even though I've used Linux like 3 times ever. Too tired by this point to do anymore but will work on things, more in the morning.

PPD is at 133,000!?! Can this be correct?

Working on a 2686 WU right now. Was hoping for a 6903/6904 unit.

Nice, can't wait for you to pull down a 6904...