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Dedicated Folding Box

N

natermeister

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 26, 2005
Messages
463
I've been wanting to start construction of a Folding/SETI farm for awhile now. Space is a consideration of mine, my plan would be to use several used IBM xSeries(I think they're 3u or 4u) servers, adding one, maybe two at a time.

The particular machines I'm looking at right now are a Quad PIII Xeon(700MHz) and a Quad P4 Xeon MP(1.5GHz), each has 2GB of RAM, and an 18.2GB and 36.4GB 10,000RPM SCSI hard drive respectively. I'm note sure on the hard drive specs, I'm guessing Ultra2 or Ultra Wide 2 for the PIII and Ultra160 for the P4.

I'd rather run them with a hard drive, my town has a shoddy power grid and running diskless could turn into a major pain in the ass. I don't know jack about running diskless, so for all I know there could be a way around that without springing for a serious UPS.

I'm thinking 4 instances of SETI on the PIII and 4 instances of F@H on the P4 box.

I'd like to hear your recommendations of this project, any input would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Nater

BTW, in the last month I've added over 3,000 points to the [H]Folding team.
 
Do you own the hardware yet? Reason I ask is that you might consider buying some Athlon 64 X2 3800s and set up some dual core machines. 4 x 700mhz is still pretty slow, especially with the larger work units. But I'd rather see you donate 4 x 700 mhz than nothing at all, if that's all you can feasibly contribute.

1 x2 3800 would out perform 4 700mhz cores, that's for sure. $152 is the cheapest I've seen them. Check out the thread about cheapest folding system parts. http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=866476
 
I'm more than likely going to get a quad 1.5 Xeon box. Just adding it up in my head, buying a couple 3800s, motherboards, memory, and two hard drives wouldn't be cheap...but I'm thinking about it.
 
Lets see..
According to the spreadsheet, you're looking at $149 for motherboard, power supply, 512mb memory (I'd use 1gb for a dual core machine, but it's not mandatory). Add $10 for a cheapo hard drive, and $152 for a X2 3800 processor. $311 for 4.0 ghz of folding power. $77.75/ghz. More so if you can overclock it a little; the X2 3800 CPUs tend to O/C to at least 2.4ghz. Plus the AMD chips are most likely going to be better at most work units (there are some exceptions).

And don't forget the power consumption. Power consumption for the AMD rig ought to be about 125 watts (plus extra to account for power supply inefficiency). Assume 75% power supply efficiency. 156 watts, 24/7 for a month = 112kwh @ 9cents/kwh = $10.11/month.

Power consumption on a quad rig is going to be heinous. 59 watts per processor, say 25 for the motherboard (probably on the low side really), 5 for a cheap old vid card, 10 for a hard drive. 276 watts, thereabouts. 345 watts assuming same power supply. 248kwh, @ 9cents/kwh = $22.32.

You can read up on power consumption on various CPUs here:
http://users.erols.com/chare/elec.htm

Power costs can really add up after awhile. Especially in the summer.
 
Well, my apartment's utilities are included in the rent. But you never know...

I pieced together a P4D system with an 805, 512MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive for $310. Two of those would seem the way to go, I'm going to see what an AMD system would cost, I'm guessing about $375-$400 when it's all said and done.
 
You might consider running Unhappy_Mages Fold Server to go mostly diskless. Especially if you plan on adding machines later. I think it will even download four work units for the quad systems you mention. The setup is mostly painless and Mage is a patient tutor. ;) Plus, you could sell off uneeded drives, etc. to buy more boxen. Saving on electricity/heat too.


 
I'm thinking that whatever I do build, should at least have one PCIe x16 slot for a lowend GPU, like an X1600, considering that GPU folding should be arriving sooner or later.
 
natermeister said:
I'm thinking that whatever I do build, should at least have one PCIe x16 slot for a lowend GPU, like an X1600, considering that GPU folding should be arriving sooner or later.
Click to expand...


a wise choice.
 
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