[F]olding box[en]

[budec]

Alright, I have a BUNCH of hard drives, network cards, video cards, cases, psu, etc. (enough to fit atleast 5 machines)

The only thing I need is mobo, cpu and memory. For a $1000 total, what would be the most bang for my buck? What proc/mobo would you recommanded... dualies, bunch of cheap celerons, etc?

Power/cooling isn't an issuse (my apartment charges me a "flat" rate on electricy. )

 

[RedShred]

buy some combo's with integrated everything... if their gonna crunch anyway, who cares about steller graphics and dynamic sound

 

[Mattman]

Look for some cheap MB/CPU combos and you should be able to come in well under $1000. Frys is known for having them, but I haven't seen anyone post any deals in this forum lately.

 

[Majic]

look at biostart all in one boards and barton cpus maybe
I have 4 running like that running on a peg board wall hanging with a shelf to hold powersupply, hd and hub its a nice setup and out of the way

 

[RedShred]

look at biostart all in one boards and barton cpus maybe
I have 4 running like that running on a peg board wall hanging with a shelf to hold powersupply, hd and hub its a nice setup and out of the way

Show me... please.

 

[Arkaine23]

I conserve space and money by scrapping HDD's and CD-rom drives for client layers and making one box into an LTSP server with Overclockix_LTSP Linux. Just try to get boards that have onboard video and Linux PXE-bootable NIC's.

Client machines get booted in text mode by default, which leaves plenty of ram free for their ramdisks, and they fold onto the server's HDD or USB pen so WU's are stored permantly. 128mb ram for clients will be plenty.

You can run commands through ssh as root with no password from the server to the clients. For example-

ssh IP_address_of_client restart

 

[ByteDown[H]ard]

If you have most of the parts then the following links on newegg will show you an all-in-one gigabyte MB, 128mb ddr 2700 and a duron 1.8 for a total of about $126, free S&H. The gigabyte board comes with OC software,EasyTune4, so you may be able to eek out 2ghz from each processor.

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=20-146-540&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=13-128-217&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=19-104-160&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

If you have a grand to spend you could get 6-7 machines easy...

 

[unhappy_mage]

sounds like it's time to get a bunch of cheap machines and netboot them. with what you save on disks you can buy more machines. they'll need enough ram to keep the whole system in the air at once, I'd recommend 256 or a small, small distro (zipslack?). googling "netboot linux" is a good way to get started. you need adapters with the "boot roms" so that they know how to look for the server. check if the onboard lan's do or get cheap $7 10/100s with the rom. either way, boot them over network and then put folding in the startup scripts. there need be nothing to kill it off in the shutdown scripts, or any shutdown scripts for that matter. just kill power.

good luck with this. I plan to do something similar when I get the $. think 2008

 

[jovetata]

im looking in the forsale/fortrade forum here to find some goos deals on used mobo's and cpus. u can easily find people selling 2.2+ overclocked athlons. just check for stability before u start crunching.

 

[FLECOM]

and if you dont want to do that... you can build 6 folders on newegg for $913...

5x 2500+ Barton Retail
1x 2500+ Barton OEM (damn 5 proc limit... your gonna need an HSF for this one)
6x 128mb ddr
6x M7VIG

 

[Majic]

OK here are some pics as per request:
Here is the 4 rack mounted to the wall:

And here is a view with keyboard and monitor:

 

[jovetata]

is folding the "only" thing u do with these machines? or do u run some sort of server with these? i ask cuz i have 3 computers that all they do is fold annd i wanna know what else i can do with em, some other productive thing u know...

BTW, that is a thing of beauty what u have there

 

[RedShred]

Thank you, sir. Very interesting.

 

[Majic]

I bought and built them to only fold. thats all they do. biostart m7vig pro board all with 2ghz cpus and 128-256 megs of ram, 250-350watt power supplies, 8-40gig hd's, speeze heat sinks with thermaltake smart fans on them and a decent 4 port KVM that came with cables. All ready had the walls done in my basement. Used standard peg wall hooks and a zip tie to hold them up there. Same with the KVM just no ties. Also a 5 Port hub that connects it to my router.

 

[Arkaine23]

LTSP layers net-booted in text mode will do fine with 128mb ram, even running two instances of F@H. Overclockix LTSP does text mode boot for clients by default and runs 2 instances of F@H by default (due to small gains in folding performance on most cpu's, and especially on P4's with HT). Samba is also preconfigured so EM3 can monitor all your Linux boxen.

 

[[H]alcyon441]

That is damn sweet setup majic. Ballpark how much did that run you?

 

[Majic]

went and priced it just now looks like 225 a system includes 2ghz cpu, heatsink, mobo, 40gig HD, 128 ram, 300w ps, rounded cable for HD ($2.99), then add 25 dollars for the 5 port hub and 79 dollars for the 4 port KVM so say about 1 grand if you bought all the parts from scratch and built it. sheet of peg beg 13 dollars i think been awhile since i price it to do the basement. and the rack was like 6 dollars at lowes.

big ways to cut cost drop the hard drive thats like 50 bucks from each system and get smaller ones or use a diskless setup. shop around and see what you may already have laying around to fill those spots.