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When is it not worth it?

S

seapirate

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 19, 2003
Messages
283
I have some older parts that I can put together to make whole systems. They range from 200mhz to 350mhz. I would not have to buy a thing, just put them together and plug them in and they would be ready to fold. Is it worth it? Or should I just let them sit until I have a different need for them to fill?

 
Yeah....there's a point where the cost of running them (electricity bill are teh sukc +1) outweighs the amonut of work they do.

I would personally look for stuff with moar powa!!11

 
The older stuff would work great for the timeless WU but you have to factor in the extra $$ to power those machines each month..
 
My basic rule of thumb is Pentium3 or higher. Anything less just sucks up more power than it's worth (unless it's already running, like a relatives computer, then it's still fine). Ideally though, 1GHz+ is where you'd wanna be.

Full Folding Ahead!

 
Power is not a problem. My dad has his own machine shop and I have a corner area that I can setup my equipment in. Its stuff that I have thats just laying around and not doing anything at the moment. Old servers, pc based firewalls that I sometimes setup, and other misc older equipment.

 
Yeah, but your dad is paying for the power, and chances are since it's a business he's paying more. Companies tend to get boned on utilities.

Full Folding Ahead!

 
I 2nd the 1 GHZ limit. I've got a 400mhz PII going and it does a 241 Gromac in like a week and a half, but it runs 24/7 no matter what.

Fold on people! For tuxedoedShrimp

 
If it will run with SSE boost then your probably ok at 500 Mhz running 24/7.
In theory a 250 mhz boxen running 24/7 will finish a workunit just within the time limit but it gets a bit iffy.

Luck........:D
 
450mhz P3 is about as low as I would go.....actually that is what all mine are right now :rolleyes:
 
tsuehpsyde said:
Yeah, but your dad is paying for the power, and chances are since it's a business he's paying more. Companies tend to get boned on utilities.

Full Folding Ahead!

Click to expand...

Companies? Just regular people are getting boned big time, I know my power bill keep going only one direction, UP :rolleyes: :D
 
BillR said:
Companies? Just regular people are getting boned big time, I know my power bill keep going only one direction, UP :rolleyes: :D
Click to expand...

Yes, but businesses get boned harder for everything from power to gas to cable TV/Internet.

Full Folding Ahead!

 
Back to the thread - and tryng to erase the mental image of BillR, BONED, and UP -
Fire em' up!!
Learning experience.

 
seapirate said:
Power is not a problem. My dad has his own machine shop and I have a corner area that I can setup my equipment in. Its stuff that I have thats just laying around and not doing anything at the moment. Old servers, pc based firewalls that I sometimes setup, and other misc older equipment.

Click to expand...
In that case go ahead and fool around with them. It will be a great learning experience if nothing else. I remember the days when I was running 200mhz-350mhz computers for folding.
 
You could also sell them to people who need cheap Internet-only machines, and take the money and buy something faster.

Say you have 4 machines; sell them for $50 each (if you can). $200 with which to buy a dedicated folding box. You won't be buying a new top of the line one, but it's easily doable, and you'll have greater output than 4 slow machines...
 
Yes, better to sell the old hardware. Then get a $70 Fry's CPU/MB combo, throw in some RAM and a HD, and (maybe) buy a case to put it in.

 
Actually the power is a on a Peak Usage billing, my equipment does not use near what the machinery uses. As for selling the equipment, that would involve getting it into cases, which I do not have, but PSU's I do have.

 
I would also go with the 1gig (or close) or better. I just pulled out a celeron 533 and a BP6 with 2x400s out of the farm, the cost of running them for me just was not worth it.
 
I think we can sum this up by saying that you can run anything you want to run for as long as you feel like running it. If you factor in other things like cost and actual production, then the answer changes because a whole bunch of old boxen are likely outproduced by one cheap new machine that uses less power than the whole bunch o' boxen.
 
ah, the lovely life cycle of computing. There is definitely a point of no return, especially with something as intensive as this. Even as a simple browsing and email machine, I'd have to suggest an upgrade occasionally.
 
I do not suggest running anything slower than a PII and if Tinker core proteins get phased out of the timeless WU's I would not suggest anything that doesn't have SSE or is below 1 Ghz if it's only use is folding. My current slowest running machine is a PIII 800. Hopefully the slowest machine will soon be a PIII 600. Although, if I had another PSU and a bit more RAM I'd probably get my dually PII 266 running again. The dually puts out about 30 PPD total on timeless and the PIII 600 does about the same. The PIII 800 is currently putting out 44 PPD on timeless WU's. A Morgan core 1 Ghz Duron does about 86 PPD on 600 pointers. As long as I can afford the electric bill, I'll keep running them more than likely. The Duron is at a friend's house and the PIII 600 will be over there soon, also. He's given me free power for over a year and a half and told me to bring machines in until the circuit can't handle any more.

This is not a question that can be simply answered. The point of "not worth it" is different for every person. Sometimes, due to circumstances, people have to change the point where it's not worth it. There are a lot of members here that are sitting on perfectly good machines that aren't running because they can't afford to power them. Luckily, some machines have come back on and others do intermittantly. Hell, I'd like to have a couple of the non-running machines to put in my apartment for heating purposes. :D

 
Yeah, that is the other side benefit, heat output. No lugging logs in to warm the shop with a wood burning stove, it is now heated with cpu cycles. :D

 
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