What components for a F@H rig?

jits h

jits h

New member
Hey guys,

Been wanting to make a dedicated F@H rig for sometime now, as my main rig is AMD based but too slow. But never come across the chance to do it. There is some help I need though, for instance, what brand/power rating PSU would be best? I've had a look around but I for my F@H rig I do not want to be spending a fortune. Also need some help on RAM, what RAM would be the best? And does ram really matter when folding?

Also, what CPU's/GPU's would be good for folding but not cost quite a lot?

Also forgot to add, would a stock cooler for a CPU be ok in maintaining decent temps?
 
long term is is more efficient to have a multi CPU set up (SR2 for example) but this obviously comes with a much greater up front cost.

best i would say is go for a decent brand of PSU (corsair for example) doesn't matter if it is bronze, silver, gold or platinum rated but the higher the better.

ram doesn't really matter so so whether it is slow DDR2 like 800MHz or DDR3 at 2000MHz it makes no difference.

you could always go for a old dual xeons workstation off ebay they tend to go quite cheap and have a lot of power

for GPUs i would suggest at the moment a GTX560Ti is the best performance per watt card and a couple of them brought used make for epic PPD though they are like gold dust if buying used (bare in mind that the cards can run on PCI-E2.0 x4 and still not get a drop in PPD).

stock heatsink should be fine if you aren't overclocking but then it depends on the CPU you would end up getting

hope this helps
smile.gif
 
Mr. Strawberry said:
long term is is more efficient to have a multi CPU set up (SR2 for example) but this obviously comes with a much greater up front cost.

best i would say is go for a decent brand of PSU (corsair for example) doesn't matter if it is bronze, silver, gold or platinum rated but the higher the better.

ram doesn't really matter so so whether it is slow DDR2 like 800MHz or DDR3 at 2000MHz it makes no difference.

you could always go for a old dual xeons workstation off ebay they tend to go quite cheap and have a lot of power

for GPUs i would suggest at the moment a GTX560Ti is the best performance per watt card and a couple of them brought used make for epic PPD though they are like gold dust if buying used (bare in mind that the cards can run on PCI-E2.0 x4 and still not get a drop in PPD).

stock heatsink should be fine if you aren't overclocking but then it depends on the CPU you would end up getting

hope this helps
smile.gif
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply
smile.gif


At the moment, Although I do really want a SR2 setup
tongue.gif
I simply cannot afford that at the time being, Im probably going for a single CPU setup. What CPU would give good enough PPD aside from the xeons?
 
Just out of curiosity would a dual chipset server motherboard work for folding? Its the cheap alternative I see to a SR2
tongue.gif
 
What PPD do you want to produce, and how much are you willing to pay per month in extra electricity?
 
sheroo said:
What PPD do you want to produce, and how much are you willing to pay per month in extra electricity?
Click to expand...

PPD wise, at least 20K+ for the CPU. And as for the electricity, I don't think I will be folding 24/7. 4-6 hours a day usually
 
mini me said:
PPD wise, at least 20K+ for the CPU. And as for the electricity, I don't think I will be folding 24/7. 4-6 hours a day usually
Click to expand...

For a single CPU to only run 6 hours a day and produce 20K is a lot to ask. A 2600K 24/7 OC'd will produce 30-35K.
 
sheroo said:
For a single CPU to only run 6 hours a day and produce 20K is a lot to ask. A 2600K 24/7 OC'd will produce 30-35K.
Click to expand...

Agreed.

It'd be cheaper to pay the extra electric and fold 24/7 than spend a fortune and then fold only 6 hours a day!

Best thing you can do for a dedicated rig is get as many cores and threads of the lowest binning, for example two i7 920s as opposed to one 990x.

Then populate your server board with cheap Fermis and overclock them a bit (GPU OCing should still work).

If you can find a ~8 pci-e lane board with support for a couple i7s then you'll be laughing - plus electric bill won't climb that high if you're using cards that don't require external power connectors.

8x ~50w from the pci-e lanes = 400w + 150w per socket = 700w + 75 for drives, fans, the board, and other misc components = 750~775w x1.25 (Bronze PSU + a little aging) = 937.5 ~ 968.75 watts per hour from the wall, in exchange for (assuming using 8x GT 430/ 440 & two i7 quads at 20k each) about 72k PPD
 
mini me said:
PPD wise, at least 20K+ for the CPU. And as for the electricity, I don't think I will be folding 24/7. 4-6 hours a day usually
Click to expand...

CPU folding is best left at 24/7 because of the quick return bonus, ie the faster you turn the WU in the more points you will get. You will lose a lot of ppd by only running 4-6 hours per day.

For example if you wanted to limit folding to 150 hours per month, you'd get more points overall by running the cpu client 6-7 days straight (150 hours) than you would if you split it up to 4-6 hours per day over a month's time.
 
riotcity76 said:
CPU folding is best left at 24/7 because of the quick return bonus, ie the faster you turn the WU in the more points you will get. You will lose a lot of ppd by only running 4-6 hours per day.

For example if you wanted to limit folding to 150 hours per month, you'd get more points overall by running the cpu client 6-7 days straight (150 hours) than you would if you split it up to 4-6 hours per day over a month's time.
Click to expand...

Well said m8
 
mini me said:
Ah ok, thanks for that, I'll keep it in mind
smile.gif
Click to expand...

You can let the client run just a single unit at a time. That way it will fold untill it's done and you will get the most quick return bonus, but it wont automaticly download a new work unit once its finished thus you wont be wasting the bonus on the next work unit untill you are ready.

Also, it might be worth mentioning how much you're looking at spending, that way we can give you suggestions more appropreate to what you can afford.

Lastly. If you really want to stick to folding just a few hours per day, you could focus a rig towards GPU folding rather than GPU. This is because GPU work units don't have a quick return bonus, so PPD isn't effected if the client is stopped/paused over night or when ever.

Edit:

Over the past few months I have sorted myself a folding rig which is a HP XW6400 (Dual C2D based Xeons) and has dual PCI-E 16x slots (one is 4x wired but that doesnt matter for folding).

It doesn't produce the most PPD in the world but it's good for what it cost me.
 
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