Between the noise (these are not silent PCs), the electric demand (I had to split them among 3 separate circuits), and the heat production I think your college would expell you Zhentar.

The heat is the most unexpected side effect. If you combine the wattage from 15 machines, 6 monitors, and the required hubs, routers, and switches you get alot of heat. It's like running a space heater inside your apartment 24 hours a day. Not a bad thing if it were cold here, but it's been in the 90's for the last 3 weeks.

So the electrical cost of running a farm is almost double what you'd expect it to be. Add to the cost of the wattage for the actual machines the cost of removing that heat from the building.

rusty, I'm going to be in madison, wisconsin, and I understand it can get a little cool up there.... don't think I'll have to worry too much, especially since my main power consumption will (hopefully) have its radiator outside the window....

my power consumption estimates are like this...

2 nodes-

2*(65 watt processor + 15(pulled that out of my ass) mobo, + 15 RAM)

My laptop's power brick can deliver up to 70 watts; the other one will probably be similar; and once I get my folding farm set up I won't leave them off folding wich means the two combined propably won't ever break 30 watts;

then there's my current computer, I'd guess 150 watts or less, based on what I've read here; and my next computer probably will generate considerable heat; with overclocking and watercooling and maybe even peltiers...... but I'll be scheming how to use the outside air to fix that problem

and the noise? a SPCR member will be sleeping 5 (or less) feet from them; no one else will be able to hear them, though the noise will probably drive me crazy....

but of course, they'll just be thankful that they have such an uber, dedicated computer science student!

so thankful that they'll load up a few uber-labs/servers with F@H just for Zhentar! (at least, in my dream last night they did..... )

The problem for him depend on wether or not he can adjust the heatr in his room individually. I remember that in my dorm days the room temps were not user adjustable.

On the plus side, he may be able to rent his room out to the football players as a sauna.

Radeonman, I warned you about temperature puns. So cool it.

If the heaters not adjustable, I can always cover/restrict the vent to adjust it myself....

if they have a no switches rule I'm doomed though!

Sauna? I'll have to build a bong cooler or two just to keep the humidity up

Groan. Okay, you win, Radeonman!

radeon and wussboy were sure having a heated discussion...

(yes, that was the best I could come up with. No laughing)

disguised attempt to push up their posts numbers

So maybe we should have a "cooling off" period for these hot-heads?



Sorry, I felt like I was missing out on all the fun

So, to get low in temperatures, one must go "far in heat"?

Maybe we should ask Kelvin...

A new motto? By itself, let the silence "sell; see us" fold.

We'll succeed by degrees, until our boxen "frees" us.

ARRGGHH!

Okay! Take away my entire post count just STOP THE PUNNING!

Besides, most of them were pretty luke-warm anyways.

Sorry, couldn't help myself.

No need to get all fired up, let off some steam somewhere else.

Okay guys, time to stop artificially increasing our post counts...... I can't think of any more puns

okay, an update.... I'm only gonna buy 1 node like that set up earlier, and get it a 180 Watt fortron PSU for $20.... for the other node, I'm going to use my current computers mobo, etc, plus the 180 watt PSU, then I'll upgrade my current computer with a 2400+ ($80 now) and some full size nForce2 mobo, dunno which yet, but it will be a little more expensive than the mn31n, plus I'll have to dig up a cheap vid card.... once I pick a mobo and add it all up, it will be a bit more expensive than just 2 nodes like I planned, but I'll get a rather nice upgrade out of it too.

Probably be about $525 instead of $460 I think; since I'll have to get new PC2700 RAM.

okay an updated price list:


$95 Shuttle MN31N
$23 128Mb PC2700 cheap generic
$73 Athlon XP 2100+
$20 180w Fortron w/ Noise Killer
$20 AX-7+ NMB

$231 Total

and the other one

$85 Epox 8RDA+
$19 128mb cheap generic PC2100
$60 512mb Corsair PC2700
$73 Athlon XP 2100+
$20 180 Watt Fortron PSU
$19 Ridiculously cheap and ridiculously crappy video card
$20 AX-7+NMB

$296 Total

Grand Total: $527 w/o shipping. I'll probably recover $30 or $40 from my parents+the old 512mb PC 2100 stick.

So, two questions- first, what do you guys think, and second, who wants to make a donation for the good of the team?

What, no cases? Do you plan on tacking these mobos to the walls/ceiling?
If so, one oscillating 16 inch fan should be able to cool them all!

Just hangin' around and chillin'

actually, I'll probably mount them to a sheet of cardboard from the box everything is shipped in

these nodes should be quieter than my current system by a long shot....

my current mobo is a VIA KT266, with 512mb of 2100 DDR in it. I'm getting a 128 to replace that, the 2700 goes in the new mobo, and the 512 2100 goes someplace useful (though I don't know what yet)

um... guys, what do you think of a duron 1400+? i saw at newegg a pc-chips motherboard with a onboard duron 1400+ for $81. i was thinking of maybe getting a couple of these and see how they fold. two nodes and one powersupply would run $237 shipped.

not bad setup there, dunno how it will do though, but at that price the two combined would have to beat just an athlon XP 2100+ (oc'ed to whatever)

Does anyone know a program to benchmark F@H? I'd like to benchmark a few combos, to test how each factor affects everything (Chipset, RAM speed/timings, CPU core, and Clock vs. FSB) with the two mobos/procs I'll have....

update: I found one here: http://www.alistairbraidwood.com/html/utilities.html

I'll be testing it now to see if it will work for my purposes....

its not working for me...

Allrighty, I got it working. I got some errormsg about not being able to start the client. A little searching through the exe reveales that for some reason it assumes that the console client is called "fah.exe". I renamed the fah3console.exe file to fah.exe and seems to work now. I see in the taskmanager that a fahcore is running. (so quit all clients before you run this benching thing)

I think my set up is a little weird, partly cuz I'm using the graphical client.... I'm going to start using the console though and see if I can get this worked out.

Well, you don't have to actually use it yourself. Just have the exe in the folding dir for the bench program to use.

I keep getting an error and the benchmark crashes... I'll just use the starting number FAH gives me, though I'm not sure that its any good for my purposes.