tour of my setup

A forum just for SPCR's folding team... by request.

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
cordis
Posts: 1082
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:56 pm
Location: San Jose

tour of my setup

Post by cordis » Sun Jan 31, 2010 1:45 am

Alright, there was a request for some pics/info on my setup, thought I'd start a new thread so it didn't clog up some other thread. I'll put in some pics as thumbnails, but they're pretty slow to upload, be warned. Anyway, let's start with...

Image

My HTPC, an NMeidaPC red wood case (more details here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811204039) with an i7-860, zalman cnps 9700 cooler, gts 250 card, windows xp. This case is cool, almost all wood, but it basically has one big 140mm fan in the back. The problem is that there's a shelf near the top for the hard drives, which limits the cpu heatsink height, that's why I went with the zalman cooler. Not the quietest cooler, but I cranked down the fan speed enough to get it to tolerable levels. That fix, along with a replacement of the fan with a 140 mm yate loon keeps it resonably quiet.
power use: 250W
ppd: ~9500
ppd/watt ~38
Definitely not my most efficient machine, but I use it to record shows and play blu-rays, I don't want to add the 2nd gpu it would take to make it efficient. Maybe if they modify smp to use threads it will get more efficient.

Image

This is a more recent build, a fortress ft-02, intel Q9300 @ 2.5GHz, nocuta nh-u12p cooler, dual gtx 260s, ubuntu linux. It's a nice case, but the heat coming out of the top is pretty intense. I really got it becaue it fits nicely into this ikea table leg/computer shelf.
power: ~373W
ppd: ~17600
ppd/watt: 47

Image

My big system, a cosmos S case, intel Q9400 @ 2.66GHz, scythe mugen 2 cooler, gtx 295 and a gtx 725, ubuntu linux. I replaced most of the coolermaster fans with scythes and noctuas, I'm really surprised how quiet it is with the 295 and the 275 in it.
power: ~463W
ppd: ~26000
ppd/watt: 56 ppd/watt
My most efficient system, probably due to the gtx 295. One of these days I need to upgrade it to an i7, might wait for the 6 core ones to come out.

Image
mod on side
Image

A micro-atx system, a silverstone sg-01 with a q9550 at 2.83GHz, a low profile zalman cooler,a gtx285 with a thermalright hr-03 gtx heat sink on it, windows vista. My only attempt to go with a heat sink change on a card, it keeps the card cool enough to overclock a bit, but I had to cut a big hole in the side to put a fan on it. I originally bought the system from endpcnoise.com, but I added the card and upgraded it with the q9550 later.
power: 267W
ppd: 11450
ppd/watt: 42.9 ppd/watt

Image

Another micro-atx system, the case is kind of like an apevia x-qpack but an older crappier version, picked it up on sale at Fry's one day on impulse, has an Atom 330 with an ION, a gts 250, ubuntu linux. A lower power system, but I've grown to hate the case, I might shut this one down when get into the top 500. Replaced the fans, but this case is so flimsy it's still pretty noisy.
power: 127W
ppd: 6360
ppd/watt: 50
Not bad, but not sure if it's worth the noise to keep it going.

Image

My old htpc, a silverstone lc17 case (maybe an older variant), Q6700 dual core, noctua nh-u9? heatsink, 9600 gso, windows xp. This one is definitely getting shut down sometime soon, it's not wildy efficient. I originally also got this from endpcnoise.com, but swapped out the guts a while ago. Might move the previous Atom330/ION system into this case and ditch the crappy case.
power: 165W
ppd: 4580
ppd/watt: 27.75
One of my least efficient systems. Have to turn this off sometime.

Image

My nas backup, a chenbro es34069 case, Atom 330, ubuntu linux, modded to have a 120mm fan blowing right down onto the cpu. This case is still a little noisy, but it is a nice form factor for holding 4 hard drives and a mini-itx board. Need to upgrade this thing one of these days, the original atom 330 boards are pigs, I'd love to see an intel culv on a mini-itx board.
power: 67W
ppd: 940
ppd/watt: 14
My least efficient system, but it runs at low enough power that I'll probably keep it running. Maybe one day I'll transfer the hard drives to one of my more efficient systems and shut this thing down. Or get a more efficient motherboard for it.

URL=http://img197.imageshack.us/i/img0402l.jpg/]Image[/URL]

Now this one is just an acer timeline notebook with a dual core cpu and windows 7. It runs the smp client pretty well, and it's really efficient. I only recently put a kill a watt on this thing and was amazed at the power consumption.
power: 18W
ppd: 775
ppd/watt: 43

So that's what I have up and running now, as I said, when I get into the top 500 I'll probably shut a couple of these machines off, and drop back into the 60k or even 50k ppd range. And keep in mind, these ppd numbers are roughly best case numbers coming out of Fahmon, actual reported numbers are always a bit lower.

frenchie
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1346
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2008 4:53 am
Location: CT

Post by frenchie » Mon Feb 01, 2010 12:38 am

* Frenchie pics up his jaw, and puts a bucket under his mouth to avoid drowning the keyboard :shock:


Thanks cordis.

Do you use also those systems for something (gaming, coding....) or are they just mainly for folding ?

erikt
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:53 am
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Post by erikt » Mon Feb 01, 2010 5:42 am

OK, I must be doing something really stupid or I simply don't know what ppd stands for. How can you get 6360 points-per-day out of an Atom?

I'm getting ~1900 ppd from my Opteron 1216 and you've got me wondering if I can't somehow bump that up.

ET

frenchie
Friend of SPCR
Posts: 1346
Joined: Tue Jul 08, 2008 4:53 am
Location: CT

Post by frenchie » Mon Feb 01, 2010 5:45 am

erikt wrote:OK, I must be doing something really stupid or I simply don't know what ppd stands for. How can you get 6360 points-per-day out of an Atom?

I'm getting ~1900 ppd from my Opteron 1216 and you've got me wondering if I can't somehow bump that up.

ET
How about with a GTS 250 :wink: :
cordis wrote:Another micro-atx system [...] has an Atom 330 with an ION, a gts 250, ubuntu linux

erikt
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 49
Joined: Mon Mar 28, 2005 9:53 am
Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

Post by erikt » Mon Feb 01, 2010 5:50 am

frenchie wrote:
erikt wrote:OK, I must be doing something really stupid or I simply don't know what ppd stands for. How can you get 6360 points-per-day out of an Atom?

I'm getting ~1900 ppd from my Opteron 1216 and you've got me wondering if I can't somehow bump that up.

ET
How about with a GTS 250 :wink: :
cordis wrote:Another micro-atx system [...] has an Atom 330 with an ION, a gts 250, ubuntu linux
Thanks! Didn't realize you could get so much out of GPU-folding. I've tried it with my office W7 machine but for some reason the GPU client doesn't like my 8800-GTS-512 SLI configuration.
ET

cordis
Posts: 1082
Joined: Thu Jan 15, 2009 10:56 pm
Location: San Jose

yes

Post by cordis » Mon Feb 01, 2010 11:08 am

The Atom333/GTS 250 system was something I wanted to try to see how low I could get the cpu overhead and have gpu power dissipation dominate the system dissipation. And it does wok, although the cpu is pretty close to being completely swamped in that system, in my other Atom system I can run smp folding on it, whereas in the gpu system I can't. I have a couple uniprocessor clients running on it, and I have the motherboard ION also folding, but that's really pushing it. Normally a 250 wouldn't give you 6360 ppd, but 250 + ION both folding does. The ION is a little underpowered, though, for some occasional big WUs it can't finish them in the deadline, so the actual ppd of the system is probably somewhat lower than this idealized number.

And Frenchie, yeah, they're pretty much for folding at this point. I have a couple of software ideas I've been toying with trying on this set of systems, but I don't have much of anything done with those, so at this point they just crank out ppd. And I do use a few of the systems day to day, the HTPC and the timeline get a lot of use, and a couple of the other systems get some sporadic use. I'm not really a gamer though, sometimes I feel like I should try a game or two out on one of these systems, and see what it's like. One of these days. ;)

dereksbelanger
Posts: 123
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 5:59 am
Location: Worcester, MA, USA

Re: tour of my setup

Post by dereksbelanger » Mon Feb 01, 2010 11:32 am

cordis wrote:Now this one is just an acer timeline notebook with a dual core cpu and windows 7. It runs the smp client pretty well, and it's really efficient. I only recently put a kill a watt on this thing and was amazed at the power consumption.
power: 18W
ppd: 775
ppd/watt: 43
HA! I've got a Dell Inspiron 6000 (Intel [email protected]) that runs almost identical to your Acer. I tried folding SMP on it just as a test/joke - but it turned out to be one of my best and most efficient producers.

dereksbelanger
Posts: 123
Joined: Thu Feb 26, 2009 5:59 am
Location: Worcester, MA, USA

Post by dereksbelanger » Mon Feb 01, 2010 1:22 pm

Nice write up, Cordis. Thanks!

aristide1
*Lifetime Patron*
Posts: 4284
Joined: Fri Apr 04, 2003 6:21 pm
Location: Undisclosed but sober in US

Post by aristide1 » Tue Feb 02, 2010 6:46 pm

Can I see your electric meter?

I don't get to see a lot of things moving at Mach 2. 8)

Post Reply