Senior Project

[TalRW]

My HS requires a senior project where students have to put in 40 hours of work. I partnered up with this kid who does SETI (who has agreed that the project we will do will fold instead of crunch )and we plan to get jobs and work for 40 hours minimum and build a folding farm. But either way being teenagers we will most likely only be able to get minimum wage so even for 80 hours (may work more than the minimum) we won't really be able to make all that much money unfortunatly. So we were wondering what processor combos would give us the most point per day. I.E. should we go quality over quanity (with like only 1 or 2 P4 HT processors) or quanity over quality (as many 1ghz CPU's as we can afford)

Also if anyone could tell us what processors are great for folding (duron/celeron/pentium/athlon ect) any help would be appriciated.

Edit: Assume we make only this 80hours * 6.75 (minimum wage) = $540
and that we may be able to get stuff like hard drives and network cards donated and mainly the 540 would be spent on motherboards and CPU's

[iNterBeiNg]

I would say to go with some athlon xp rigs, they seem to have the best price/performance ratio

[Andyman902042]

Yes get athlon XP rigs. Order a few of the cheapest refurbished motherbaords you can find. Newegg has them for about $30 here (http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=list&catalog=22&Type=Refurbish)(at the moment) but you'll have to order a few different kinds scence there usually a limit of 2. They go quick, sometimes you'll see it then 5 minutes later it's out of stock so when you see them, go for it. If you can find it cheaper somewhere else go for it.

Here's (http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=324946&highlight=ltsp) what you'll want for the OS. This way you just need 1 cdrom drive and no hardrives for your whole farm. It's also linux so its legally free. You need motherboards that can boot from the network to use it.

For the ram get 256 MB of the cheapest PC2100 ram you can find for each layer. FAH mostly relies on raw MHz rather then FSB so slow ram is fine. Just don't forget to overclock it.
I'd type more but I have to go.

[Deathknight]

Yeah I will also recommend the athlon xp route. Very cheap per layer price if you pick your motherboard and cpu out carefully. You will probably want a board with onboard video, definitly with onboard lan.

I have seen a bunch of threads here over time about building cheap farms, one of em was really recent though so I will see if I can find that one for ya ;)

Here we go this is the one:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=320477&highlight=fold+farm+cheap

[ChasR]

The Mobile XP 2500+ is the most bang for the buck. It's unlocked so you can run up the multiplier without running up the FSB. I have 5 or 6 of them running at a minimum of 2.4 GHz and one at 2.6GHz.

[veryhumid]

sweet project! another vote for the athlon xp. if you need a net card and vid card I will be happy to donate!

[TalRW]

cool thanks for all the idea's guys (calling taco bell tonight about a job because I saw they were hiring). So far we are already off to a decent start with both of us owning spare 500 mhz rigs :attn: . Looks like we will be going with athlons and can hopefully get a few layers, also thanks so much for that linux link, we were planning on getting HD's for each layer.

Edit: My one question is about that linux OS, would it be able to run FAH 5.0 or 5.2 or would it only be able to run 4.0, and would that hurt our PPD, because if it does I may just see if we can get some people to donate low capacity drives.

[matrixzen]

I also recommend using AMDs because they'll finish those tinkers like nothing.

[Mark620]

Please read:

Overclockix LTSP 2.0 release:
http://overclockix.octeams.com/How_to_setup_a_Folding_Farm.htm

--Written by user Overdoze http://overclockix.octeams.com, September 26th, 2004
What this cdrom can do?
The most efficient, cheapest, fastest (under 30 minutes setup time), easiest way to build a cluster folding farm. No hardrive, monitor, keyboard, mouse is ever needed. Higher folding production points since it is folding using windows client rather than slow linux client. Draw less power and generate less heat than normal farm since there is no hardrives, extra peripherals etc.

[qualhiveldorf]

I agree with everything above also for hsf's just get a decent copper hsf Newegg has them around $12 and they perform fairly well, my bro got a Barton 2800+ to 3200+ speeds with a cheap $8 copper hsf. Also opt for arctic silver its only $5-7 and one tube will last you a very long time, considering you won't remount your hsf twice a day seeing as downtime = BAD!!! for folding. In your senior project don't forget to mention all ways of boosting production, farming, borging and overclocking.

[Arkaine23]

Ask and you shall recieve. I know where you can get Overclockix LTSP v2.1. And BTW, it uses the latest 5.02 windows folding client.

Here's the breakdown-

Build your server-

You can use one of your 500mhz boxes for it. It'll need about 2.5 GB if you install it to HDD, and that will have to be a linux partition.

You should be able to put together athlon XP layers for under $150 each. You'll want a router or switch to network all the boxes together. Then just build a rack to hold the layers.