Fastest Machine on a budget

Team Roper · Sep 20, 2002

Hey guys,

This may have been covered recently, but I've been away for a couple months. I had a small bulldogging accident. Anyone have suggestions for the fastest cruncher for under $500. CPU/MBD/RAM etc... Thanks guys!

Doug

TC · Sep 20, 2002

Newegg has refurbished ecs boards for $35 and xp1600's for $55.

Cuper · Sep 20, 2002

What do you want to do with the Computer? Games, Crunch, Photo, Video, .....

Team Roper · Sep 20, 2002

Well.. it would pretty much be sitting in the basement as sole seti cruncher.

rogerdugans · Sep 20, 2002

Best way to add crunchers cheap, if you dare Linux

is to go diskless- http://www.ocsetiteam.com/other/cluster.htm

You need one running linux rig for a server and then you can add pcs without hard drives, etc. Pretty slick.

There is also OverCrunchix around, but I am not sure how thats working out....too many projects, not enough time.

If you need a full pc, XP1600s and refurb mobos are about the best thing going cheaply.

Cuper · Sep 20, 2002

hmmm, I'm thinking of a P4 for most units.. Don't know much about P4's so I'll leave that up to someone to answer. I know that you can save some cash buy putting together a cheap XP system such as TC said. Just get all cheap parts. You could prob. get a whole system together for $200. Not including the OS.

LandShark · Sep 21, 2002

with $500 for a pure cruncher, you should be able to build 2-3 machines!!

what i did on mine is, cpu/refurb'ed mobo/memory/cheap compputer show psu/used small hard drive/weekend onsale $5 after rebate NIC/no case. that's is.

let's see:
refurb. 8k3a 'bout $55 from newegg or refurb. ecs for $35
xp1600 $55 (should be no problem to at least 1.7G!)
some good memory depending how high your fsb is. but guess you'll need something that could do at least 166MHz (that's a major investment but will hold the value tho!) look for the classify forum too
psu 250-300W $25-35 at local computer show. sometimes, you'll find some for $20
used small harddrive forsale forum in here. got most for around $20-35, ranging from 4G to 20G
office depot/best buy/compusa weekend sale Linksys NIC $5 after rebate
=============================================
cheapest you could do is 'bout $150 plus memory

sure you could do at least 2 pure cruncher!!

none1 · Sep 21, 2002

Ya, shark's got the right idea. I'd go with the refurb 8k3a, OR for $62 the abit kx7. Get a $80 stick of samsung PC2700, and the XP 1600+. This system will WAY OC, comfortably to 166 FSB.

I think I'm going the above path for future nodes, that combo is SO OC freindly.

Only question is to sub generic PC2700 for like $55, I'd say no, the samsung just rocks. So I'm looking

abit kx7 $62
samsung 256 meg 2700 $80
1600xp+ $55
power S. for $20
nic $7
video? $20
HSF $15? volcano 7

So I'm up at like $250 for an LTSP node, with SOLID quality componets, AND will OC real well. This is real safe.

OR,
refurb Ausus nforce $68
1600 XP $55
ps $20
HSF $15 V7
HD $20
samsung 128 mb pc2100 $35
TOTAL = $213, $190 without the HD for an LTSP node.

The nforce also makes a decent extra gaming rig, depending on HD size, even has good onboard sound. Ya, its a gforce2 mx, but HEY, that works for warcraft III , Diablo II, etc., lan games JUST FINE.

We can go even cheaper if you're OK with lesser componets <cough ecs cough pcchips cough cough >..... above is using good *****.

DanFraser · Sep 21, 2002

none1 said:
lesser componets <cough ecs cough pcchips cough cough >.....

OI! Dont knock 'em!!!

lonewolf1983 · Sep 22, 2002

indeed i love my ECS board, especially considering its 1/2 the price of any decent board over here (and we dont have the luxury of refurbished hardware..)

Yodums · Sep 22, 2002

A diskless cruncher crunches slower since it's running off of a network drive, you can ask from the classifieds for a 1-2gig drive or Ebay which has them for 5-10 bucks.

5-10 bucks for 30mins is a MUCH better gain than spending 150.00 on watercooling just not as fun

I recommend the following:

Abit KX7-333 Refurbished - 62.00
Sparkle 300watt PSU - 33.00
Athlon XP 1600+ - 53.99
Video card - Pick up some old Voodoo PCI or something from a local store, it should be very cheap.
Dlink DFE-530TX+ - 15.00 (Takes very high fsb, I have the non + version and it went as high as 172fsb without a hitch)
128mb Crucial PC2700 - $43.99
1.2-2gig drives are under 10 dollars at Ebay...
ThermalRight AX7 w/ Tt Smart Fan II - 39.00

It should roughly equal up to 246.98 shipped not including video and complete price of hard drive. If your budget is 500.00 you could buy two of these babies.

The ThermalRight AX7 w/ Tt Smart Fan II were taken from heatsinkfactory.com

The memory was taken from Crucial.com

The rest were from Newegg

Yodums

none1 · Sep 23, 2002

Yodums, could we not seti completey in RAM, and not use the network HD, thus greatly increasing the overall speed of the farm, WITHOUT adding a HD?

hmmmm

TC · Sep 23, 2002

LOL I've got 2 ECS boards overclocked to 150 and they cost me $35 a piece. No problems yet. They can't be that bad.

none1 · Sep 23, 2002

TC said:
LOL I've got 2 ECS boards overclocked to 150 and they cost me $35 a piece. No problems yet. They can't be that bad.

1) What mem you using?

2) Which ECS board? What is the max FSB these boards can do. (HEY, at $35 I'll consider anything)

I'm guessing its the k7s5a.

3) And I long as we got TC here, will the ECS board boot from the onboard NIC for LTSP?

4) Didn't mean to imply that the ECS is bad, it just doesn't have the options of the epox or abits. I like bios based volt mods, and I didn't think the ECS had this. I tend to be OC centric, the epox and the abit attract me more, am not as familiar with the ECS, but don't think they OC as well.

5) I'll also point out that at $35 a piece, even if they break, you can still buy another 2 and be less than most other boards.

TC · Sep 23, 2002

K7S5A's with PC2400 ddr ram. They boot and run fine at 150. Rumor is if you're running windows they can be booted at 150 and then use soft fsb to overclock to 160 or 166. They don't boot from the onboard nic - they've got the Novell junk. Otherwise not bad for the money.

none1 · Sep 23, 2002

TC said:
K7S5A's with PC2400 ddr ram. ........They don't boot from the onboard nic - they've got the Novell junk. ........

FYI

I haven't had time to follow up on this. But here
http://gimel.esc.cam.ac.uk/james/rpld/index.html
is a link that says it allows you to boot IBM RPL stuff, and someone else on the net said they got it to work with a sis based novell type lan boot.

I don't have a compiler installed yet, and I only saw source code, so it will be a while before I can test it out.

Yodums · Sep 23, 2002

none1 said:
Yodums, could we not seti completey in RAM, and not use the network HD, thus greatly increasing the overall speed of the farm, WITHOUT adding a HD?

hmmmm

TC Reported it's not worth the effort of making a ramdrive for SETI, he saw like a 2-3 min difference.

Yodums

lonewolf1983 · Sep 23, 2002

indeed theres no speed boost from a ram drive, but under linux lets you take out the hard disk to save money.

yodums recommendations looks really great...

and the ECS boards run great for the price

none1 · Sep 24, 2002

WAIT a minute fellas .....

FIRST

Yodums said:
A diskless cruncher crunches slower since it's running off of a network drive, you can ask from the classifieds for a 1-2gig drive or Ebay which has them for 5-10 bucks.

SECOND

Yodums said:
TC Reported it's not worth the effort of making a ramdrive for SETI, he saw like a 2-3 min difference.

Yodums

NONE1 " BUT 2-3 min difference COMPARED TO WHAT? compared to native disk (my guess) or compared to network disk?"

So, seti on a hard drive is great. BUT, you take it off a native drive, put it on the network, and seti slows down. OK, I get it. BUT, then you take it off the network, and put it in RAM, and its still much slower than a native disk? ..... That can't be right.

To me, it would seem that the speed SHOULD rank like this

FASTEST = ram disk, but maybe only a little faster than native disk
FAST = native disk, almost as fast as ram disk
SLOW = use network disk

Yodums first observation is that network disk is slow, so get a native disk cheap. My thought is that a RAM DISK would be about as fast as a native disk, BUT WOULD BE FREE, i.e. you wouldn't need the extra hard driver.

So I still don't see where getting real cheap hard drives for the nodes would get any performance, compared to a free ramdisk.

What am I missing?

Thanks much.

lonewolf1983 · Sep 24, 2002

i think the differentiation you are not making here is between a diskless node ramdisk, and one run on a system with a native hard disk...

Obviously since you will be running the whole OS (linux) from a ramdrive, seti will also be loaded onto this ramdrive, giving good performance.

What i (and the others???) were stating was that if you have a hard disk in the machine, theres no reason to run seti from a ramdisk.

Ive never seen a performance hit from running seti off a network drive (i do this to access seti off my fileserver at uni) and have noticed no speed difference.

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