Building a Folding Farm

[sfu7274456]

It's been a while since I updated this thread. It looks like I am about 9 days away from breaking into the 9 figure club. Not bad, I did it in less than a year. Couldn't have done it without you guys support, help, and advice. Thanks guys

 

[Jmtyra]

Pre-congrats! WTF!

 

[harlam357]

That's one hell of an accomplishment sfu!!! Probably one of the fastest ever!!!

 

[Sommelier]

I've shown this thread to a few people when they make a comment like, "Do you really need to run "that program" on 3 computers!"

Congrats on 9 figures! Time to aim for 10!

 

[ChasR]

 

[David]

When I get the money to play with I'm going to do this. Get them stable, fold then cluster them and rent it out(how, who and what kind of income can I see from it?, liability for people using my machines for illegal actions?) pay off the cost to build the cluster/folding farm, then bank half of the rest of the profits to put in a wind generator and a back up diesel/propane/LP 20kw generator for power outages so I am up 100% of the time for folding and for money making ventures

Would/Could I break even or even potientially pocket a decent amount of cash to pad my accounts, and add to the cluster/farm?

Anyone have any experience with building and renting clusters out?

I'd suggest building a Gaussian 09 cluster, but then you run into other issues. G09 is a computational chemistry package, so people can model chemical reactions on a computer. It can get very demanding, CPU-time wise. We have an academic who has a G09 cluster consisting of (I think) about 60 AMD Opteron cores.

200 i7 cores + hyperthreading is a serious resource. But, G09 costs a few thousand dollars for a site license. You'd need backup power, resilient storage, regular backups, confidentiality agreements. The G09 license is one of the most horrific known to man, and I'm not sure if they'd even let you rent out CPU time.

Probably not worth it.

 

['Cuda340]

WTF !!

 

[BEEAH]

You would imagine with setups like this you could do a much better job with powering all of this with a central power supply unit of some type. Granted I am assuming you bought your PSU's to be rated just over what each setup would draw.

Does anyone even build a central PSU that has several branched or trunk line type connections on them?

 

[the_cultie]

You would imagine with setups like this you could do a much better job with powering all of this with a central power supply unit of some type. Granted I am assuming you bought your PSU's to be rated just over what each setup would draw.

Does anyone even build a central PSU that has several branched or trunk line type connections on them?

I don't know if anyone makes anything like this but personally I don't think I would use it. If the psu died then all pc's are down. At least with many psu's if one fails it's only one pc thats down.

 

[Abyssal Angel]

Just piping in here, either to give good advise or showcase my ignorance:

I was under the impression that we (one) should aim for a power supply with headroom, as PSU's rated at ie. 600W would not be able to deliver for instance more than 550W without it's efficiency going way down?

If I'm mistaken, I'd love to be corrected and I'll willingly place myself at the mercy of you all for shaming and the tossing of rotten vegetables (ah where would we be without the humble veggie to show our dubious support for various stage performers?).

 

[Jmtyra]

Hi Abyssal -- you're close; let's look at an example to elaborate on how this works.

Power supplies are rated at a DC wattage, for example 600w. That's the supposed maximum DC wattage that the PSU can put out. However, it's a rectifier, converting AC power to DC power at a certain efficiency rating. Let's say 80% for this example.

The PSU rated at 600w (DC) will take ~750w AC to produce 600w DC of power, given our example of an 80% efficiency rating.

High-quality PSUs like Seasonic, Corsair and Antec will certainly produce what they are rated at, if not more. However, they will always pull more AC wattage than the amount of DC wattage they produce (as a rectifier). That will never change, unless we are able to figure out (one day?) how to convert energy at a 1:1 (100%) ratio.

Edit: Lower-quality PSUs will not always produce the full amount that they are rated at.

 

[the_cultie]

Hi Abyssal -- you're close; let's look at an example to elaborate on how this works.

Power supplies are rated at a DC wattage, for example 600w. That's the supposed maximum DC wattage that the PSU can put out. However, it's a rectifier, converting AC power to DC power at a certain efficiency rating. Let's say 80% for this example.

The PSU rated at 600w (DC) will take ~750w AC to produce 600w DC of power, given our example of an 80% efficiency rating.

High-quality PSUs like Seasonic, Corsair and Antec will certainly produce what they are rated at, if not more. However, they will always pull more AC wattage than the amount of DC wattage they produce (as a rectifier). That will never change, unless we are able to figure out (one day?) how to convert energy at a 1:1 (100%) ratio.

Edit: Lower-quality PSUs will not always produce the full amount that they are rated at.

The biggest hurdle to overcome in getting 100% efficiency is getting super conductors to operate at normal temperatures and not at the insanely cold temperatures needed to get them to work. If we could get that then power supplies wouldn't need fans or heatsinks as no energy would be lost in the form of heat.

 

[BEEAH]

I don't know if anyone makes anything like this but personally I don't think I would use it. If the psu died then all pc's are down. At least with many psu's if one fails it's only one pc thats down.

Very good point, the loss of the redundancy would be a major drawback.

 

[deadlysyn]

I seem to remember promises of this build being posted on the front page. Still up for writing an article, sfu?

 

[sfu7274456]

I seem to remember promises of this build being posted on the front page. Still up for writing an article, sfu?

I am, just been busy.

 

[GIXXERGUY6]

I seem to remember promises of this build being posted on the front page. Still up for writing an article, sfu?

Leave him alone he's trying to figure out where he's putting his 2nd rack for our team.

 

[Jmtyra]

Looks like you're about ~6 days away now.

EOC future estimated stats

 

[deadlysyn]

Leave him alone he's trying to figure out where he's putting his 2nd rack for our team.

Negative, Batman.

The more exposure we can get for Team 32 on the front page, the more new members we can bring in, therefore increasing our total daily output. A build like this would definitely catch the eyes of those new people we are trying to draw in.

 

[GIXXERGUY6]

Negative, Batman.

The more exposure we can get for Team 32 on the front page, the more new members we can bring in, therefore increasing our total daily output. A build like this would definitely catch the eyes of those new people we are trying to draw in.

Yeah yeah yeah I was being sarcastic. You double poster

 

[deadlysyn]

Yeah yeah yeah I was being sarcastic. You double poster

Got proof of this double posting?