Mini Powerhouse For Seti Only.

[Kunaak]

I like seti and all, and I want to build one decent little powerhouse PC for it.
not a farm or any cause space is a issue.
so I have room one for 1 other PC.
this PC I want to leave on, and just let it run everyday all day, just let it crunch away all the time.

this isn't a PC I intend to use for anything else other then Seti- no video editing, no sound encoding or anything else.
just seti.

heres my dilemma.
looking around at newegg, I determined, that $600 and alittle more should get this idea off the ground and going.
thats fine with me.

but, when it comes to Dual CPU PC-I am in the dark.
this will be a first for me.
so I don't know what way to go.

heres what I saw so far in the $600 range.

PC 1.
2 Xeon 2.66 with 533 FSB-HT enabled.
Asus PC-DL.
any cheap ram.
cheap hard drive and all other parts I have laying around already.

I think this would be a great PC, cause it can do 4 work units at one time, and from what I hear should OC just fine.
I was planning on using plain air cooling, quiet, so basically I won't ever really remember that PC's there, so I can just let it run all the time.

PC 2.
Operton 1.6's.
Board-can't remember, MSI though.
looks ok, but no real info on it other then something weird about the heatsinks, like MSI includes one with the motherboard that you have to use...
cheap ECC ram for $100 extra.

this PC I am unsure of.
it may be fast, but with only 2 WU's being done at a time, I don't really know if its extra speed over a Xeon would allow it to really produce more WU's per day.
with the Xeon doing 4 at a time, it seems the operton would have to be signifigantly faster to match the Xeons with hyperthreading doing 4 WU's at a time.

so theres my dilemma...
which one would be better, given what I intend to use it for??

remember, this is basically a PC I intend to build then forget, just letting it do Seti work all day for as long as I keep it.

 

[martindemon]

I too need a powerful calculator for my Ph.D. and i came to the conclusion (probably will be my final choice) that the cheapest one would be an overclocked MSI K7D Master with dual mobile 2500. Even if cooling just with air, it seems that the power of the setup can't be beat for the money. I think you can almost make two of them for the price of an equivalent opteron system. But that's old technology and i know i normally don't want old material... So that's the reason why my choice is not final...

 

[MLMIB]

if you get 2.4 mo's (xeons) you can get them to be 3.6's in the pl-dc, I just hafta wait for my board and I'll give it a go

 

[disk11]

http://cox-internet.com/setispy/efficiency.htm

I hope this helps.

If you get the PC-DL and intend to overclock it, you will need to invest in some good memory and some time modding it. This site has all the info you'll need: http://www.datamine.tk/

 

[Kunaak]

that looks like a very fun board to mod.

but I figure you guys here are the pros at this Dual stuff.
what ones you think would be better for seti alone, opertons or Xeons with HT?

 

[MLMIB]

xeons are better for folding, that much I know(or so is my assumption, as p4's reign supreme at folding)

 

[Ad Rock]

xeons are better for folding, that much I know(or so is my assumption, as p4's reign supreme at folding)

Weird I thought it was AMD that was better at folding...

 

[3line]

Dual mobile bartons is the way to go.

 

[disk11]

Check out the calculator at the bottom of my first link, it figures the WU time with different processor setups. What is odd is duals are slower than singles (perhaps bad SMP coding?) and no way to calculate in for HT, though I can't imagine it helps too much due to how HT works. It only improves output by 15% for F@H.

 

[M@tt]

You will have to run Seti@Home under Boinc soon, so maybe take a look at Top Computer(site's down atm) most of the Top Crunchers are Multi CPU Xeon's