I'm coming up on 2E6 SETI credits (well past 2E6 for total BOINC) and I'm starting to feel guilty about my power consumption. I'm thinking maybe it's time to let the big boxes power down, replacing them with something less carbon-intensive. The question is: what?

I guess the first part is: am I better off going for one over-clocked quad or multiple low-power boxes? Are the new quads so much faster than power-sipping, embeddable SBCs that I still get more credit/watt at the high end? Or could I put together a small stack of 5-watt machines which approach a high-end box in throughput?

The second part is: how low can I go, consumption-wise, and still help the SETI cause? What kind of RAC can I get for 5W? 3W? 1W? These boxes would only crunch for BOINC -- they don't need any sort of fancy graphics or big hard drives.

Yes, I know I could do my own research on the SBCs available. I'm not asking you to do that work for me. I'm just hoping someone here can give rough estimates off the top of his head and save me a little time.

I am totally comfortable building my own boxes. My money isn't infinite but I'm willing to spend a few bucks to help the planet.

TIA.

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Oh....pick me....pick me......

Buy a quad Penryn and a 500 watt compressor to sit atop your rig and you will have the best power consumption per cobblestone you can get!!!!

Ooops.....I got the equation backwards, eh?

I though it was watt-per-credit.....

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Have you checked This Thread

Ah! Thank you! That's exactly the kind of info I was looking for.

I did try "search" before posting. I guess I didn't hit the right combo of keywords.

Thanks for your help.

Paulie

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Ooops.....I got the equation backwards, eh?

The dyslexic kitties are probably just tired after being chased by a god. (LOL)

Ooops.....I got the equation backwards, eh?

The dyslexic kitties are probably just tired after being chased by a god. (LOL)

Methinks they are being chased by Seti crunching demons........

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

Have you checked This Thread

One thing missing from this thread are the "Socket P" Core2 processors, which have some pretty low TDP values.

... and not much there from AMD.

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Methinks they are being chased by Seti crunching demons........

If your kitties are anything like my 3, they will sabotage any attempt to head in a low-wattage direction. Nothing the cats like more than a warm box to lie on. They probably saw my post and scrambled the logic.

[I'll admit that I was hoping that the answer to my query would involve some no-fan enclosures. That would have meant an end to the quarterly clean-the-cat-hair-out-of-all-the-heatsinks chore.]

Methinks they are being chased by Seti crunching demons........

If your kitties are anything like my 3, they will sabotage any attempt to head in a low-wattage direction. Nothing the cats like more than a warm box to lie on. They probably saw my post and scrambled the logic.

[I'll admit that I was hoping that the answer to my query would involve some no-fan enclosures. That would have meant an end to the quarterly clean-the-cat-hair-out-of-all-the-heatsinks chore.]

LOL......kitty hair is everywhere.......

My dearly departed Tigger used to luv sitting atop my old Sony monitor with her paws hanging down on the screen.....I never had the heart to get her to move.......

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

[I'll admit that I was hoping that the answer to my query would involve some no-fan enclosures. That would have meant an end to the quarterly clean-the-cat-hair-out-of-all-the-heatsinks chore.]

LogicSupply.com has some cool looking (pun intended) fanless enclosures. Their blog talks about a new fanless case that'd work with some of the low power Core2's.

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This is my Cheap 'N' Cheeerfull Crunching Box.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=49285#806872

It's extra green because it re-cycles an old P4 box, disks, PSU etc. No fancy components so it's a cheap build, but gets a good RAC (3,700 Stock) and only draws about 80watts running.

You may be able to get better credits per watt with more exotic components, but it would cost a lot more, expecially as you would need to build several boxes to get a RAC to match a single 'cheap' quad core.

I could probably tweak that box for slightly lower power and slightly higher RAC, I just haven't got around to it.

A better system board etc would give a better RAC, but at the expense of higher power consumption. Getting 10% more RAC, for 20% more cost and 30% more power draw? - thats sorta going backwards there.

Ian

If you really want some power per watt, and up front cost is no issue, try one of the new Cray CX's About 10% the power to run compaired to my current farm and RAC would be about 40% more. I currently pay about $350 per month for my farm and cooling it. This would cost about $38 a month to run. I get a RAC of around 35-40K. While not tested, in theory the Cray would get a Rac in the 60-70K range.

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If you really want some power per watt, and up front cost is no issue, try one of the new Cray CX's About 10% the power to run compaired to my current farm and RAC would be about 40% more. I currently pay about $350 per month for my farm and cooling it. This would cost about $38 a month to run. I get a RAC of around 35-40K. While not tested, in theory the Cray would get a Rac in the 60-70K range.

LOL......tell Cray to check out the Frozen Penny...........A few of thses and things could be 'smokin'.......
Four core and several years ago..............LOL.

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"Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting." Alan Dean Foster

This is my Cheap 'N' Cheeerfull Crunching Box.

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=49285#806872

...

It was that thread that got me started down this path, actually. I read it and got to thinking how I really don't high-end disks, network cards, etc. just to crunch. I'm burning watts for stuff I don't use. And I'll probably end up building something along the same lines.

I just wanted to check first whether anyone had experience with mini- or nano-ITX form factor boards. Some of these can be used to build fanless systems drawing very few watts. You could stack 5 or 6 little Linux machines for $500. I just can't get a handle on performance. Has anyone used these?

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It was that thread that got me started down this path, actually. I read it and got to thinking how I really don't high-end disks, network cards, etc. just to crunch. I'm burning watts for stuff I don't use. And I'll probably end up building something along the same lines.

I just wanted to check first whether anyone had experience with mini- or nano-ITX form factor boards. Some of these can be used to build fanless systems drawing very few watts. You could stack 5 or 6 little Linux machines for $500. I just can't get a handle on performance. Has anyone used these?

They just dont have the CPU grunt.

Even if you build an Atom system, it's probably going to suck 20 or 30 watts total (40-50% or the power), but get about 15% or 20% of the RAC.

Low power use, but even less crunching.

The VIA chips are even worse, the Maths Co-Processor in them is seriously puny.

They are great for some applications, but SETI work isn't one of them.

I still think the Intel Quad of your choice with the minimum of power wasting peripherals is the best option right now. Not sure which CPU is the sweet spot, but they will all do reasonable.

The machine still makes a perfectly good daily driver, and if you want gaming performance you can throw in a PCI-e graphics card and get it. But of course your power use will jump up.

Ian

I still think the Intel Quad of your choice with the minimum of power wasting peripherals is the best option right now. Not sure which CPU is the sweet spot, but they will all do reasonable.
Ian

Putting a quad instead of the equivalent type Duo or Solo in the same box will always win on BOINC power efficiency because the advantage of amortizing the peripheral power over more computation considerably outweighs the slightly less than linear with core count performance improvement due to conflicts.

Some considerations:
1. resist the temptation to include extra drives--their power will burden you forever, and replacing a failed one is easy and will be cheaper when you need it than now.
2. be sure to get an efficient power supply, and resist the gamer notion of enormously exceeding system requirement (even a good 80+ supply loses efficiency when run far below 50% of capacity)
3. resist temptation to provide graphics speed you won't use--consider the integrated chipset version, or a sub $50 low-end card using a modern chip at low clock.
4. look up and down the undervolt to overvolt, underclock to overclock curve to find the total system performance/power optimal point. My guess is that you are likely to find it near the rated clock rate but somewhat under stock voltage.

Along the lines of building a decent daily driver that also puts out a lot of BOINC work at respectable but not world-beating credit/watt, I'll offer the build I've been commissioning this week:

Q9550 (the lowest current Penryn-generation Quad with the big cache)
Asus P5QL Pro motherboard
4 1G DDR2 RAM sticks
1 1TB WD10EACS hard drive
1 MSI Radeon R3450-TD256H
1 optical drive
1 Seasonic 380W supply from the S12 series

At stock settings this was consuming 127W running four Einstein jobs (would be somewhat higher running 4 SETIs with the SSE4.1 V8 ap) today. I currently am trying a moderate undervolt, which has the power down to 116W on first try. I think it would run for days at a voltage giving 105W, but may keep it higher for margin. Idle at stock is about 70W.

You could get the power down quite a bit for a crunch-only system by dropping the optical drive, subbing one of the Intel MLC SSD drives for the hard drive, finding an acceptable integrated graphics motherboard with much lower power, and choosing a matched power supply. For the moment the Intel SSD would drive the purchase price way up--far to much to earn back from the power savings over a hard drive. But they are wonderfully low power, and are fast enough and have sufficient cycle life to serve as boot drives (unlike some other SSD's, and most thumb drives and flash cards).

Atom boxes may get more competitive if box vendors use a full platform of low-power components, but for now the 30+ watt Atom boxes are a bad joke in the performance/watt derby. The platform does exist, but currently is being designed into portables.

By no means is the system I built a minimalist cruncher. But the extra money I put in over the minimum daily use system to get more crunch had very, very good incremental crunch payback. Running BOINC it burns about 40 more watts than the November 2000 Dell it replaces in my family stable, while providing something like 20 to 30 times the BOINC output. For those of us not running big fleets, retiring a couple of old slow power-inefficient box in favor a modern box is a good way to get cost and power-efficient BOINC output.

For a design with strong power consideration, the Q9550 has an advantage over the otherwise wonderful Q6600. My Q9550 part looks able to run its spec 2.83 GHz with a 1.05 V VID with the load-line control turned on. A little voltage reduction gives startling power reduction.

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Along the lines of building a decent daily driver that also puts out a lot of BOINC work at respectable but not world-beating credit/watt, I'll offer the build I've been commissioning this week:

Q9550 (the lowest current Penryn-generation Quad with the big cache)
Asus P5QL Pro motherboard
4 1G DDR2 RAM sticks
1 1TB WD10EACS hard drive
1 MSI Radeon R3450-TD256H
1 optical drive
1 Seasonic 380W supply from the S12 series

Totally agree with your thinking, you should have a good multipurpose PC and a good cruncher. The better components cost a bit more, in dollars and power consumption, but you are probably about the same level as my box with credits/watt, but with a better performing PC.

Ian

On a build for crunching machine, as SSD drives are expensive consider using mobile drive they use less than ¼ the power of standard 3.5" drives.

You folks are the best. That's exactly the kind of info I wanted. I'd been seeing fan-less embeddable boxes in the 5W range and couldn't get them out of my head. Like this one, which is more $$$ than I want to spend but I like the form factor and power use. I just had no clue about the AMD Geode and how it would crunch.

Based on all your responses, I think I will just do the Cheap-n-Cheerful thing and forget about the low-power boxes for now.

Thanks again!

On a build for crunching machine, as SSD drives are expensive consider using mobile drive they use less than ¼ the power of standard 3.5" drives.

At the present prices you are almost certainly right. There is a great deal of manufacturer interest in SSD's. That may lead to dramatically less expensive ones suitable for a SETI boot drive pretty soon. At today's prices I certainly agree you would have to be a power fanatic to do that in a purpose built SETI box.

I am no believer that flash drives are going to replace all hard drives, but it is the need for high-capacity that's going to keep hard drives alive. Properly done flash hard drives offer such compelling performance, reliability, and power advantages at the low end that I think they will completely take over the smaller portable market. Soon, the pressures of serving that market will stimulate the availability of low end models with attractive prices (quite possibly not from Intel, which will be quite happy to serve the more expensive part of the market).

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