Hey, folks!

I'm planning on building a computer when I get some money saved up, primarily to learn more about hardware, and to run BOINC (for SETI@h, Einstein@h, WCG). I'm wondering if there's a guide out there for building the most cost-effective set-up possible.

I'm talking about the greatest performance per dollar, including the cost of electricity AND the cost of the hardware. Also, is buying used parts / outdated parts to save on cost an effective strategy?

Thanks!
--Raccoon

Best bang for your buck is an AMD system. AMD chips are very cheap compared to Intel's. Motherboard costs vary. If you are looking at budget Motherboards you can find them for $50. I prefer newer Motherboards, which will cost more, because they tend to have more flexibility than cheaper boards. Ram is going to cost you the same no matter what system you use.

If you are building a cruncher for Seti you'll want an Nvidia card. ATI cards work on seti but not as well as the Nvidia cards. If you intend to crunch projects other than seti then you'll want an ATI card. If you are just a routine user you'll probably just use the onboard intergrated graphics.

let the AMD/Intel flaming begin

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Other things being equal, you want as much graphics power as possible, as one GPU typically has the compute power of several CPU cores. For example, one NVIDIA GT 240 card is about as powerful in terms of Seti processing as 2 quad core Opteron 2356s. And the GT 240 is a cheap card, under $100.

So get a MB with as many GPU slots (usually PCIe x16) as you can find.

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I assumed cost effective meant cheaply built. Slapping several GPU's on your computer will cost you on the back end. Your electric bill will go up.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

I assumed cost effective meant cheaply built. Slapping several GPU's on your computer will cost you on the back end. Your electric bill will go up.

well, yeah, but the GT 240 uses less wattage than the 2 CPUs it equals processing-wise, so that DOES save energy vs. running another CPU or 2 on another motherboard.

In other words, 1 MB + 2x2356 + 4 GT 240s uses less power than the 5 MB + 10 x 2356 it does the same work as - so more "efficient", yes?

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I agree the GPU's are cheap and easy to use. I'm not sure what he's wanting out of his hypothetical rig.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

I agree the GPU's are cheap and easy to use. I'm not sure what he's wanting out of his hypothetical rig.

Fair enough!

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Hi, new to these Number Crunching Forum, supose so, but instead of many
cheap NVIDIA cards, is 1 GTX470, 480, 560, 570 etc.

Problem with f.i.3 GTS240 is, current (in Amps)for these cards all run through the mobo, which can get too hot, they are Multi-Layers, meaning atleast 2 layers on each side, some have also a 3'd layer, in between.

400 & 500 series use external power supply, which is far better, and on a 480, you can easily run 3 MB tasks, at a time, giving the same troughput (time) as a GTS250,
but only 1 WU at a time.

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I assumed cost effective meant cheaply built. Slapping several GPU's on your computer will cost you on the back end. Your electric bill will go up.

well, yeah, but the GT 240 uses less wattage than the 2 CPUs it equals processing-wise, so that DOES save energy vs. running another CPU or 2 on another motherboard.

In other words, 1 MB + 2x2356 + 4 GT 240s uses less power than the 5 MB + 10 x 2356 it does the same work as - so more "efficient", yes?

Yeah, that is the kind of efficiency I'm talking about. Not necessarily spending as little as possible, but rather getting the most out of whatever I spend.

It is all, of course, hypothetical at this point. But I figure it's good to plan ahead.

In all these cases, I'm assuming a 3 year life--and thus three years of electricity use. At $0.10 per kWh, over three years that's about $2.56 per watt, or $256 for a 100 watt set-up.

So I guess I can look at the power usage of various set-ups, plus the up-front price. Have something like:

Efficiency = FLOPS / (Cost to buy + energy bill)

I'd still stick with the AMD for cost effectiveness. For the cost of 1 top of the line Intel chip/mobo you can by 3 AMD 1090t and mobo.

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In a rich man's house there is no place to spit but his face.
Diogenes Of Sinope

Hi, new to these Number Crunching Forum, supose so, but instead of many
cheap NVIDIA cards, is 1 GTX470, 480, 560, 570 etc.

Problem with f.i.3 GTS240 is, current (in Amps)for these cards all run through the mobo, which can get too hot, they are Multi-Layers, meaning atleast 2 layers on each side, some have also a 3'd layer, in between.

400 & 500 series use external power supply, which is far better, and on a 480, you can easily run 3 MB tasks, at a time, giving the same troughput (time) as a GTS250,
but only 1 WU at a time.

Well, again, yeah, but I use server boards (TYAN S2915) or workstation boards (ASUS L1N64-SLI WS/B) which have 4 PCIe slots and are built to take the current - I've been running them 24/7 for many moons, not more cheaply made desktop boards. Can't get 4 PCIe slots on cheap boards.

Also: I agree - 2 GTX 460s >= 4 GT240s, but cost more than 4 GT 240s, and (I think) don't save current over them.

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I'm assuming the money is an issue, and you aren't trying to build any sort of "super cruncher" with server hardware and multiple high end CUDA cards?

So, best bang for buck? Spend your $$ on the graphics card as that gives the best return. Everything else is really just there to keep the graphics card running.

It's easy to get carried away and build an I7 system with triple CUDA cards, that needs a 1000W power supply, sounds like a jet fighter, and costs a couple of thousand $.

What I would do, is buy a basic entry level system board for $50, a dual core CPU (AMD or Intel depending on your preference) and some ram to suit, mostly depending on what else you intend to use it for. 2gb? 4gb? Some sensible amount anyway.

Then spend up large in an NVIDIA 460 graphics card. Just one as you don't have a fancy system board, or a big PSU. But you should be OK with a bog standard 450W supply with that set up.

As a daily driver it's going run fine, ~3ghz CPU and plenty of RAM, and the trick graphics card is going to give you a good gaming rig as well.

Buying older hardware? Not usually effective as it's not going to have the grunt to perform very well. Sure you can crunch with an old P4, but not a heck of lot. Only exception would be a relatively late model machine that you could fit a CUDA card into. A Pentium or AMD dual core with a PCIe slot that supports the new graphics card would still give good performance.

Another cheapo option, scrounge an old P4 and rebuild it on the $300 budget above.

Ian

I'd still stick with the AMD for cost effectiveness. For the cost of 1 top of the line Intel chip/mobo you can by 3 AMD 1090t and mobo.

Top of the line AMD
Motherboard $300
Phenom II x6 1090 $247
$547


Intel
Motherboard $345
i7 2600 $343
$690

The cost of 1 Intel system doesn't even get me 1.5 AMD systems, let alone 3.


As for actual performance,
2600 v 1090
The i7 2600 beats the stuffing out of the x6 1090t, and it uses less power while doing so.

Sure, the intial cost of the AMD system is lower, but you get more work done per $ with the Intel system. And it will cost less to run the Intel system than the AMD one.


Back in the day when the P4 was Intels best, AMD outperformed them easily. But since the Core series of CPUs, AMD hasn't even been in the race. And the Sandy Bridge series of CPUs just buried them even deeper.
Hopefully Bulldozer can pull off something miraculous, but i don't think it's going to happen.

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Grant
Darwin NT

i5-2500K uses 100 W, clocked at 4.5 GHz(which is very moderate) and will beat any 1090T, no matter it is having 4 cores only, compared to 6.
2600K uses 20 W more and offers approx. 50% more work output than 2500K.
Most effective VC, imho, are 460 GTX 768 MB. They use 100-115 W when undervolted and overclocked to 800 MHz core(1600 shaders), cheap they are, and MAR WUs have been crunched in 10-11 minutes average(12 minutes for 0.3x units). 5 specimen passed thru me, Palit GTX 460 768 MB. Every single one them allowed to be clocked at 800 MHz(810 actually) with default voltage lowered with 0,037 to 0,05 V, which is primary reason for lowered power consumption. They are cool also. Mine are doing 57-62 C, with fans at 42-45%, which is inaudible.
If u buy AsRock P67 Extreme4 motherboard, which is around 130 EURO, u can plug in three of these.
This host uses only two of its CPU cores for crunching and produces respectable number of credits for 330-340 watts per hour. For 100 more watts, another 460 plugged in, it can add another 13-14K RAC.

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Its more like

Asrock Extreme 3 $89
1090T $199

$288

Runs smoothly.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

Intel
Motherboard $345
i7 2600 $343
$690

My i7 2600 + Asus P8P67 Deluxe combo were under $500. In theory, one could put 3 GPUs on this board, though you'd really have to have the right case, space-wise, or the third card would have to be single slot. And you can go much lower by getting a cheaper MB and going to the 2500...

Though I do agree, if the system were just for crunching and money were an issue, I'd go AMD and Nvidia for Seti, AMD and AMD for other projects. And I would not even bother crunching on the CPU, just use it to support the GPU.

-Dave

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I partly agree.
I would rather think to add a second card instead upgrading mobo and CPU.
Of course better PSU if needed.

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With each crime and every kindness we birth our future.

I partly agree.
I would rather think to add a second card instead upgrading mobo and CPU.
Of course better PSU if needed.

Yeah I would concur on that as well. If I could save ~$200 going AMD I would build an AMD rig, even if I had to use something slower or non-hexcore and put a second video card in it, then crunch what I can on the cpu and mainly have it for feeding the gpus. Especially considering how much faster the gpus are than cpus.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

The faster the card u put on this AMD, the worse impact slow CPU will have on it.
Like twice longer WU preparation CPU phase. In case of shorties, VHARs, this can cost u 20% of total credits output. On each card.

Btw, 4.5 GHz 2500K is almost same productive as one clocked GTX 460(or roughly as two well clocked GT240) and uses same amount of power. 2600K is far more effective, bcs of HT.

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The faster the card u put on this AMD, the worse impact slow CPU will have on it.
Like twice longer WU preparation CPU phase. In case of shorties, VHARs, this can cost u 20% of total credits output. On each card.

Btw, 4.5 GHz 2500K is almost same productive as one clocked GTX 460(or roughly as two well clocked GT240) and uses same amount of power. 2600K is far more effective, bcs of HT.

Wow never would have seen that! 20% is a good chunk of time allotted or could be especially running lots of shorties, which is known to happen from time to time. So at what point on an AMD would you say a 1090T just isn't enough processor per number of cards? Would a 1090T handle 2x 580's without significant loss in production?

Makes me happy I'm on the Intel side of things right now, can't wait to see what bulldozer has to show us, hopefully it's not a let down for us.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!