Seti computational farm

GenuineIntel
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU @ 2.40GHz [Family 6 Model 15 Stepping 7]
(4 processors) NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT (241MB) driver: 258.96

There is my main computer... Maybe I should just add gpu cards to this and my
dual core linux box?

Steven

Upgrading your current GPU to something more efficient would be a good first step.

Loading up a few machines with 3 or 4 high end GPU's is probably the most efficient. However you will have to invest in high capacity power supplies & cooling. With single, or maybe dual, GPU's per machine you can use more run of the mill components.

With a large multiGPU system the CPU is less important. As you may be using it only to run the OS and feed the GPU's. So you could go with a lower cost CPU.

When adding these systems you just have to decide on how much power you are willing to pay for to run them. The UPS's I have in a rack show a usage of about 400 kW/h per week for only about a third of my machines. So it is probably safe to say I'm using around 5,000 kW/h per month running all of the systems. I don't know what the rate we pay for electric at work is, but my home rate is about $0.18 per kW/h.

i am running a sabertooth 990fx motherboard with a 8150 Zambezi 8 core cpu with three ati gpus a6870 a 5870 and a 5570. with seti going down a lot i have been running primegrid to get numbers on my rig. i an running about 110,000 work units a day 2 core are feeding the gpus fulltime.the hd6870 has 960 Stream Processors and does about 24 jobs a day the 5870 with 1200 Stream Processors runs about 12 jobs a day the 5570 with 400 Stream Processors runs about 5 a day the remaining 6 cpus also do 5 as well.these cards are not well matched, and would run better as goups of the same cart but this is what i had in my junk box or could get cheap when i built this rig. as you can see 35 jobs gpu 5 jobs cpu on a monster machine
o nobody menchined most of the more powerful cards take 2 slots.
next build 4 core with apu two matched videocards.
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Like Tbret says, don't waste money on PCI CUDA cards. while it would "work", they are old technology cards, probably only 16 or 32 CUDA cores. They are obsolete before you buy them.

For the cost of 4 of those you could completely gut the old box, and put in a PCI-E system board, a cheap CPU, a stick of RAM, AND a more modern mid-range CUDA card, and the whole rig should still run off a 350w power supply.

Probably get 10X the RAC of a PCI based CUDA machine. And you have a machine that is a current entry level computer, is a useful machine for general use, and even gaming, and you can run for many years.

Do that with a handful of your old boxes and your "farm" starts becoming a useful collection. Of course, whip the lid off the boxes first, you might find a later model P4 that actually has a PCI-E slot. In that case just buy a mid-range CUDA card for it and it becomes useful.

My current desktop is an old BOX that I rebuilt with a Q6600 and cheapo system board a few years back, pre CUDA apps. I have the option of dropping in a new CUDA card now to boost the RAC, but haven't got around to doing it.

Ian

An ATI card must have a certain open GL ability I am not sure about.

In The Netherlands electricity is €0.50 per KW/h

I wil add my 2cents and say dont use the old computers. You dont know how long they might last. Besides they are outdated a lot. I have fixed my old P4 twice. The first time I took it to the shop and had a new CPU fan out in and a used PSU installed. cost was $125.00. Then two months later my hard drive died. This time with the help of a lopt of folks in here I put in a new hard drive.
The motherboard and CPU are still working but for how long? I bought the P4 new in 2003.

Your best bet is to gut one of the old ones and build it the way you want it.
I just built my own (with a lot of help from those in here) An I7 3770. Im running it without adding my EVGA 550 TI gpu so I can get a bench mark of just running CPUs. Right now im allmost 10 times better than the P4. Both running stock apps.
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One of my lottery fantasies. A few dozen of these fully tricked out


http://www.velocitymicro.com/wizard.php?sr=0&iid=194&gclid=CMjX3pHAu7MCFREx4AodSBAA0Q

And mayby a small power company!!
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Your Instant Price Update
$62278

Estimated Ship Date
12/5/2012

haha :)
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Your Instant Price Update
$62278

Estimated Ship Date
12/5/2012

haha :)

For a real fantasy, has anyone figured out if one of those Monster Cray machines could be configured and what the throughput would be?
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DIY Supercomputer built in a weekend....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k32Bwy9rha4

For SETI you would want less Xeons, and more GPUs. but the code they are running is not written for GPUs, so it's Xeons all the way. 3,072 CPU cores. But the idea of a rack of self contained barebones PCs connected together is ideal for SETI work. In fact bandwidth isn't really an issue, as long as they can communicate at some sensible speed all is well.

Built by Uni Students for their research project. Doesn't say how many pizzas it took to complete.

Ian

I don't think the problem would be HOW to build them, but how to tell Boinc Manager to activate-see those computers, or any other computer.

You may build as many you want but how BM will understand them?

Is there any setting to tell BM that you are working on a farm computer, and use all of them at the same time?
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