Dell Inspiron 530

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Profile Advent42
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Message 1872025 - Posted: 9 Jun 2017, 21:11:20 UTC
Last modified: 9 Jun 2017, 21:12:30 UTC

I stopped using this about 3 years ago. But with the SETI programme...I decided to get it down from the attic and have a look at it a fresh.
It is up on my account for anybody to see....but again I am wondering is this beast worth messing about with...???
It initially had 2 GB of ram...and not much in the way of Graphics stuff. I bought 2 X 2 GB RAM and installed it the other day. Cant say I have noticed much difference but I enjoyed the little upgrade.
I guess it is not worth spending much on it as it probably wont produce much more from the old girl.....but any suggestion would be welcome as it gives me an opportunity to mess around in an area of computers I normally never go near..
Should I leave it to chug along as it is doing? The WUs it is getting are all around 13 hours long!!!
Thanks....
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Message 1872041 - Posted: 9 Jun 2017, 21:42:38 UTC - in response to Message 1872025.  

That is up to you. If you don't mind using power for 2 tasks a day, just set it in a corner and never look at it.
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Message 1872045 - Posted: 9 Jun 2017, 21:55:46 UTC

Or stick a GTX 1050 Ti in it to make it worthwhile. ;-)

Cheers.
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Message 1872051 - Posted: 9 Jun 2017, 22:19:37 UTC - in response to Message 1872045.  

Or stick a GTX 1050 Ti in it to make it worthwhile. ;-)

Cheers.

OK....Just had a look at the price of that.....can you suggest anything a bit cheaper.....
I notice my Dell is not showing any graphic activity on my account...I thought it would have had some thing.....
Thanks for your help guys....
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Message 1872053 - Posted: 9 Jun 2017, 22:22:51 UTC - in response to Message 1872045.  

Dear Wiggo
I have some old Dell laptops crunching away where I have put in the max RAM, but from reading threads here I wonder how much difference this has made. With these old laptops, is it actually possible to put a GTX 1050 "in it" as you say?
TIA George
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Message 1872055 - Posted: 9 Jun 2017, 22:23:49 UTC - in response to Message 1872051.  

Or stick a GTX 1050 Ti in it to make it worthwhile. ;-)

Cheers.

OK....Just had a look at the price of that.....can you suggest anything a bit cheaper.....
I notice my Dell is not showing any graphic activity on my account...I thought it would have had some thing.....
Thanks for your help guys....

A 2nd hand GTX 750 Ti then.

Cheers.
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Message 1872058 - Posted: 9 Jun 2017, 22:26:24 UTC - in response to Message 1872051.  
Last modified: 9 Jun 2017, 22:30:24 UTC

I was thinking it was a laptop ... looks like it has 1-PCIe x16, 1-PCIe x1.
Manual says if it has the 530W PSU it has a 6 pin GPU power plug, that would do for a 1070.

Cheaper than a 1050Ti, how about 750Ti, or 1050.

EDIT: It would make a great GPU server (well for 1 GPU) disable CPU processing and let the GPU chug away. Also a great candidate for LINUX.
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Message 1872099 - Posted: 10 Jun 2017, 0:41:35 UTC - in response to Message 1872051.  

Or stick a GTX 1050 Ti in it to make it worthwhile. ;-)

Cheers.

OK....Just had a look at the price of that.....can you suggest anything a bit cheaper.....
I notice my Dell is not showing any graphic activity on my account...I thought it would have had some thing.....
Thanks for your help guys....

I had a few of those at the last place I worked.
IIRC they shipped with either on-board Intel graphics or something along the lines of a Radeon X1300 series GPU. Both are to old to do any kind of GPU crunching.
Running only CPU tasks with the optimized apps I seem to recall they had a RAC in the 1200-1500 range.
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Message 1872177 - Posted: 10 Jun 2017, 11:05:41 UTC - in response to Message 1872099.  

Running only CPU tasks with the optimized apps I seem to recall they had a RAC in the 1200-1500 range.

So my next dumb question is what is the optimized apps??
Sorry.

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Message 1872179 - Posted: 10 Jun 2017, 11:09:15 UTC - in response to Message 1872177.  

Running only CPU tasks with the optimized apps I seem to recall they had a RAC in the 1200-1500 range.

So my next dumb question is what is the optimized apps??
Sorry.


Lunatics optimized applications.
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Message 1872239 - Posted: 10 Jun 2017, 15:20:06 UTC - in response to Message 1872179.  

Running only CPU tasks with the optimized apps I seem to recall they had a RAC in the 1200-1500 range.

So my next dumb question is what is the optimized apps??
Sorry.


Lunatics optimized applications.


Ah its a dinosaur.......I should just let it graze in the corner....for a while...or until my electricity bill starts soaring!!!
Thanks people...
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Message 1872334 - Posted: 11 Jun 2017, 1:30:48 UTC - in response to Message 1872053.  
Last modified: 11 Jun 2017, 1:34:48 UTC

Dear Wiggo
I have some old Dell laptops crunching away where I have put in the max RAM, but from reading threads here I wonder how much difference this has made. With these old laptops, is it actually possible to put a GTX 1050 "in it" as you say?
TIA George


According to Google, a Dell Inspiron 530 is a desktop machine. The name mislead me, I thought it was a laptop too.

I second the motion for either a used GTX 750 Ti or a GTX 1050 Ti. I do know that a GT 1070 (about $30) was processing a stock gpu task in about 2 1/2 hours on a Intel Duo 2 core.

Tom
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Message 1872366 - Posted: 11 Jun 2017, 3:09:36 UTC - in response to Message 1872334.  

Dear Wiggo
I have some old Dell laptops crunching away where I have put in the max RAM, but from reading threads here I wonder how much difference this has made. With these old laptops, is it actually possible to put a GTX 1050 "in it" as you say?
TIA George

The only difference you would see if you were going from single channel memory to dual channel (if they only had 1 memory module then they'd only run in single channel mode, 2 modules are needed for dual channel), but anymore more than 2GB's of memory would make little difference in most cases.

No, usually the GPU in laptops is part of the motherboard. and can't be changed (highend gaming laptops can be upgraded, but they are propriety jobs).

According to Google, a Dell Inspiron 530 is a desktop machine. The name mislead me, I thought it was a laptop too.

I second the motion for either a used GTX 750 Ti or a GTX 1050 Ti. I do know that a GT 1070 (about $30) was processing a stock gpu task in about 2 1/2 hours on a Intel Duo 2 core.

Tom

The only thing would be if its a mid ATX or SSF case (that model came in both flavours), if the later then it would require a SSF video card.

Also a 2nd hand GTX 660/Ti would be fine if its a mATX case (these should be pretty cheap these days.

Cheers.
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Message 1872394 - Posted: 11 Jun 2017, 8:17:22 UTC - in response to Message 1872334.  
Last modified: 11 Jun 2017, 8:22:45 UTC

Thank you for the clarification Tom. I also have Dell Precision T3500 tower unit that generates circa 6,000 credits a day but my electricity bill doubles as a result!Tend to run it mostly in winter where it takes the chill off my living room in my 1930s flat with single-glazed windows :-)
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Message 1872527 - Posted: 12 Jun 2017, 1:33:25 UTC - in response to Message 1872366.  


The only thing would be if its a mid ATX or SSF case (that model came in both flavours), if the later then it would require a SSF video card.

Also a 2nd hand GTX 660/Ti would be fine if its a mATX case (these should be pretty cheap these days.

Cheers.


I have a Gtx 750 Ti low profile that was living in a Dell SSF case. I believe you can also get the GTX 1050 Ti in that form factor.

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Message 1872528 - Posted: 12 Jun 2017, 1:43:05 UTC - in response to Message 1872366.  

Dear Wiggo
I have some old Dell laptops crunching away where I have put in the max RAM, but from reading threads here I wonder how much difference this has made. With these old laptops...TIA George


George, you might be able to get more production out of your Laptops with something called a "cooling pad". You can get them at Walmart for maybe $20. And you can run them off a USB port on each laptop.

I would install TThortle to keep the laptops (or any pc) from over heating. Depending on what kind of "internal" (intel or ati) gpu you MIGHT be able to process a task at a time without slowing down your whole machine. You would need to experiment. Parameters are in the readme files and/or ask here.

You can use the home/school/work preferences of your Boinc account to setup cpu only as well as cpu+intel gpu and assign your laptops to which ever to see how they crunch.

HTH,
Tom
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Message 1872530 - Posted: 12 Jun 2017, 1:51:55 UTC
Last modified: 12 Jun 2017, 1:55:33 UTC

George,
I notice you have a Xeon of the exact same cpu class as mine (7327799) . I got a significant speed up (dropped from maybe 5.5 hours / cpu task to 3.5 hours / cpu task) when I migrated to the Lunatix's upgrade. I recommend the Beta6 because it includes the ability to run the SOG gpu task which you might be able to get to run on your Quadra video card.

If you have a 400 watt power supply on that Xeon that has a video card power cable you could run a GTX 1060 Ti and really watch your RAC rise on that machine.

HTH,
Tom
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Message 1872532 - Posted: 12 Jun 2017, 2:15:25 UTC

George,
I notice you have a Xeon of the exact same cpu class as mine (7327799) . I got a significant speed up (dropped from maybe 5.5 hours / cpu task to 3.5 hours / cpu task) when I migrated to the Lunatix's upgrade. I recommend the Beta6 because it includes the ability to run the SOG gpu task which you might be able to get to run on your Quadra video card.

If you have a 400 watt power supply on that Xeon that has a video card power cable you could run a GTX 1060 Ti and really watch your RAC rise on that machine.

HTH,
Tom

The Lunatics 0.45 Beta6 can be obtained from here and the Quadro 5000 is Fermi based so it can run the SoG app but it may need a driver update to do so.

George, the installer will automatically select the right CPU apps to use, but you will need to select the SoG app to run on your GPU if you decide to go that route or you'll just get the old (and outdated) CUDA32 app thrown at you. ;-)

Cheers.
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Message 1872687 - Posted: 13 Jun 2017, 1:37:35 UTC - in response to Message 1872532.  

Dear Tom/Wiggo
Thanks for your feedback regarding my TU. Will have a look at this when I return from my short break in the beautiful university town of Durham http://www.thisisdurham.com/
Regards
George
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Message 1872688 - Posted: 13 Jun 2017, 1:43:09 UTC - in response to Message 1872532.  

Dear Tom
Stupid question time......At present, I just plug my TU and laptops into my 13 amp power sockets - what is the advantage of having a power supply? My laptops seem to cost about 10p (say 13c) a day to run and the TU around £1 a day.
TIA
George
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Message boards : Number crunching : Dell Inspiron 530


 
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