I have $1500 to spend on a new PC. What is the best hardware to include to optimize running SETI app?

First shot - I'll assume $1500 is about £1200 for now
Let's stick with a Windows 7 PC for now as you've already got a few of them, and are obviously familiar with that operating system
Intel Quad Core Xeon W-2123 Workstation CPU/Processor (4-core, 8 thread) (UK price ~£400)
Asus or Gigabyte motherboard - several to choose from at about £200-250 (UK price)
16Gb (4x4gB) DDR4 RAM (middle of the road) £150
RTX 2070 GPU £460-£550
Which leaves a bit for PSU, HDD, case ect.

If you went to a first gen AMD Ryzen you could probably shave £100 or so of this budget, and double to CPU core/thread count.

Rationale for going with an Intel Zeon processor rather than an Intel i7 - I've found them to be a bit more reliable (the only CPU I've really blown up was an i7, and its replacement Xeon has been a solid device.


There are any number of possible combinations all of which will work well - "yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice", but the above is a sort of basic setup that will work, rather than one that may give trouble getting stable.

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

Second shot:
Dump using the Intel processor in one of your existing computers and insert a pair of RTX2070 GPUs and a bigger PSU - that should come well within your budget and give you more than just a slight leg-up in performance

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Bob Smith
Member of Seti PIPPS (Pluto is a Planet Protest Society)
Somewhere in the (un)known Universe?

If I understand the LeaderBoard right, the more money you spend on used Gtx 1070 thru Gtx 1080 Ti's (eg. more cards) the more productive a Seti-only machine will be. So would a new system with fewer Gpu's make sense or would upgrading a current MB/Chasis/PSU make more sense?

The question on Gpus is would the cost of a RTX 2070 be low enough to compete with multiple cards used cards of the previous generation? I know of one example where the 2070 is running very nearly nose to nose with a gtx 1080 Ti. The main difference appears to be the 2070 is getting some slower tasks in processing while the 1080 Ti appears to be processing at almost the exact same speed every time.

On your proposed budget, with a big enough PSU and a large case with lots of air cooling, you might be able to upgrade to 3 used double-wide Gtx 1080 Ti cards.

Tom

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A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association).

Thanks. This has been helpful advice.