I was googling around on this topic and it seems to be a nice perennial one. So lets take another spin at it.

We already have at least two working (at least the systems are) theories for the "Best Seti@Home" system. And I think most everyone will agree its a gpu-eat-gpu world for S@H. So the more gpu's you can deploy the more production you will get.

So there are two areas I would like to examine.

1) A nice mid-grade Boinc system with some cores and some or a gpu. What is your low bid on such a system (assuming we are ignoring Android Cellphones, Android Tablets and the ARM cpu branch of life)? This system is most likely running a Windows 10 OS, has at least 8 megs of ram (1 or more sticks), probably has anything from 250 GB of SSD to several Tera-bytes of regular HD. Has at least 1 discrete gpu. And it could even be a Laptop :)

2) A higher end machine with at least 8 cores and maybe a couple of gpus. This machine could be doing serious image processing or other fairly heavy duty production tasks as part of its day job. What would like like a good set of options? This system is most likely running Windows 10 OS also.

Tom

---

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

Well I don't know about the best but I do have 2 systems one of each category currently running seti

The "low end" is my laptop and only runs every now and then for a couple of hours to half a day on 2-4cores and low end gpu

And my "high end system" most of the time on both gpus and 65% cpu (7 out of 12 threads)

My computers are not hidden so you can check the specs

1) A nice mid-grade Boinc system with some cores and some or a gpu. What is your low bid on such a system (assuming we are ignoring Android Cellphones, Android Tablets and the ARM cpu branch of life)? This system is most likely running a Windows 10 OS, has at least 8 megs of ram (1 or more sticks), probably has anything from 250 GB of SSD to several Tera-bytes of regular HD. Has at least 1 discrete gpu. And it could even be a Laptop :)

$626. I'd go with Maximum PC's "Budget Build", a Ryzen 5 2600 and a GTX 1660 Super.

2) A higher end machine with at least 8 cores and maybe a couple of gpus. This machine could be doing serious image processing or other fairly heavy duty production tasks as part of its day job. What would like like a good set of options? This system is most likely running Windows 10 OS also.

No question on CPU (unless you're willing to up the cost a lot by going Threadripper...) Ryzen 3950X. If cost is a factor, the 3900X is at the "sweet spot." If you're not gaming, there's no need for ray tracing and I'd try to pick up a couple of 1080Ti GPUs for it - you can get the 2080s if the budget allows. Personally, I have little need for GPU other than BOINC and I'd go with two 1660Ti's. I'm looking to replace my current old photo editing box (5820K CPU and 780 GPU) and will likely get a 3900X and one 1660Ti, to stay in my budget, around $1200 (reusing a lot of parts).

Budget???
Without knowing that it is very difficult to say what is "mid-range".
Also what form-factor (desktop, laptop, ???)
Country??
DIY or pre-built?

That said Bill Michael's outline spec of a Ryzen 5 2600 with a GTX1660 would be a good stater for ten
So here goes:
Ryzen 5 3600 (180)
Micro ATX AM4 motherboard (70)
RAM, 8Gb 2x4Gb sticks, 2666 (45)
GTX1660 (200)
PSU ~550w (40)
Case (40)
1Tb HDD (35)
Keyboard & Mouse (20)
Monitor 22in (70)
OS Win 10 Pro (130)

My local box builder charges a flat (50) to put it all together, install the OS make sure it is all working.
Figures in brackets are typical UK price (in GBP, including VAT) from various box shifters.
At this end of the market there is no point in going to SSD.

(I really hope you meant 8Gb of RAM - its a long time since I saw a function PC with 8Mb....)

---

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

At this end of the market there is no point in going to SSD

I disagree. If you are building the rig for BOINC/Seti, then there is no need for a 1 TB drive. If you are building it for gaming also, OK, valid choice.
For the same 35 Euro or dollars, that will get you at minimum a 256GB or maybe a 512GB drive on sale. Which is plenty for an OS and BOINC/Seti. Heck even 128GB is sufficient.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

I think one of my boinc systems is running a 80GB SSD, and a quite old one at that lol.

although with how much constant reading and writing that is happening, I really would love to put BOINC on a RAM drive for the endurance. this poses problems though as if it's a real RAM drive using system RAM, you will lose all of your WU data whenever the system reboots. maybe you could set something up so that you have a RAM drive which is mirrored to a HDD, but I'm not sure that would provide the best results, might just slow you down to the HDD speeds. no point mirroring it to an SSD if you're trying to reduce the writes to an SSD of course lol.

The "best" drive would probably be one of Intel's Optane drives built on the 3D X-point technology, which offers RAM-like latency and endurance, with the caveat that they are quite expensive (the big ones), but at least they are still non-volatile. also only available in pcie/nvme formats as far as i know. Also it looks like you need certain CPU/MB combinations to make use of the smaller optane accelerator devices (the 16/32 GB modules). but if you have a 7th gen or later Intel CPU and a compatible motherboard, it might be cool to put your BOINC data directory on one of these small optane drives and let it get hammered with all the constant traffic than an SSD. I might look into this, but it wont work on my 2 fastest systems since they are too old. 32GB is probably enough space for most projects, but I know some like GPUGrid have huge data files and probably isn't enough. Certainly enough for SETI though.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

The prices of SSD were stupid, and the 1Tb was actually less than smaller ones!
And SSD at this level of potential performance will make very little difference, and remember this was a LOW/MEDIUM budget machine, not a high budget, and would probably be used for far more than just crunching.

---

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

no point mirroring it to an SSD if you're trying to reduce the writes to an SSD of course lol.

Why even worry about reducing writes. There was a longevity test a few years back and the drives didn't fail until they had written petabytes.
Most of the recent SSD's have TBW values that would stretch out to 10 years even with our constant task checkpoints. You will replace the drive for a bigger, cheaper, faster model before the drive fails.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

The prices of SSD were stupid, and the 1Tb was actually less than smaller ones!
And SSD at this level of potential performance will make very little difference, and remember this was a LOW/MEDIUM budget machine, not a high budget, and would probably be used for far more than just crunching.

I don't know where you were looking. This is the first page I found at Amazon.co.uk Plenty of choices below £ 35.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=ssd+240gb&crid=1TC7JRY1RXA8F&sprefix=SSD%2Caps%2C334&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_5_3

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

For a SETI only cruncher even an old 64GB SSD is enough for the OS + the SETI program & data.

Even with an extra large WU cache like i use the entire SETI directory (Program + data) uses less than 16GB.

---

no point mirroring it to an SSD if you're trying to reduce the writes to an SSD of course lol.

Why even worry about reducing writes. There was a longevity test a few years back and the drives didn't fail until they had written petabytes.
Most of the recent SSD's have TBW values that would stretch out to 10 years even with our constant task checkpoints. You will replace the drive for a bigger, cheaper, faster model before the drive fails.

It was just an ‘ideal’ situation kind of thing. There’s a lot of things we don’t “need” to do, but want to do anyway due to some perceived risk or benefit lol.

I’ve not had an SSD failure that I can attribute to SETI yet, but I’ve certainly had SSDs fail on me. It’s just about reducing that risk.

I still might try one of those Intel Optane accelerator drives since I have a compatible system. The small drives aren’t too expensive.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

1) A nice mid-grade Boinc system with some cores and some or a gpu. What is your low bid on such a system (assuming we are ignoring Android Cellphones, Android Tablets and the ARM cpu branch of life)? This system is most likely running a Windows 10 OS, has at least 8 megs of ram (1 or more sticks), probably has anything from 250 GB of SSD to several Tera-bytes of regular HD. Has at least 1 discrete gpu. And it could even be a Laptop :)

$626. I'd go with Maximum PC's "Budget Build", a Ryzen 5 2600 and a GTX 1660 Super.

I recently re-allocated all my higher end gpus for other testing. But I do have a Ryzen 5 2600 running with a (gasp) Nvidia 295 and Windows 10. I am not impressed with the video responsiveness so I am probably going to "back-grade" to one of the spare Gtx 1060 3GB's I have.

All the Gtx 1660 Supers are spoken for and running on another (busier) box.

Tom

---

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

UK box shifters, not Amazon - I used the configuration tools provided by three of them, and then averaged the prices. This was a starter for ten, and a complete system, hence the inclusion of the monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Another reason I went for a HHD over an SSD was my own personal experience of the poor life expectancy of them - my work-supplied laptop, which was new in July 2019 is on it third, unlike its predecessor which had a HDD and lasted over four years of being tossed around trains, planes and automobiles for four circumnavigations of the globe and was was only replaced when the screen-hinge failed.

---

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

Highest "value" cruncher config I've found so far is a stock T7500 chassis which you can usually get with xeon x56 series CPUs, and a mobo/PS that can directly support at least 3 highish-end GPUs inside the chassis. Used, about $50-100 on Ebay or Craigslist ready for an image.

Add to that three 1060s, or two 1060s and one 1070, and you'll be churning out some solid numbers for only spending $300-500. Zero mods needed.

I've built out one setup like that, and have been meaning to get some more going.

Highest "value" cruncher config I've found so far is a stock T7500 chassis

If wanting Windows and not Linux then check for "OEM" brand:

If "OEM" like Dell, HP, IBM etc, then comes with license in the bios and one can Install win7 or 8 using the OEM key and a downloaded ISO. There is still a free upgrade to 10 once 7 or 8 is activated. Frequently, the bios can be upgrade to include the license if not there originally.

I still might try one of those Intel Optane accelerator drives since I have a compatible system. The small drives aren’t too expensive.

Better grab it soon or maybe wait for the fire sale prices. Latest articles say that Intel is having lots of troubles moving Optane inventory because the demand is just not there. Rumors are that Intel is shutting down fabs and personnel tied to Optane memory production. May not be around for much longer.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

yeah, I've heard similar. It doesn't surprise me, it's a niche product and really designed to be a cache drive, but almost no one does that sort of thing in the consumer space. they just want the whole drive to be faster all the time.

but I thought the main reason for it going away was that Intel and Micron are dissolving the 3D Xpoint partnership : https://www.anandtech.com/show/13083/intel-and-micron-update-3d-xpoint-roadmap-combined-effort-2nd-gen-3rd-gen-separate

I guess they will continue independent development and fork off from each other.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits: 29,492 CPU time: 134,419 hours

Well if you delve into that article, the issue is that the split between Micron and Intel in the Xpoint production is that Intel is obligated to buy a certain level of chips coming from Micron along with using their Xpoint chip production. Neither Micron nor Intel have the demand for keeping their Xpoint chip production at the current levels because they just aren't seeing the demand from module vendors. Even in the server space. I think the product will continue to be a niche product and is destined to become marginalized into obscurity.

Unless either of them comes up with a new use for the chips and new product demand, I don't see much future for the products. I already see the consumer OEM Intel motherboard vendors already minimalizing support for Optane or even just dropping the feature from new products. When Optane came out, the feature was front and center on the marketing pages for motherboards. Now it is just buried down in the Specs list.

---

Seti@Home classic workunits:20,676 CPU time:74,226 hours

A proud member of the OFA (Old Farts Association)

Highest "value" cruncher config I've found so far is a stock T7500 chassis which you can usually get with xeon x56 series CPUs, and a mobo/PS that can directly support at least 3 highish-end GPUs inside the chassis. Used, about $50-100 on Ebay or Craigslist ready for an image.

Add to that three 1060s, or two 1060s and one 1070, and you'll be churning out some solid numbers for only spending $300-500. Zero mods needed.

I've built out one setup like that, and have been meaning to get some more going.

+1

---

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

Budget end?

Buy an ex lease i5 workstation / desktop and fit whatever GPU your budget / case space / power supply will handle.

If it's a daily driver, throw in a SSD, even a small one as the system disk really speeds things up, and is probably the single best thing you can do to a budget machine. A small SSD is now cheaper than a HDD, so unless you NEED a heap of storage, then a 256 gb SSD cheap and perfectly good enough.

If it's a BOINC only machine, then hard disk doesn't really matter. It just needs something to boot from and some storage, the few extra seconds a SSD saves hardly matters. I've got a box full of assorted SATA disks that are suitable. But if it's a PC you want to actually use, go for the SSD and some extra RAM, even if it's a low spec machine, it's the biggest boost you can give any machine.