I don't need another system...I don't need another system...I don't need another system...

[Markfw]

Thought I would get something a little cheaper than those v3 chips, they are so expensive especially on a student budget. Do you have any recommendations for motherboard, I was thinking the Asus Z9PE-D8 WS board, but its so expensive at $600

Well, you can get one (dual 2011) for about $300, but then you need 2 chips. Thats why I am sold on the $170 motherboard with one $350 chip.

 

[StefanR5R]

tired of the dual socket motherboards if not required for a lot of cores, due to case size and all.

I fitted my X10DAX into Corsair 400Q. Pretty cramped, and I had to add a metal rail at the top of the back plate in order to add SSI EEB mounting holes. But the outcome is nicely compact and has enough air flow for quiet cooling of two 135 W TDP CPUs. There is only a small low-power GPU in there though.

 

[StefanR5R]

One of my little machines has a Sandy Bridge Celeron in it, and it runs a 1060 just fine. It uses more than 50% of the CPU to do it, but that's all it does, and it puts out the same points as the box with the same GPU and a Skylake i5.

In which projects did you the compare the points of both systems? (E.g. Folding@Home GPU jobs seem to require much more CPU than Primegrid GPU jobs.)

Are the Celeron and the i5 running at similar clocks?

 

[crashtech]

In which projects did you the compare the points of both systems? (E.g. Folding@Home GPU jobs seem to require much more CPU than Primegrid GPU jobs.)

Are the Celeron and the i5 running at similar clocks?

I've only tested F@H with a single 1060, the Celeron is running 2.7GHz while the i5 runs at 3.3, it's the much faster CPU, obviously. Perhaps this is unique to the 1060, or perhaps to non-high-end Nvidia cards in general, but the 1060 doesn't seem to require lots of CPU power, at least for F@H.

 

[Markfw]

Well, my 1070 is taking 65% of the G4400, and the dual 1080's I have take over 50% of a 4 ghz 6700k !

The dual 1070's are running on my E5-2683 and allowed about 13% of 28 threads. All of this on F@H. They take a fair amount of CPU

 

[crashtech]

Maybe I will try two 1060s with the G4560. Two of 1060s cost slightly more than one 1070 but can produce approximately 100k ppd more. I'd love to find the killer budget combo and keep adding incrementally.

My guess is that the G4560 could possibly run two 1070s as well...

 

[StefanR5R]

Thanks Markfw and crashtech for shedding more light into this. (I'm about to swap PSUs and GPUs between PCs and looking to make another GPU available for DC, so this is exactly the sort of info that helps planning.)

 

[crashtech]

Thanks Markfw and crashtech for shedding more light into this. (I'm about to swap PSUs and GPUs between PCs and looking to make another GPU available for DC, so this is exactly the sort of info that helps planning.)

I'd love to hear about your results, when you have them.

 

[TennesseeTony]

Crashtech, I have two important words for ya: Power Consumption.

If you pay your own electric bill, I'd advise to have as few cards as possible.

If you expand incrementally in the future, this becomes even more important.

Nothing takes the wind out of your DC sails like a surprise power bill, in which you realize you could have bought a 1070 for what you're sending in to cover last month's juice consumption.

 

[crashtech]

You are right about the 1070 being more efficient in ppd/watt. It's tough to pin down exact numbers, but one power consumption figure I saw for the 1070 was 180 watts, and for the 1060, 120 watts. That would be approximately 3,900 ppd/watt for the 1070, and about 3300 ppd/watt for the 1060. Running two 1060s puts me 60W over a single 1070, which at my electrical rate represents about $4.50 additional cost per month. Something to think about, but not as great a difference as we might presume at first blush. I live in a state with very cheap electricity though, so it's not nearly as bad for me as it is for many others.

 

[Markfw]

I have 2 1070's and one 2683 all @ 100% taking 430 watts from the wall. So those numbers sound right.

 

[crashtech]

Well, I got curious and did a little arithmetic that is probably full of errors, but by combining the projected point production of the GPU(s) divided by their purchase price plus the price of the electricity they are projected to use out over two years, the 1070 system wins by 3%. Only GPU power draw was figured into the calculation. I would presume that if a 2C/4T Pentium proves capable of driving twin 1070s, that might be the most efficient setup of all, from both a ppd/$ and ppd/watt perspective.

 

[Markfw]

Yes, I agree. Thats why I keep building more multi-gpu setups. My SR-2 would be the most efficient, except socket 1366 is not as efficient as 2011-v3. But 3 cards on one motherboard makes up for it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wonder, could anyone use a three-slot Thuban, or a four-slot Thuban CPU/mobo/RAM combo? Thinking off offloading my Thuban-driven GPU-cruncher rigs.

 

[crashtech]

There would be a question of how well Thuban cores could feed a modern multi GPU setup with 1070s. I honestly have no idea.

 

[StefanR5R]

In theory I have the means to try a 1070 with a 2.5 GHz Deneb (Phenom II X4 905e). But then I would have to mess around with Nvidia drivers on Gentoo Linux which I never did before, or need to install a different distro. But spare time is lacking.

Another thing I am thinking of trying eventually is to test with an Intel processor, systematically downclocked by -1 or -1/2 GHz steps, and see if GPU PPDs go down. Though before that I want to read up on how to force Folding@Home to compute a copy of the same WU over and over again for comparability and repeatability...

 

[Markfw]

Larry, in todays world, all the cards are double wide, and most need at least a slot between to let air flow as well. So my 7 slot SR-2 can only house 3 cards effectively. Most motherboard can only do 2, or less.

 

[Orange Kid]

AuthenticAMD
AMD Phenom(tm) II X6 1045T Processor [Family 16 Model 10 Stepping 0]
(6 processors)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 (4095MB) driver: 373.06 OpenCL: 1.2

Gets around 550000 ppd in F@H. Only one slot for GPU probably 8x. Don't remember the motherboard and to far away to check at the moment.

 

[Markfw]

A 1070 should average over 600k ppd. Right now my 3 are doing 650,650 and 680. First problem I see is that old motherboard is not PCIE 3.0, that will slow it down. The memory speed will slow it down (compared to new DDR4 memory) and last, how much CPU (%) is it using ? I think it likes fast single cores.

 

[Kiska]

Hrm, I am having no luck finding, dual 2011 boards, that are within my budget, so do any of you have a spare board that I can buy off of you?
Obviously I am gonna put a GPU in it, not sure which one yet. But probably not the high end ones, cause I am a student and must not spend all my money

 

[TennesseeTony]

Kiska, I'd certainly go with the find you posted in the weekly stats if I were you, that is an incredible deal (depending on shipping costs), just add a hard drive and an OS, right?

http://www.natex.us/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=Quanta2ML4GB-Kit&CartID=1

 

[crashtech]

The only issue with 1U servers is that they are very loud, I had one that was annoying even in the other room with the door shut.

 

[Markfw]

So now I have THREE new servers that I can't afford, 3 E5-2683 systems, and one more in the works ! All 3 are now doing WCG, it will take a few days for the averages to equalize, so not sure now much work they are doing. So thats 84 threads doing WCG (minus a few percent for a few video cards)

 

[Markfw]

Test image of my SR-2 system soon to be crashtech's !

 

[Kiska]

So in regards to my new system, looks like I'll be buying this motherboard: http://www.megabuy.com.au/asus-z9pe-d8-ws-dual-socket-lga2011-server-board-p580551.html
A REALLY expensive one, in order to use the 2 E5-2670s, I bought. Really sad, I'll have to be using a lease option for this since, I don't have the money on hand to pay for it.
So $91.01 per month for 12 months, thats like 33% interest

@Markfw or @TennesseeTony how much is this motherboard in the states, and how much would shipping be to Aus?