Quad core for $266 in July (hopefully). Lets see some CHEAP crunching builds?

[TallBill]

Well, I'm no millionaire, and it'll probably be a while before I can afford dedicated crunchers, but who knows. If the quad cores are actually under $300, I'll probably turn both of my home PC's into quad core computers. And instead of wasting the electricity bill on running older computers, a quad core setup would be perfect for dedicated crunching. So what cheap setups can be built?

Needs the following:
CPU and motherboard - No getting around this, cheapest mobo available, onboard eithernet and video needed.
Ram - Maybe 1gb, maybe less if its a dedicated cruncher
PSU - Minimum needed, efficiency would be nice
HDD - Probably a cheap small capacity drive bought used
Case - Either cheap plastic, or a custom wood/metal "rack" I wouldn't be running a computer off of cardboard. I've done it before, and no thanks. Quiet fans are a plus.
OS - Linux distro I'm assuming, unless you have extra windows keys laying around.
KVM - To control however many pcs at once. Divide up amongst the cost of however many pc's being built.

My early searches make me think that its easily doable for under $500 per computer, but I'll wait to post them to see what others come up with. I was planning on spending $1500 on a gaming rig, so maybe I can squeeze out another $1000 to put together 2 quad core crunchers.

Power and cooling would end up being the most limiting factors I'd think, but not sure how effiecient you could get the power draw, especially with an onboard video card and no monitor I wouldn't think that it'd be to horrible.

 

[CupCak3]

Here's my quick build.

1 Q6600 $266
1 GB PC800 $75
1 used HDD $15
1 used Vid $25
1 cheap case $30
1 decent PSU $50
BIOSTAR TForceP965 $110
Fans $10

Total $581

you could actually save about 50 bucks if you went with the ASrock quad board.

I'm not saying this is the optimal build but just something I did in about 2 min. Prices can change so much on part b/t now and july its hard to price a system.

 

[Golgatha]

I'd go for a Q6600 at $266 in a heartbeat. Anyone care to donate one to the cause ?

 

[Wolfsraider]

I want 4 please

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: Wolfsraider
I want 4 please

I just ran the idea by my wife and she was all for it. The only part she didn't like was upgrading her computer, because "it works now, and I dont want you to break it".



With any luck I'll end up with 2 quad-core, and 2 dual core rigs at home. I'll have to get creative to get more.

 

[RobertE]

It's really, really tempting seeing how my 6320 performs. So far, it is almost equalling the output of my other three boxes combined. They are a Sempron 2800, P4 2.8, & Celron M 430. Could easily consolidate the P4 & Sempron system with another C2D or a quad and save some $$$ on the power bill.

 

[TallBill]

Heres the best that I could come up with.

Cpu $266

Foxconn 946GZ7MA-8KS2H $80

Kingston ValueRAM 667 2x512GB stick $45

Used HDD $20

SIGMA Orca ATX Mid Tower $75 w/ 400w PSU

OS Free

Total cost $486. Four of these plus a 4 port kvm for under $2000. 16 cores of goodness lol.


Edit - I'd probably buy at least $14 in quiet fans as well bringing the total to an even $500. Or you could spend under $100 on cooling and better RAM if you intended to overclock the cpus as well.

 

[keeleysam]

I've been using BOINCpe recently. It really quiets down the crunchers without a hard drive spinning up and down.

My setup:

Q6600 - $266
Zalman/Arctic Cooling heatsink second hand - $10
Abit IB9 - $69
2 x 512MB DDR2-800 - $45.98
Old CDROM or netboot - Free
FAR Ultra PSU
FAR Ultra case
Old free ATI rage PCI card

~$390

 

[imaheadcase]

Don't forget to add overclocking into equation. Im going to overclock 2 quadcores, thats about 24-28ghz of cpu power Im going to turn my "old" core 2 duo running at 3.2ghz into a temporary rosetta machine when im not using it for other tasks. Should be fun

 

[JWMiddleton]

Interesting thead. Weekend before last Fry's had a deal on a C2D combo with a ECS Mobo (vid incl) and e4320 CPU for $129. I jumped on it simply because the board (P4M800Pro-M) runs with either DDR or DDR2 RAM and I had spare PC3200 RAM. I did have to buy a PS though. I got a tt 430W for about $50. (Not a deal) I've simply got the board sitting on a computer table next to the KVM switch. I did have to buy a HS/FAN for ~$20 as it was an OEM chip. So, I've had it crunching R@H for a little over a week and the RAC is up to 300 and climbing. Acccording to stat.free-dc.com it is doing a bit over 500 a day.

In the past I've built a few "nude" crunchers and put each in a $6 milk crate that can stack nicely. You only need a CD ROM drive to do the inital load. You can buy pulled video cards (PCI) for ~$5 each if your board does not have vid. So, with a little planning you can build a nice farm.

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: JWMiddleton
Interesting thead. Weekend before last Fry's had a deal on a C2D combo with a ECS Mobo (vid incl) and e4320 CPU for $129. I jumped on it simply because the board (P4M800Pro-M) runs with either DDR or DDR2 RAM and I had spare PC3200 RAM. I did have to buy a PS though. I got a tt 430W for about $50. (Not a deal) I've simply got the board sitting on a computer table next to the KVM switch. I did have to buy a HS/FAN for ~$20 as it was an OEM chip. So, I've had it crunching R@H for a little over a week and the RAC is up to 300 and climbing. Acccording to stat.free-dc.com it is doing a bit over 500 a day.

In the past I've built a few "nude" crunchers and put each in a $6 milk crate that can stack nicely. You only need a CD ROM drive to do the inital load. You can buy pulled video cards (PCI) for ~$5 each if your board does not have vid. So, with a little planning you can build a nice farm.

Got any pics of the crunchers in a milk crate? I'd love to see a stack of quad machines running in a few months

 

[JWMiddleton]

Originally posted by: TallBill
Got any pics of the crunchers in a milk crate? I'd love to see a stack of quad machines running in a few months

A search of the AT archives found this thread. Old thread from 2002

 

[TallBill]

Originally posted by: JWMiddleton

Originally posted by: TallBill
Got any pics of the crunchers in a milk crate? I'd love to see a stack of quad machines running in a few months

A search of the AT archives found this thread. Old thread from 2002

Nice pics! Now imagine all of those being quad cores.

 

[JWMiddleton]

Here is something I posted about the milk crate cases:

Office Depot sells a file cube/crate that looks like the old-timey milk crate for $6.95 ($5.00 on sale.) They stack very nicely and I've used them with tie-wraps to install SETI crunchers. I turn them on their side and mounted the Mobo with the connections to the front. I used a 340 MB HD with that setup and it worked great for Win98SE. No floopy or CD-ROM needed after installation. The problem I ran into was finding cheap, but workable PS units. It ended up being about as cheap to buy a case with PS as it was to find just the PS. So, I got away from the milk creates. But, with a mobo with everything built in you could actually mount 2 of them in one crate and there has been talk on this forum about using one PS to power two computers.

 

[The Borg]

Hi all,

Here is something I posted a while back regarding the rack I built:

My 2 cents. I love this topic!!!

I used to run about 16 old machines. Anything I could get my hands on. From a P1-133 up to P3's - this was almost 2 years ago. Then I realised that the power to SETI WU was not good, so I decided to go all out and buy bare bones machines. I was also fed up with trying to get all the old components to play nice together.

I looked at a price / perfomance thing and at the time (Nov 2005) decided on P4 3.0 machines, 256 meg ram, mATX board with on board graphics and 80gig drives (a file server will help, even lan booting or flash drives etc). Each one landed up costing me about ZAR3500 (about $300).

I have literally stacked then one on top of the other. I put threaded rods throught the mounting holes, nuts to hold the boards in place. Wooden board to mount the hard drives and PSU's. Irrigation tubing to insulate the threaded rods. The first part consists of 7 machines and stands just under 1-m high. I am busy extending it with another 5 machines (compliments of Amd.borg - Johan). This thing stand over 2-m high but has a footprint of a wide tower and only a power and network cable leaving it. Makes a noise (over 80 fans when complete) and is hot.

Next expansion would be Intel Quads, but I will wait for the prices to drop.

Would love to show you guys a few pics, but I don't know how to do that.

The way I see it is that the more power (with in reason and that is easy to work out) you put on one board, the better. You then only have to buy one board, one set of memory, one PSU, etc. and BOINC scales to more processors perfectly, not like games and other thread based stuff.

This thing gives me about 9000 credits per day.

And another comment:

As promised, pics of 'The Borg'. Be warned, they are large files. I have not cut the size down. Each about 1.5 meg. This will allow you to see the details nicely.

During construction of first phase - Rear view.

During construction of first phase - Front view.

Completed fisrt phase. Wiring mostly complete.

From bottom to top is Borg 01 - Borg 07.
Borg 01 - 06: P4 3.0 GHz machines, 256 meg RAM, 80 GB HDD. Intel boards so no OC
Borg 07: AMD64 3500+ OC 2.475 GHz, 1G RAM, 80 GB HDD
8 port switch.

During construction of second phase - Rear view.

Completed Crack Rack - View 1.

Currently sitting in my daughter's room, but when she visits me every 2 weeks, she sleeps in my room. She is only 2 years old. Her comments to this monster is - "shoe-shoe"

Completed Crack Rack - View 2.

Close up of Borg 05 - 09, the switches and the wiring.

From bottom to top (of phase 2) is Borg 08 - Borg 12.
8 port switch.
Borg 08 - 12: P4 3.0 GHz machines, 512 meg RAM, 160 GB HDD - SATA. Mostly OC'ed to about 3.25 GHz

I still need to finish off the wiring of the second part, but I am waiting for a 16 prot switch and I need to put the second part on the gound next to the first part. As it is at the moment, the rack stands over 2-m high, so I cannot get it out the door, and it is not that stable.

The LED's and switches are just for ease of use and indication.

Well, that is what a 8000 or so credit's per day supercomputer looks like.

A few changes. These now sit side by side and in total I am crunching about 11,000 per day.

 

[Wolfsraider]

LOL maybe if asrock makes a dual board for ddr and agp I can pick up 2 but I doubt it, I want to upgrade the 3.2 prescott and the 2.0 ibm this fall

 

[TallBill]

The $50 ASRock board has DDR and AGP

 

[Modelworks]

I'm using one of the Asrock boards, the 775 dual vsta.
Its got both pcie and agp, ddr and ddr2. Was a good cheap upgrade path.

Currently running a pentium D 3.0Ghz, but will go quad when the price is right.

 

[Ken g6]

I'm not entirely sure about the rest of the hardware, but I have a couple of suggestions:
1. I imagine with most projects, you'll need one NIC ($4 or less) in each machine. And cables, and a hub or switch.
2. With that, you could replace the KVM with VNC (free). Although setup can be a pain, unless you create one HDD image on one machine and move the drives around. Which brings me to...
3. Instead of a HDD, you could use a flash drive. $6 for 512MB, which should be enough to boot a bare-bones Linux (such as this, but I don't know if that supports SMP), and connect to a network drive that would hold at least the DC software. That way you're not constantly writing to the flash drive.

 

[Wolfsraider]

I have the dual asrock 775 visdta will it support the quad core?

its the dd/ddr2 agp/pciE varmit.

If so I might swing one lol

 

[TallBill]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813157107

If it that board, then yup

 

[NicColt]

I'm ready to press the purchase button but this is my choice...


I can either get 2 x AMD X2 5200+ 65W systems or one Q6600 Intel system for about the same price give or take $50.

do you think that 2 x 5200+ would crunch more than one Q6600 ?

 

[TallBill]

I'd go with the quadcore, should be less electricity/heat/noise/management for only one PC instead of 2. Are these going to be dedicated crunchers? Hehe, cant wait till July huh?

 

[NicColt]

Hi TallBill and yea they will be dedicated crunchers...

Heat noise and hydro are not really a concern, I have two rooms side by side for my use so in one room I have my desk and monitor and I run the cables through a small hole in the wall where my cable connection comes out to the other room where I have my 2 boxes so I have absolutely no noise or heat issues.

I can't seen to get SoB numbers from a 5200+ so I can't really compare which would be a better crunch for the buck. I think a Q6600 puts out about 8M IIRC

 

[TallBill]

Also, are you planning to OC? You can get a Q6600 up to 3 ghz fairly easy from what I hear. Either way I'm happy that it'll be for SoB