SETI - The time has come - Crackrack - **UPDATED**

[Migroo]

Hi guys (UPDATE at bottom of thread)

I've been given free run of the garage (which is considerable size...) so I'm going to build a crack rack! I've already got a few PCs etc that can start to crank out the WUs - but I didnt have space for them until now - so I'll get those going. Note - this is not going to be a heavily funded project - no Duron 1GHz racks for me (I'm going the cheaper route).

I need some info from those of you experienced with crack racks. I'm going to be building one rack 'unit' at a time, which will be a caseless system with no other duties than SETI (or another DC project if there is need).

Anyway - I'm going to be running the fastest CPU combos I have obviously, but now that I have access to Ebay etc: I need to know what to go after.

- What size hard drives can I get away with for running Win98? Linux?
- What is the minimum RAM needed for Win98 and SETI? (I'm assuming its around 32 MB)
- Any CPUs that are really bad at SETI? Any that are really good (for what they are)?

I ask the CPU question as I'm going to be running anything I can get my hands on - I have a K6-2 350 and a Celeron 400 here already that are 'spare'. I need to know what to aviod (I have a good idea that K6-2s are really not worth it). I like the look of Celerons, Durons and Athlons for their price on Ebay. The older Celeron route looks particularly appealing as I have quite a bit of PC100 memory, so an FSB overclock from 66 -> 100 will be on the cards for those CPUs. Are there any CPUs that should be good for SETI (on paper) but really end up slow?

Any advice would be really cool.

 

[LastKnight]

I'll offer what advice I can from what i've seen from my fleet, but you may want to look at JW's fleet link in his sig, he shows all his pcs, which ones are o/c'd and how many wus they produce. It'll definitely give you an idea of what to expect.

What I'd probably recommend from an inexpensive standpoint is the socket a durons with cheapo mobos. i have a duron 750 that does a wu in around 8 hrs. The 2 old slot a 550s that i have generally turn a wu out in 11-12. I set up a k6 233 to run seti, and it was taking longer than a day to complete a wu, but it's currently crunching eccp, not quickly, but it's crunching.

I think the last crackrack i saw was running win98 off 100mb zip disks. I'm sure this is running a stripped down version of 98, but that may be the way to go. You may also want to appeal to ppl that have small 200mb drives in their closet. After all, they're not worth much.

I tried running seti on my celeron 300a (non oc'd) and decided it really wasn't worth it for seti, it would go through a wu in 15 hrs or so. I think JW has one that's oc'd to 450, though, on his page.

Hope this helps, g/l

 

[lane42]

If you look over at newegg an 850 Duron sells for 40 Bucks, 33.00 + 6.95 and should be good for 3 wu's a day. A good cheap board, these i might try for my rack is a Shuttle ak32L, 63.00 dollars, 54 + 9.00 shipping w/ vcore and fsb adj. and use's ddr or sdr ram.

 

[Migroo]

Thanks guys that was useful.

I cant really appeal to people here for very old used kit as I live in the UK - shipping would rule out the advantage. Same with NewEgg really - but I think OverClockers.co.uk sells some good Duron combos - I might even think about getting one, but I really want to keep costs down on this.

LastKnight - Yep thanks, I might run some of the lower-end CPUs to crunch ECCp - after all I have an account.

There seems to be a good supply of Durons and Athlons in the 500 and 600-ish MHz range. I'll see how those compare to what OCuk has on offer - WU per £

Thanks guys, I promice pics of the finished thing!

 

[Migroo]

OCuk have Duron 1Ghz and PCChips Mobo combos + HSF for around £100.

A bit steep really, since I will be running these things caseless and in the garage - they might get easily damaged. Its a lot of money to invest in one cruncher. Then again I suppose I could buy one of these combos and then slam it in a case...

At least with the cheap route if I lose a cruncher its not so much to replace and get the same output.


Food for thought at least - any more suggestions?

 

[Smoke]

Caseless? Why don't you try a "plastic milk crate"! They do have those over there, don't they?

 

[Crow]

Hi Migroo

I have found NT4 workstation to be a good os for a crackrack. I run 3 dual BP6 s with 32MB ram and 260mb harddrive these will run RC5 no prob on this spec, for seti I would say min of 64MB.

Do a search on Ebay.co.uk under seller "tister" he always has some cheap boards for sale.

If you are looking for any network cards I have some ISA 3com cards you could have for the cost of postage.

 

[lane42]

Woops, sorry Migroo, forgot your in the uk. I guess shipping from california would be a bit steep

 

[Crow]

Me Again

I ran my crackrack in the garage with no problem, I just brought a 5 shelf wooden storage unit from B&Q, cost about 15 quid and laid every thing on the shelfs.

Ran with no problems for over a year, wifey got fed up with electricity bills, so every thing is now in the A/C IT room at work , one of the perks of being in charge of IT.

 

[Migroo]

Hi Guys

Thanks for all the info!!

Crow - Yeah I was wondering how I would get round the containment problem - that shelving unit sounds really good. Out of interest - how much did your bill increase by running those machines? I just need to factor that into the budget... Nice idea with the NT4 - I have one that I'm not using at work but does it fit on those 260mb drives? :Q

Smokeball - not sure - what I'm thinking of wouldnt really help with the dust problem - but I'm probably thinking of the wrong milk crate!

No problem lane42

I'll update you guys tonight with what I have - this should get interesting

 

[Crow]

Hi Migroo

The total space with NT4 & PCanywhere installed is 96mb that includes a 16mb swap file, so a 260MB hard drive is fine.


I was running 3 x BP6 with cel 366@550, PII350 x 2 and a P200MMX this about doubled our electricity bill per quarter, its not a lot when you work out how much enjoyment you get from it for less that a 50pence a day. But along with my other vices of drinking, smoking, wild women (wishfull thinking) and me comps it was to much for the wife.

Celerons and PIIIs will use less juice than Durons and Athlons.

Just email me on zf3361@yahoo.co.uk if need any help.

 

[Migroo]

Wow I see what you mean - quite a lot of power. Its not too much per day though

Good point about AMD chips using more juice - then again they are cheaper than Intel's to buy, so I'll probably put up with the higher kWh usage

Thanks very much on the email offer - I'll shout if I need any help

 

[zeruty]

if you are gonna use your k-2 360, I'd recommend you use one of the statsaholic's enhanced clients and run eccp on it
on my k6-2 500, I was getting about 26 hours per wu, but it holds its own with eccp

 

[RaySun2Be]

Originally posted by: zeruty
if you are gonna use your k-2 360, I'd recommend you use one of the statsaholic's enhanced clients and run eccp on it
on my k6-2 500, I was getting about 26 hours per wu, but it holds its own with eccp

I've got a K6-2 500mhz, Win98, and it's average is 24 hours 16 minutes. :Q

FOr comparison, I've got a cely466, Win2KPro at home that averages ~18 hours.

 

[Assimilator1]

- What is the minimum RAM needed for Win98 and SETI? (I'm assuming its around 32 MB)

No,you want at least 64Mb to avoid swapfile activity

For SETI as a general rule for best efficiency ,avoid Socket7 systems altogether (slow L2 cache) unless you are given a K6-3 or K6-2/3+ which will manage a WU in under a day!.eg I have a Pentium 233MMX@266, 64MB CAS2 SDRAM,TX chipset which does WU's in 30.5hrs ish

How about getting some 2nd hand BX chipset boards with some of the lower clock speed coppermines to overclock? ,with the very low latency memory performance of that chipset they did very well at SETI.Btw v3.03 of SETI seemed to prefer the fast cache of the Celerons compared to the older PII/III's with their larger 512k cache.So the older Celerons are a reasonable choise
I had a Cel 366@550,CAS2,BX440 which managed 10.5hrs/WU ,a PIII 650@820 in the same board managed 7hrs/WU

Me & a friend worked out that the electricity costs will be about £6/mth/PC running 24/7 ,slightly more for an Athlon.We have cheap rate electricity at night here btw.

Just remebered I have a Slot1 Celeron 300A I have for sale now ,last weekend I upgraded my sons PC to a Cel 366@550 (yeah my old cpu).The 300A will do 450 MHz at def 2v or it can 475MHz @ 2.1v,at a push you can hit 495MHz @2.2v but I didn't test that setting properly.
I also have a 300MB HDD setting around doing nothing atm ,I'd give give that 1 away.
Also for sale that might be of interest to you ,a Slot A Athlon 700 with HSF.With a KX133 board ,decent RAM which can take 133MHz,CAS2,Turbo,4 way interleave it'll do 8.5-9hr WU's

I seem to remember Migroo that you are not far away from me ,PM me if you are interested in anything

 

[Migroo]

Thanks for the replies guys

Yeah Assim1, I'll definately aviod Socket7 systems Thanks zeruty - I'll keep that K6-2 350 of mine and have it running ECCp

It looks as if my strategy will be erring towards the few fast systems rather than the many slow systems. That information re: the Intel chips is v. useful

I need to get to B&Q sometime over the weekend and buy some sort of shelving unit to hold all the components!

Keep the comments / WU times coming!

Thanks a lot.

 

[networkman]

For me, the limiting factor has been electricity consumption(all at home), and that's why I've pretty much gone the dual-cpu route.

These dual-AMD rigs really crank out the units to the tune of roughly 10/day with no overclocking at all. I've found that I can run these rigs just fine on a single 250watt p/s. I've also found that the dual 1.2 MP systems run just about as fast as the dual XP1600 systems - both do roughly 10 WUs per day, even though the XP1600s are slightly faster(1.4 I think). 1.2 MP chips are relatively inexpensive and since they are MP I don't have to be concerned about marrying them up with another older model chip as I would with the XPs.

Just some more thoughts for ya.

 

[Migroo]

Thanks for your input Networkman

Yes I had thought about Dualies. Its something I would like to have a go at, at any rate.

Right now the idea is just to get setup with a few units, then later on (having seen how it goes etc with SETIing and electricity bills) I will set about improving them - I want an ongoing project AND the deciding factor is that I couldnt afford to spash out on new chips etc

At the moment its all looking good. Got a few components, 2 complete PCs (one apparently with a dead CPU or something) and some more on the way from Ebay. I'll let you know how the first stage goes, which will be running up what I already have - then selling the spare parts such as sound cards etc that I'll never need, then expanding with better chips etc

Sounds like fun

Many thanks for everyone's input.

 

[muttley]

I don't know what your electric rates are but if you have time and access pay a little more power supplys you'll find that paying a little extra will sometimes get you better return on your investment. Some switching supplies are terrible inefficient. This occures 1 in design. 2 in running low power out from a bigger supply. 3 from running to much power out of a low rated supply. At present I have a 550 watt enermax power supply and I love it cause it is so quiet. However I bought more than I really need (I had a 350 and a single 1700+ to test dual AMD MP processor boards and the dual new boards arn't ready for prime time and I thought that the 350 was a cause of problem) and I sure hope that this will go on an opteron AMD setup in the future.
I figure that a cheap power supply compared to a good quality will pay fot itself in 2 years if I got my math and numbers right at the time.

muttleyBruce

 

[Evadman]

This 400 watt PWS is what I have most of my systems running on. Even holds up the Dual Socket A's without a problem.

I have 1.2 gig hard drives and Win 98 running on most of my rack as that is what I have licences for. Also, my rack @ the moment has cases. I use them to cut down on the noise as I have to live here

Be careful running themin the garage, as heat could be a problem in the summer. I ran into that problem when this room hit about 120 degrees

Ram, I have 128 DDR as I could not find 64 DDR for a decent price. I would rather pay $5 more and get dbl the ram.

For price point / speed, I try to go with 1.0 durons. Anything over the 1.0 duron will be a morgan core, and have the die improvements and SSE support which will help out. I got a bunch for $50 a while ago, so Iwould assume they aer cheaper now.

Most seem to be building racks with the PC Chips mobo, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth from PC chips, so I use the K7S5A, but I have to buy a vid card. ECS also has the K7SEM with onboard Video, but it is a SDR solution. I am sure there is a DDR solution out there, but it is probably about $70 instead of $50 for the PC Chips and K7SEM / K7S5A.

<edit>
Fixed some stupid spelling errors

 

[Migroo]

Thanks for the contributions guys!

I'm going to have to save all this to a word file and archive it - this is some excellent info

Yeah Evad, I dont know if the machines will have cases or not. For the time being, they will, as I have a lot of cases, and it makes sence with the garage environment. I just called the group of them a 'crack 'rack'' for want of a better phrase.. perhaps 'farm'... no thats too big... I think 'herd' will have to suffice for now

No problem with the temperature. It may get warm but I can leave a window open.

Oh, and just won some more parts

 

[lane42]

Migroo, you could allways check out Refurbished parts Here I just ordered 2 Epox 8k7a motherboards with a 30 day Guarantee for 52.50 each, free shipping They have a bunch of stuff listed.

 

[zeruty]

Most seem to be building racks with the PC Chips mobo, but I still have a bad taste in my mouth from PC chips, so I use the K7S5A, but I have to buy a vid card. ECS also has the K7SEM with onboard Video, but it is a SDR solution. I am sure there is a DDR solution out there, but it is probably about $70 instead of $50 for the PC Chips and K7SEM / K7S5A.

From what I understand, PC Chips, and ECS are the same company... also in the same mix is Matsonic
a lot of people seem to like the k7s5a, but where I work when we got those in we had TONS of problems with them
we stopped carrying them after about two weeks
we carried the pc chips m830's for a while, didnt sell many but we carried them
we've had really good luck with matsonic 8308's and 8137's

it's kind of odd having varied results all from the same company
but anyways from what I understand they are all part of the same company (I think called Elitegroup or something)

 

[Migroo]

OK an UPDATE!

I should be setting up the first machine this weekend - a K6-2 350 (I know, not much, but its '+1'...).

I'm also testing out a Duron 650 I just bought in my PC here (normally run an XP 1700+) and it flies, got it up to 125 FSB so far (+ 25% speed) on stock voltage...

Got a HDD to go with the Duron aswell, so its coming along nicely. Will give an update at the end of the wkend.

Thanks all for previous comments!

 

[Engineer]

Great job Migroo!

So glad to see you back in the SPIRIT!