So as I am a newbie in folding (only 49 days so far) I have been trying different hardware combinations, clients and OS to see what gives best performance for cost and efficiency. Its been a interesting journey so far and very addictive. i had a few people asking what kit i been using to achieve the rapid climb within the team so i though i give a small summary of the components Rig 1 - Watercooled Nvidia Asus Titan's 12GB are the kings of folding in my opinion. I got two of them overclocked (boosts to 1422Mhz) and temps do not rise above 40C degrees at full load pushing out 1M -1.2M ppd. Intel 5960x 8 core cpu watercooled, overclocked to 4.2Ghz (from 3.0Ghz) running web browser folding client Rig 2 Aircooled 2x Gigabyte 980ti (my favorite gpu for gaming) also folding, overclocked (boosts to 1550Mhz) and this is also pushing out 1M ppd. Intel 4790K overclocked to 4.6Ghz I also have several servers (dual cpu Quad Xeon x5570 with different gpu folding now and again; MSI 970 GTX - OC boosts 1533Mhz, 48C - 280k- 320k ppd EVGA 690 GTX (dual gpu in 1 pcb) - OC boosts to 1228Mhz, 68C, 180k-230k ppd (quite disapppoint with its performance) I also had a few AMD graphics cards, MSI R9 390 8G, R7 370 4G and R9 290x but again they did not perform as good as nvidia cards and they pulled a lot of power at the wall so I decided to not use them, sell them and get more 970gtx (another one arriving next week) After testing 3x HP Z600 servers, 1x HP Z800 and tinkering with a evga sr2 server, i decided to sell them all and build 1 mega folding PC based on a server platfform. The reason for this is simply because i want permanent folding rig with the capability of folding 2-3million million points on its own and also utilise it for video rendering/editing projects. Also my Rig 1 will be up for sale this month so I need to build another to replace and exceed its performance to get contributing to the cause. So if anyone is interesting in buying these servers, or my main rig, let me know. Pictures, videos of them can be found on social media and Youtube. YT - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRNnbR-wRWI FB - https://www.facebook.com/PcShed Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/pcshedtv/ Twitter - @Pc_Shed G+ - https://plus.google.com/+PcShedTV Check the lastest video on the current rigs and items for sale, everything is up for sale next week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRNnbR-wRWI After researching for cpu and motherboard for next weeks build, there are 2 possibilities; 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2660 (lga 2011) 8C 16HT- 2.2ghz - boosts to 3.0Ghz with 20M Cache on a Asus Z9PE-D8 WS motherboard or 1x Intel Xeon E5-2675 V3 (lga 2011-V3 16C 32HT 1.8Ghz-boosts to 2.3Ghz 40M Cache on a Asus Z10PE-D8 WS Xeon Series S2011 v3 motherboard Any thoughts and advice on this would be very much appreciated as i never done a build on these WS platfforms and not sure what ram would be best to use on them. In regards to gpu's to go in them there will be 7 x 970GTX's using usb pci express risers to begin. Solution for electricity consumption will be a 18 panels Solar panels installation probably in September this year.
Multi-socket WS's used to be the best hardware for Folding during the era of the Big Advantage Project (bigadv), but that was terminated at the end of January 2015; Big Advantage News. It was during that era that many of those using company servers (inpharm, zz9pzza and more recently Nelio) shot up through the charts. With the cessation of that project however, multi-socket WS's aren't as desirable as they used to be for Folding, which might be why you've not had a response to your post, as most Folders now don't go down this route - GPU's produce the highest PPD these days. I can't personally comment on your platform options - my only experience is with a quad socket (48 core) Opteron WS which I still use for Core A5 projects.
PcShedTV - What's happened to the PPD??? The mag article indicated you were heading onward and upward.
Come back PcShedTV!!!! My servers in bits still moving to a bigger case and fitting a loop to keep it noce and cool with summer approaching....
So much for onward and upward. The cynical among us might say that PCShedTV was using folding/CPC as a method of little self publicising... I say: Good on 'em! Thank you for supporting our team while conducting your experiment. Please come back and share your learnings so that we can better our team and results - don't allow your efforts and energy be wasted - hardware moves on every year and those changes make the learnings go out-of-date quite quickly.
Blimey, that was a short lived but productive spell of folding. Well then, looks like it's up to me to fit as many GPUs as possible into the 8U of rack space I have to work with. Electricity costs won't be a problem for me in the short term but cooling might as the weather gets warmer. I think it's finally time for me to invest in a proper AC unit this summer. The exhaust temp of the cabinet was hitting the very high twenties today and it wasn't even that warm outside.
So that is what happened to PcShed. I was getting concerned I was about to slide back down the leader board! I'm back up and running with 4 GPUs. Had to change some fans on the AMDs although I think my Nvidia 770 has died. For reasons I don't understand, my older PC with the AMD's sometimes refuses to upload finished units and download new ones until I reboot the system. Difficult to do When I am in a hotel working.
