Hello Whats the best kit to get folding with in terms of boards, CPUs and GPUs. eg, SR2 with dual X5650s at 4GHz, or GTX580s. Just thinking I could have a look to do a little folding as I have access to a hell of a lot of kit here. Thanks
Combine your best processing power with your most powerful NVidia GPUs and you have your best folding machine. If you have "everything", then dual or quad xeon of the latest generation available to you, with as many GTX 680 or 580 as possible (or better still, GTX 690, 590 or similar)
Set up one machine dedicated to running SMP units - Linux on as many fast cores as you can get. If you have access to 4-socket opteron serverboards go for it. Leave it running 24/7 to get 'quick return bonus' points. Have another machine dedicated to GPU units - four double GPU cards. You don't need a highly spec'd CPU for doing this, if you experiment you can still squeeze some points from ordinary Windows WU. You needn't run 24/7 since there is no QRB on GPU units *yet* and almost all GPUs capable of running Folding@Home can complete a WU in a matter of hours. This sort of machine will be using close to 1kW, so make sure the person paying the electricity bills has given permission.
This: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-553-AS&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=1695 And a pair: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CP-422-IN&groupid=701&catid=6&subcat=1823 Very good rig, good for 200k PPD probably with good memory. Also low power draw. What I would build if I could afford it. Out of curiosity, what do you do with OC?
I work as a product manager for most component groups as well as servers. (In other words, i control what oc sells and doesnt sell on my set groups) I'm pretty sure the Srx has a pair of 2687s in it with 96gb of ram in the next room. It has a few 680s installed too so could be the ticket to get things rolling. I'll report back once I've got things running.
Make sure you use the bigadv flag. Just use the V7 client, very easy to setup. And watch the temps! Also, get a passkey (just Google fah passkey) and if you are folding on a new username for the first time, just do 10 normal units then add the bigadv flag. You don't get bonus points till you have done 10 units.
We have the tests set up for that already so unfortunately thats a no go.. nothing to stop RMA gpus being tested in that way though..