So after reading a few replies in regards to why members of the team no longer fold who used to in the past, 2 main points seems to come up all the time. - Hardware Costs, new hardware is expensive which yield better ppd - Electricity Costs, to run a 24/7 dedicated folding rig Now, I am not rich and I have funded my folding projects from nothing using GiffGaff sim card affiliate program to raise enough funds to buy whole pc. You get £5 per simcard that it is activated and get paid every 6 months direct to you as it is a community lead mobile phone network and rewards people who share and create awareness of thier existence. https://www.giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/pcshed I even did a Youtube video is sharing how to do this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BYmlekcnUo With the money raised, I started buy small pc components and selling them on and reinvesting the profit to a point where I could buy a complete pc (get better value when stripped for parts if you buy a whole pc). It has taken me a few years to get to a point where I have the necessary funds to invest in folding. I utilise Ebay once a month when they do special promotional offers of 100 free listing with 75% on final Felling fee to keeps costs down. So I have 2 ideas which i would love some feedback from the existing members; - To build a Team travelling folding PC. This would be a up to date build using the most modern/efficient GPU's for folding (I can provide system). This would go to a members house for 1 month who would love to fold again but does not have the kit to do it as long as they were prepared to pay the electricity bill for running it for a month. 24/7 operation would be prefered but as a added bonus for the gamers out there, they can use the folding rig to game on as long as it folds for a minimum of 12 hours per day. Remote access to the rig would be a must and I would personally deliver/pick up and set system up every month. Once month is passed total points would be recorded and added to a in team league table. - Create a electricity fund for people who have a folding rig already but can't afford to run it 24/7. This means anyone who can afford it, donate to the fund and help your fellow team mates to get back on the folding horse. Again a minimum folding of 12 hours per day but 24/7 preffered. In regards on how to monitor your use of electricity while folding, I can provide a socket wall voltage meter which will tell you how much your pc is pulling at the wall. As long as I got the cost per unit and useage I can work out the total cost by number of units of power used. At the end of the month I would give total useage and costs and arrange payment direct to member. Also the total points contributed for the month would be submitted into the in team league table. I have a YouTube and Twitch channel (non profit, no adverts etc) which I can promote this further, give well deserved shoutouts to performing members. I am also active in social media on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook etc which these day is a must to create awareness to any cause So what are you thoughts on these ideas? Would this incentive help get exisiting members get back to folding? What specs should the Team Folding Rig have Would you have a pc folding at your home if electricity bill was covered for it? Anyone who would like to get involved in helping me setting this up? Every month on my YT channel I do random acts of kindness and i think this would be a way of contributing to something worth while.
Some interesting ideas. See what others think. (I, for one, would love someone to pay my electricity bills )
Thanks for your input. After seeying your rigs specs and your ppd your contributing, £5 a day is not going to cover it!!!
Folding has always been about charity in my mind so instead of donating cash to some good causes, a central folding fund might be a good idea. Find a member who is in a fairly cheap power area and use the funds for the meter so to speak.
Some great ideas there. I need to digest them and come back to you with thoughts because implementing anything like this is very open to abuse, and I'm sure that there is a way to optimise the spend/tax aspect...
I apologise for not replying to this thread at the time it was posted, I really did intend on doing so because I think these are brilliant ideas. I would be willing and able to host the machine/hardware but the obvious problem is that I'm across the water from you so that probably disqualifies me. Another option would be to just send the cards around between team members; my folding farm has space for another 4x GPUs which I could run 24/7 at full bore without even making a "drop in the ocean" impact on the electricity bill of the site they're at, which is a big deal for me because the electricity cost is what made me stop folding at home a couple of years ago. I just can't dump money into it at the moment - between my van project as well as tool and equipment investments over the past year or so I am already worried about the account balance for my car project, so spending another £500 or more on cards is not justifiable as much as I'd like to increase my own and the team's PPD not to mention contribute more units to the project. I am still folding on a few clients at home but it's small compared to the rest and as I've said, the power hungry "farm" is off-site and I no longer have to worry about the electricity bill for it. I'm trying to make the best use of the 8U rack space that I have at the moment and might have another 8U to work with from July onwards. With more than enough old X58 hardware lying around the workshop to throw together another couple of machines to run more cards I would love to get to over 1 million PPD on my "Unicorn" username by the middle of this year, but when I took the decision to build a competitive racing car a few years ago I knew that I'd picked one hobby that would cost a lot of money and would severely limit my spending on the rest of them, and that's still very much the case.
Oh wait, I've completely mid-read your post (I was admittedly driving at the time! ) and thought you had two AMD 280s! The Core_11 work units that GTX 260s and the rest of the Fermi family were processing ended a long time ago and there are no plans to support them again with more work. I do still have a few GTX 260s, 285s and 295s lying around here from my original folding farm, but unfortunately they're no good in the new one. Sorry about that!
