HI Everyone, Somewhat of a Folding addict now so felt it was time I did the AA thang. Hello, my name is Joe and I'm a Fold-a-holic. I first started folding in March of 2008, up until then I'd never heard of Folding@Home and came across it all by luck when my house mate at the time bought a PS3, he didn't own a HDTV so luckily for me his new toy ended up in my room. Understanding that I couldn't selfishly justify the use my mates PS3 to fold 24/7 I turned my attention to the Windows client to see what I could achieve. I'd been buying CustomPC magazine since around the beginning of 2008, once I'd finished looking into Folding it felt right CPC would be the team I'd join. I'd read the folding section each month and found myself geekily fantasizing about one day maybe getting profiled. I loved the idea of getting my name in the publication and remember thinking it would take an age to produce the 20,000 points needed to make the print. When everyone was enjoying the longevity of their 8800GTX's I felt I'd missed the good times with that GPU and hung on to my trusty old 7800GT until the 8800GTX successor was announced. I'd saved up some cash and upon it's release promptly purchased a 9800GTX. Up until this point my folding contribution had come mainly from an E8500 with a hefty over clock. I soon found myself running the GPU client and had quickly replaced the stock cooler with a Zalman product. Finally I could fall asleep without battling the thunderous wall of noise my GPU created running under load. Unfortunately my PC was primarily a gaming rig and turning off my GPU client to game was starting to bug me. I'd read see the scores some of you guys were producing and think, I gotta build me more machines. That machine happened to be a Mac Pro case mod and around then I was moving it all over to water cooling. This sadly brought my folding to halt whilst the project slowly progressed. It wasn't until I moved house a year later when I thought, I gotta have a crack at breaking into the top 20 producers. I joined the CPC forums and although I had very little input to the community the help I received was outstanding. After CPC joined up with Bit-Tech I didn't signup to the new Folding forums right away and so slowly contributed to the team in silence. Well, now I'm hoping to be more involved. My contribution is nearing 50,000 PPD and I'm currently planning to extend that with a new rig at the end over the summer. Hopefully doubling my current production rate. I'm running two dedicated Folding rigs with a third in the works, this is my attempt at a small farm. ... I live in a shared house, no garage and house mates what don't want to hear the buzzing of case fans 24/7. Building it in my room seemed to make sense. I made a rather simple rack under my desk for about £40.00 (B&Q/MAPLINS) and picked up a Lian Li C32b HTPC case as it was mountable. FAH1 SPECS: Intel Core i7 875k (stock), 2x ASUS GTX460 768mb (900/1800), ASUS P7P55D, Corsair XMS3 4GB, Corsair TX850. COOLING: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 pro, 2x EK SUPREME HF VGA, Assorted RAM sinks, EK CoolStream XT240, 2x Noctua NF-P12 Vortex, 2x Noctua NF-S12B, 1 x Enermax T.B.Silence 80mm, 1x 140mm Sharkoon. ... ... ... Those images are old, It's now push pull on the RAD and all the tubing has been replaced. Just forgot to take a photo. Since it was built this rig has folded solid without a hitch. I wanted to use water as these machine are 6-8 feet away from where I sleep, noise levels were the most important detail. The loudest thing in that rig is the PSU on a warm day. GPU temps sit happily at 51'c and the Noctua P12's seem to do a great job and keeping the noise down. ... FAH1 = 22-24,000 PPD FAH2 SPECS: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (stock), 2x EVGA GTX470 SC Cheesecake (730/1430), EVGA 680i SLI, Crucial Ballistix 8500 2x1GB, Corsair TX750. COOLING: Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 pro, 2x EK SUPREME HF VGA, Assorted RAM sinks, EK CoolStream XT240, 2x Noctua NF-P12 Vortex, 2x Noctua NF-S12B, 1 x Enermax T.B.Silence 80mm, 1x 140mm Sharkoon. ... ... ... ... I've had a bit of trouble with this one over the last few weeks (couple of buggered Ballistix sticks were the culprit), however its up and running again and I'm slowly stretching out the 470's (had 2x9800GT before). Again the temps are pretty good for a small case with the RAD mounted internally they sit around 54'c (as of writing, the winter yields much lower temps). ... FAH2 = 26-30,000 PPD So that's me... and THIS is me. ... Looking forward to putting a third rig in the rack, I'm planning Z68 based BIG ADV machine running Linux, My experience with linux is minimal so expect to be hearing from me. J.
Welcome to the forum HackJoe, that's a monster of a first post Let us know how you get on with your Z68 rig, it should be a monster, both in terms of ppd and power efficiency
As above, awesome first post. Welcome aboard, some lovely looking rigs there, love it even more they are in a homemade rack!
Welcome, my plan is also build a Z68 2600k rig running Linux, even in a wee custom case Want to use it in my living room as heating in the winter lol.
Welcome Dude, and are you sure your not a column writer for a mag? Great first post, and propper big up to you for rack mounting in a timer frame Nature meets metal..... I like it! Linux folding has been a popular subject recently so have a browse as there are some good posts on getting Linux up and running..... Man i have got to raise my game
You've got a lot of GPU folding there. If you were to sell those two rigs, and build 2 2600K BigADV systems overclocked to 4.7-5GHz, you would be looking at 100K PPD. For very low power draw.
I like it Where did you get the metal from for mounting it, I wouldn't mind something like that in my spare bedroom since a full weight server rack might be a bit heavy
Thanks for the warm welcome, Cheers, I'm quite excited about the Z68 build, hopefully ordering the case, rad, fans and HDD today. I've got a the RES, pump/top, CPU block, fittings and PSU. Need to do a little research into which motherboard to buy, I'll wanting to keep the costs down yet the mobo needs to be a great overclocker. Could I get away with no dedicated GPU? run off the IGP or will that effect how are it can be overclocked? Thanks, It really was easy to build, the rack rails are from Maplins as are the blanking plates and fittings. I just cut the rail in half, screwed them onto the wooden legs used the blanking plate to work out the 19" and added a couple metal corner supports where the legs meet the desk. Sorted. lol, the heat dump is a killer, my rigs both use a 140mm roof exhaust fan and a single 80mm exhaust on the back, I kept my radiator off last winter as those two machines keep my room really quite comfortable. The summer however is a different story, I'm currently working out if air conditioning viable. LOL thanks, I'd been meaning to join the forums for a long time, once I started writing the post It seemed as thou I blinked and all that happened. The rack mount has really worked out well. If I'd had the space my folding machines would be in old cases running on air, there would be a few more of them too, I've got 2x 9800GT's and 9800GTX and 3x 9600GSO's just sat in boxes up in the loft. thats another 20k+ PPD going to waste. pretty sure the 9800GTX and at least one of the 9600 GSO's are fried thou.. Linux seems to made alot of sense for dedicated folding rigs, saves cash on having to get Windows huh, which to choose.. Fedora or Ubuntu? probably the latter. Thats a genius idea, it's actually upset me that I hadn't thought of it . the heat output would be much lower as would the noise. hmmmmmm... You've got me thinking.. HERE, I'm not the biggest fan of MAPLINS but for £17.99 their rack solution is a corker. J.
Yup, Thats my mini beast . I'd bought all the hardware for this Mac Pro mod I've spent the last couple years working on and it got to a point where i felt the hardware had been sat in their boxes for far to long, so, i bought the FT03. ... ... SPECS: Intel i7 950 (stock) + Asus Rampage III Gene + 6GB Corsair Dominator 1600MHZ + MSI TWINFOZR GTX580 (stock) + Silverstone Strider ST1000 + OCZ Vertex 2E 240GB + Samsung F3 1TB COOLING: Prolimatech Super Mega HSF (140mm Noctua NF-P14 FLX) + 3x Enermax Cluster UCCL12 + 1x Noctua NF-B9 I'm hoping to overclock it (was always my intention) just have not found to time to get stuck in. It's a great little case, I've still to wire up the slot loading DVD drive (it's fitted just not plugged in) and find I have to game with the side off or the GPU overheats (mad huh) it hits 87'c underload with the side on and it causes all games to crap out, even after I'd fitted the 92mm fan to help pump out the heat. The problem is the MSI GTX580 has its own aftermarket style HS which just blows the hot air into the case. I dont mind to much, it's pretty to look at. J.
LOL, cheers, reading back over it you notice just how many grammatical mistakes I made.. Never really was one for proof reading. Well, I've decided to break up my FAH2 rig in favour of a potential second Z68 i7 2600K rig, it'll be some time before it gets done (I pulled the trigger on a third Lian Li C32b), gotta build FAH3 first. However once that's built and running I'm gonna flog the 470'a and donate the Q6600 + EVGA 680i SLI to someone still rocking something older. The Z68 motherboard research begins. J.
Welcome mate, nice hardware and im loving the home built rack, gives me ideas haha. What rack mount cases are those, never seen ones you can get away with putting rads in!
They are the Lian Li C32B. It's a tight fit getting the 240 RAD with push pull in there but it's really quite effective. J.
