What you crunching with??

[Brucifer]

Yo, Vaughan! What the heck do you have devoted to this project to be getting those high daily scores?????

[vaughan]

A bunch of machines

I think they're mainly Gentoo boxes back in Sydney that my son is looking after, mostly a mix of Ivy and Sandybridges. I was able to manage the Linux boxes using BOINC Manager from a LogMeIn session to a Windows box but my son changed the router / IP settings and I don't know the new IP addresses of the Linux machines now; will get that info next weekend. Switched most/all(?) Windows boxes to Physicsathome last weekend until they ran out of tasks. Now running Gerasim as they finally have some more tasks. Got to watch the temps as its a humid summer and the computer room hits 36C without a/c. Just waiting for some cooler weather then I can let the other machines loose.

[Brucifer]

ah.... feast or famine I guess!! Lol. It's good to see that you are back at the crunching again after your recent bout with the alternative life style that too many of us seem to have had to endure in the past five years or so! :-) Myself, I went and invested in some more win7 and picked up a couple i5 guts to replace a couple of the higher wattage C2Q systems. Also experimenting with an i3 and some gpu's to see what I can do there wattage wise. Definitely not like the years past, but am not generating the intense heat that I was before either. :-)

[vaughan]

All my current / recent builds are water cooled using a Corsair H80 system. Sorry no AMD CPUs too weak cruncher performance per watt of electricity and too much heat output. I5 Ivy Bridge seems to be the sweet spot for price/performance they overclock to 4.6 comfortably and temps remain manageable. I routinely put 32GB low profile Corsair DDR3 in the crunchers then any BOINC project that has silly high ram requirements can be catered for. My son installs Gentoo-64 as the OS. Usually put a 256 GB SSD Samsung 830s for storage. GPUs are whatever the wallet can afford on the day.

I forgot to add that the twin Xeon server has been crunching Asteroids too. That box is more set and forget than any of the others. It role is manage the network and crunch like crazy. No overclocking on the Xeons of course but stable as anything.

[Dirk Broer]

I have no complaints about the crunching performance per watt for my A6-3500 and especially not for it's successor with me for it: my A8-3820 (both 65 Watt tdp APUs), while the A8-3870K does a pretty thing in credits per Watt too. And no problem with heat output here now: it is winter! It even freezes at night...
It's a pitty the Intel HD 2000 IGP of my i3-2100 is totally useless, the CPU itself performs quite good per watt giving it's two cores with hyperthreading -also thanks to the HD 4770 in that same system, which is my sole MilkyWay cruncher-. Comes money I'll replace it with a i7-3770, but at the moment I have more hopes for a rebuild under Linux of my ASUS F1A75 with afore mentioned A6-3500.
Rumour has it that the Ivy Bridge with their Intel HD 2500 and HD 4000 can soon be used -the IGP already being detected in BOINC >7.0.39-, if only for the OpenCL that is possible on the CPU itself.

[Brucifer]

I've also got one cruncher running with the H80 cooling and have been really happy with it. Interestingly though messing around with asteroids has impressed me with the i5's I bought as they are really decent performing for their current draw and low heat. The gpu's definitely put out the work, but they put out the heat too. Just not much way around that sadly. I still haven't made it into the watercooling gpu scene yet. It's something I want to try, but it seems like I'm just too busy with a ton of other stuff all the time to get around to it.

[Terry1953]

I've still have an 8350 laying here that I haven't built yet and I'm in no hurry the one I have running is throwing as much heat as a fireplace. I cranked it down to running on 2 cores and am just letting the GPU run Moo. Those two things don't belong in the same box. I'm considering sealing the case and running a 4" dryer type vent in from outside at the bottom and a 4" out at the top with a fan assist. It should work during the winter.

[Brucifer]

hahahhaha -- I definitely hear you on that one!! :-) I have though about basically the same thing. My thoughts were to build an enclosed shelf type arrangement that I could stuff the boxes in to crunch away, and then knock a couple vent holes in the side of the house so that one would suck in the fresh air and the other would be the exhaust port. That would also provide some noise insulation for those really noisy high performing gpu's.

Of course that doesn't take into account the wife crapping in her drawers when I put the holes in the side of the house. She gets pretty touchy on my holes I drill for network wires and such! Lol

So really, the most logical way really is to look into the water cooling thing. Could still put the main heat exchanger outside the house and then just run small water pipe though the wall into the computer room. Or even put it under the house maybe...??? But at any rate that would help knock down on noise, plus keep the interior room temperatures much more easy to regulate for the A/C and help keep the power bill down.

Of course there is also the nuclear option -- just quit crunching. But I tried that a couple times and it was a pretty severe withdrawal problem because computers are my main year round form of entertaining myself and keeping the brain occupied.

And thus the Raspberry Pi. That is a much cheaper way to play, of course you don't get much crunching completed and are limited in what you can crunch too for that matter. But it's something else to play with that keeps the brain cells entertained. :-)

[Terry1953]

Hummm... I really like the box idea. Since I live in a log cabin with 4X12 rough cut oak walls it would save me several holes to just drill 1 intake and one exhaust hole. The wife has made a deal with me that the master bedroom is mine to do with as I please as long as she rules the rest of the house. Right now I have an eight foot by 2 foot desk running along the west wall with a 4 foot by 2 foot "T" leg in the center. I'm thinking about a 4x2 by 6 foot tall box on one end of the desk with a shelf. I could use rough cut oak 1x12"s with 1" of foam insulation and a door down the middle 2 foot wide and 6 foot tall. A small hole for my KVM cords and I'm left with an L shaped desk. Guess I'll sketch it up and start begging. lol

[Brucifer]

Well if you went with the water cooling, then you wouldn't be space limited by the box. Plus things would be a lot quieter too. Well, except for the hum of the coolant pumps. Of course the water cooling would cost a bit more too. I haven't made up my mind yet what I'm gonna do yet. Still mulling a few ideas around in the head.