LHC@home

Did quite a number of upgrades since my original post from 17 Dec 2005 ;)

3x Athlon64 X2 4600+ EE
3x Athlon64 X2 4400+
3x Athlon64 X2 4200+
1x Athlon64 X2 4000+ EE
3x Athlon64 X2 3800+
3x Athlon64 X2 3600+ EE
1x Dual AthlonMP 2800+
1x Athlon64 3700+
2x Athlon64 3200+
3x Athlon64 3000+
1x AthlonXP 3000+

Bad news is that Energy prices have increased every year, good news is that the total Power Consumption has fallen at (almost) the same rate, still trying to keep pace with the energy prices though :p

Anyway, that's still 2542 Watts worth of raw computing power at my command :D

---

Scientific Network : 45000 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB

I just setup a new Athlon MP at 1800+ mhz.....surpringly swift cruncher.
Also surprising is how the MP's hold their value on eBay.

The farm is now :
Dual Xeon C2Q x5355
C2Q q6700
C2Q q6600
2x C2D 6700
Dual Xeon 3.6
Dual Athlon MP 1800+
...and a smattering of others.

Sysfried.....Xeon 7110's.......Tulsa's ? Right ?
I have access to set of 7120's.....I would like to know more about your machine.
Please contact me.

---

Sysfried.....Xeon 7110's.......Tulsa's ? Right ?
I have access to set of 7120's.....I would like to know more about your machine.
Please contact me.

my LHC nick @ (biggest search engine corp these days)mail.com

Regards,

Sysfried

---

The farm has again been in-densified

Converted the Xeon 3.6 and Athlon MP systems into a
Dual Opteron 2218 system on a Asus L1N64 motherboard.
This system is already twice as fast as the Xeon 3.6 was and it uses a single 550watt PSU instead of dual 650's.
Running in a Koolance liquid cooled system the procs are at 95 degrees F .

I am looking forward to the release of the AMD quads cores.

---

20+ machines, ranging from and old dual PII 300 to new P-4's and AMD's.
Hope to start adding some Intel Duals and Quads this year and start
retireing some of the old hardware. Even though it seems to march
right along with very little complaining, unlike my newer stuff.

---

Beach Bums Current Stats:


Come Join us at Hawaiian Beach Bums

Happy new year to all !

The farm has evolved as usual.
The most notable addition is a Poweredge 6850 running quad 2.66 MP xeons.
These are dual core hyperthreading.....so 16 threads.
Its not as fast as you would think....but it does have solid production.
The reality.....a new 5400 series quad core Xeon could probably outrun it.

Did Santa bring anyone else something shiny and new ?

---

not crunching... just for play and experiments
486 DX4 cameo
P166 Monster1
P200 noname
Celeron 400 Monster2
Celeron 433 noname
Cyrix 433 Snake
Celeron 600 Pegasus
Celeron 933 Dominator
P3 1GHz Monster3
P3 1,13GHz Destroier

"working grup"
AMD 3000+ XP Inferno
AMD 2600+ XP Bart
Core 2 Duo E4400 Hydrajunior
Core 2 Duo E6600 HydraD
Core 2 Duo Q6600 HydraQ

---

retired machines:

-pIII 1 ghz , 1gig ram
-xbox xdsl(linux) 700mhz celeron M , 64ram
-athlonXP 1800+ , 1 gig ram

actual machines:

-athlonXP 3000+ (barton) , 1gig ram
-amd 3800x2 , 1gig ram

futur project:
another amdx2
and or rpm version of boinc
on sgi octane.

Ok, here is my stuff:

- HP XW6000, 2x 2,4GHz Intel Xeons, 4GB mem
- Dell Precision 450, 2x 2,4GHz Intel Xeons, 2GB mem
- HP XW6200 motherboard, 2x Intel Xeons 3,0 GHz (800MHz FSB), 2GB mem

One or two are mostly 24/7 active and at the moment they are waiting for new LHC@Home jobs! ;)

---

I am currently only running two systems:
1)AMD Athlon 3800+ dual-core (may soon update to AMD Phenom 9500 quad-core) 1gig of ram (Planning to add a gig in a day or two)
2)Amd Sempron 3200+ 256mb of ram

I am thinking about building myself a new descktop computer and retiring the one that I currently use every day. My plans are to build one with an AMD Phenom 9600 quad-core and 4gigs of ram!

---

-Albert Einstein

Have had to stop using the 3 computers I had access to at work as I no longer work there.
So down 3 x 2.4GHz Intel Celerons, down 1.5 GB ram and down 240 GB hard drives.
Drops my system to 5 Computers, 15 cores, 37.15 GHz, 11 GB ram, 2,160 GB HD

But as a new Christmas present for myself (it came after Christmas, but never mind), I have built another AMD Opteron 285, as I already had the chips.
This adds 4 x 2.6 GHz, 2 GB ram, 2 x 400 GB Hard Drives.

After droping the P4 2.53@2.75 Ghz back to 2.66GHz I have now dropped it back to standard 2.53Ghz.
This brings my small farm back up to:-
6 Computers (5 at my house),
Giving 19 CPU cores,
47.33 GHz,
13 GB RAM,
2,960 GB Hard Disk space.

Hope this is a good year for all.

---

Another year, another Update ;)

1x Athlon64 X2 5000+ EE
2x Athlon64 X2 4800+ EE
3x Athlon64 X2 4600+ EE
4x Athlon X2 BE-2400 EE
4x Athlon64 X2 4000+ EE
4x Athlon X2 BE-2350 EE
1x Athlon64 X2 3800+ EE
3x Athlon X2 BE-2300 EE
2x Athlon64 X2 3600+ EE

Last year the Network ate 2542W of Power, now it's much more potent and energy consumption is down to 2043W. Gotta love Energy Efficient computing :D

---

Scientific Network : 45000 MHz - 77824 MB - 1970 GB

@Albert: Be very picky about your motherboard! I built a Phenom system in early December and I still don't have it stable under load. It boots up and idles just fine but if I load all 4 cores with seti@home work, it spontaneously reboots after a minute or two. LHC@home tends to last longer - probably because it doesn't hit the memory as hard. But If I restrict BOINC to 2 cores, I can run all day long. Based on various forums and reviews it looks like there are memory compatibility problems. I have a Gigabyte GA-MA790FX-DS5 board with 2 GB of Kingston HyperX 1066 MHz memory. Apparently the phenom and/or the 790FX chipset does not play well with 1066 MHz memory.

One problem is that the Phenom wants to run the memory at 1.8V but almost all of the 1066 MHz memory out there requires 2.2V or more. Most boards let you overvolt the memory and achieve the correct voltage but there have been reports that setting it to over 2.2V can fry the Phenom's memory controller.

I have also had problems with the BIOS just ignoring some of the settings I change. For example, I currently have the BIOS set to put the memory controllers on the Phenom into "ganged" mode but both the POST screen and the AMD OverDrive utility says they are in un-ganged mode. Memory timings are also ignored sometimes. This is probably a Gigabyte BIOS problem.

I just ordered some 800 MHz memory that is on Gigabyte's official "approved memory list" for this board so I'll see if that fixes anything. I think I defintely paid an early adopter tax this time :(

---

- A member of The Knights Who Say NI!
My BOINC stats site

Hello,
BEWARE...Bonic Farm's are rather contagious...

Well i did have:-

1 x Dual 450MHz Apple Mac G4
2 x Quad 2 GHz Compaq Evo W6000 Workstations
2 x 8x Core Compaq Proliant 8500R Servers
3 x Dual P3 1 GHz Compaq AP550 Professional Workstations
4 x Dual P3 866 Mhz Compaq Professional Workstations

40x Cores all-together crunching away....

Now my new year resolution ....To save some money due to electricity costs

All i have now is...

4 x Quad Compaq Evo W6000 Workstations and that's it !
2 @ 2 GHz & 2 @ 2.8 GHz

16 x Cores crunching away

All the surplus machines i threw out up the local tip ..refuse/transfer station.

I do have have another set of 2.8GHz Cpu's waiting to be installed into one of the 2GHz workstations when the new heatsinks arrive.
So that will be 3 @ 2.8 GHz & 1 @ 2 GHz.

Am i saving any money ...
Well I'll get back to you on that one !... when the quarterly bill arrives.

The good point is the 4x machine's i have now are doing more in credit wise than my boinc small holding / farm once did.

Regards,

---

It is just short of 2 years since anyone posted in this thread.
As there is nothing much else happening in LHC Volunteer land I will update my computer list.

Did have
1x Intel P4 2.53, 1GB RAM, 2x80GB
1x AMD X2 4800+, 2GB RAM, 2x250GB
1x AMD Opteron 275 (@2.2GHz), 4GB RAM, 2x250GB
3x AMD Opteron 285 (@2.6GHz), 2GB RAM ea, 4x250GB + 2x400GB

Equals

6 CPUs
19 Cores
47.33 GHz (Total Frequency)
13 GB RAM (Total Memory)
2,960 GB Hard Disk space

Finally retired permanently the Intel P4 2.53 and upgraded it to a Quad core AMD X4 955 @ 3.2 GHz with 4 GB RAM.

Two of my AMD Opteron 285s died (appears to be motherboard and I can't get anymore of them), so I have upgraded one of them so far with another AMD X4 955 quad core.

The AMD X2 4800+ has also been have lots of motherboard problems so have decided to replace that one also with another AMD X4 955 quad core.

So this means that I now have
(the 4800+ is still being built at the moment but will be working soon)

1x AMD Opteron 275 (same as above)
1x AMD Opteron 285, 2GB RAM (may upgrade to 4) 2x250 GB
3x AMD Phenom II X4 955, 4GB RAM ea, 2x80 GB + 4x250 GB

Gives

5 CPUs
20 CPU Cores
57.60 GHz (Total Frequency)
18 GB RAM (20 GB with 285 upgrade)
2,160 GB (Hard Disk space)

So with less CPUs,
I have more Cores,
much higher overall crunching Frequency,
more RAM,
with a bit less hard drive storage space.

I also have 3 ATI graphic cards that are now producing most of my output, who would of thought that when we last posted here in this thread?

---

300 hundred days since last update,

Well the Opteron 275 finally died as well, another motherboard it seems, that\'s the 3rd one now in less than a year.

Had to wait 3 months for new gear to turn up so I could upgrade it.

It is now an AMD Phenom II X6 @ 3.2 GHz with 8 GB of RAM as I will update to 64 bit in the near future, same hard drives as before.

Now have,

(My Last) AMD Opteron 285 @ 2.6 GHz, 2 GB RAM, 2x 250 GB HD, 2x ATI Radeon HD5870 1 GB graphic cards
AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2x 80 GB HD, 2x ATI Radeon 5870 1 GB graphic cards
2x AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM, 2x 250 GB HD
AMD Phenom II X6 @ 3.2 GHz, 8 GB RAm, 2x 250 GB HD.


Equals
68 GHz total clock frequency
2,160 GB Hard Disk space
22 GB total RAM
6 CPUs
22 processing Cores.

With the graphic cards now producing majority of my total.

Conan.

---

At the other end of the scale, my farm is rather more a window box or perhaps flower pot :)

12 boxes
19 hyperthreads/cores
32.13Ghz total clock frequency
16GB memory
No idea how much HD space (bulk storage is on NAS boxes)

This excludes a couple of laptops that I rarely BOINC on, and one of the above is in a bedroom so often has BOINC suspended to keep the fan noise levels down :)

All machines are P4s, mostly HT and a couple of Celerons. No multicore processors, no graphics cards. All bought second hand for $30-$100 with valid/legal XP installed. Although I did install Linux on one when I had driver problems, and on another when I wanted something to play with :)

Memory is only upgraded when there is spare memory from a better machine that\\\'s been upgraded (with cheap secondhand memory) or from a dead machine. Other parts are salvaged from dead machines to keep others alive. The only parts bought (rarely) are secondhand PSUs and CPU fans. I\\\'ll move processors around too sometimes.

The only truly dead machines that I\\\'ve had have blown mobos or no cheap spare PSUs available. Only 3 IIRC.

Best RAC I can achive? About 11K! :)

Why do I bother? Well, it\\\'s fun. I don\\\'t tend to crunch the big-hitter projects, rather the ones I feel like at the time. I rarely concentrate on a single project for more than a week at a time. I have a short attention span ;)

Downsides? Space for 12 boxes - Most are in my workshop. Electricity costs - Yeah, this is a bad one. Heat generation - Keeps my workshop a bit warmer though, and my home office has the rest of the machines and requires little extra heating in the winter :)

I could get better RAC from a single quad with a graphics card in it. But where would be the fun in that ;)

Al.

---

one of the above is in a bedroom so often has BOINC suspended to keep the fan noise levels down

That\'s the only way I heat my condo -- I\'ve been here for a year now, and still haven\'t turned it on! It\'s only a BOINC contributor who has their door open on Christmas to keep their apartment cool. I guess I just have electric heat:
3x PhenomII x4 640 quad @ 3.2Ghz (overclocked)
1x Q8400 quad @ 2.67Ghz (stock)
1x Athalon64 x2 6400+ @3.4Ghz (overclocked)
plus a couple of other units at work &c.
One of the Phenom\'s keeps my bedroom nice and toasty warm.

BOINC was created with the idea of exploiting \"unused cycles\" in PCs. Now people are building computer farms and home supercomputers using GPUs (nVidia and ATI/AMD). This is already killing SETI@home which is closed down most of the time.Too many results in too little time and the servers are overloaded.Be careful.
Tullio

BOINC was created with the idea of exploiting \\\"unused cycles\\\" in PCs. Now people are building computer farms and home supercomputers using GPUs (nVidia and ATI/AMD). This is already killing SETI@home which is closed down most of the time.Too many results in too little time and the servers are overloaded.Be careful.
Tullio

Fun isn\'t it?

The servers catch up sooner or later, if they don\'t and the results are still needed then the servers get updated or they lose the results, the volunteers and solutions to the projects problems.

Pushing technology is what playing with computers is all about and I love doing it (as long as it does not cost me too much).

---