Building a dedicated Folding machine
 

Ok, i'm going to be building a dedicated folding machine and i'm looking for suggestions on the best bang for the buck.

I'll most likely be running a linux client of a bootable CD as that would be cheapest I believe.

Here are my questions.

1) One of our sponsors will donate a cpu to us for folding but it would have to be older stock (something that isn't moving well) than say a Quad Core.:biggrin: Which one would produce the most PPD?

2) What is the minimum ram that would be required so that it wouldn't bottleneck the CPU.

3) A cheap stable mATX MB that overclocks well. I would hope to hit 3ghz but it would obviously depend on the cpu.

3) Low budget mATX case, hopefully with no PSU as I will want to put something better in.

Dual cores with larger caches fold fairly well.

I'm watching the folks here on the forums who are trying out the XFX 650i board to see what they can get out of it in the hopes that it might become something that we can recommend as a decent budget priced OC board (unless NCIX happens to have a spare rma'd Dark squealer kicking around that they don't intend to send back..... :) ).

Not sure on best mem... at least 1 gig, and you would want it to be dual channel (bandwidth matters).

Does it have to be matx???? The tech stations work wonders as they don't overheat.... :)

E2130 Asus P5K-Vm mobo


If you are overclocking, I would say 2GB if you are aiming for around 3.0Ghz

Asus P5K-Vm mobo

Silverstone Sugo 03.

Something like my little rig?

XFX 650i
(which CPU can be called older stock?)
I will probably buy some Mushkin Ram (2x1gb) for 119$.
Don't go easy with the PSU - I learned my lesson....
Don't forget a low-end VC - I bought an ATI X300 fanless just for that purpose.
DVD-rom are dirt-cheap.
And of course the HSPC tech station, that Wilson proposed. That's what I'm using too and I love it.
Simple CPU cooler, I tried the Arctic Cooler 7 and does a great job. I went with the Swiftech Premium kit just for the fun of it!

John

It doesn't have to be mATX but if the first one is successful I might start a farm which may create a space problem fairly quickly.:biggrin:

Don't really know hopefully some Core 2 Duo. If the performance between the different models is not to big I would go for a slower/cheaper one.
Is 2GB's necessary?

Agreed.:thumb:

Can't On-board video be used?


AC 7 is an excellent choice.

On-board and OC usually don't go together very well.

I've managed to get about 30% out of Asrock S754 (AMD) nvidia 6100 mobos, but that's been the exception rather than the rule with on-board vid.

Any vid (other than one of those "turbo cache" models like the 6200s) would suit... even an old pci card would be fine.

2 gb is necessary for dual channel and bandwidth.

As for a cpu, wish for an "old" E6400. It can be oc'ed faily easily.

Compucase 6K28 is small and only $40

What's the avg. stable overclock on those and @ overclocked speeds what do you estimate the PPD would come in at?