Thinking of Building a Folding Rig

[Goalieman077]

Well I have been on and off of whether or not to build a folding rig in the next few months. Anyway I wouldn't have a fortune to spend only around $700 give of
take. Would it be possible to build a decent folding rig for this budget? Is it even worth it or would I get low ppd with that small of a budget?

[MonsterSound]

You could build an excellent folding rig within that budget. nVidia GPU's are the key.
And the team would love another rig to help push the big humiliating crush onto TPU </insert evil laugh>.

[Goalieman077]

Hmm well if i could
do decent then I may. I would need everything though. What would
be the best gpu/s to get and how many ppd?

[_dangtx_]

thats wayyy to much...you need a mobo with 2 pcie slots or more and a cpu to go in there...so anything that fits the bill will do...add 2 8800gt's bought for around 50-65 a pop and oc the shaders to a healthy 1700+(will need decent cooling and bios flash perhaps) and you get yourself 10k ppd or better. if you really want to kik arse, get a 4 slot pci-e mobo(and a cheap duallie amd cpu) and stick in 4 gt's...thats easy 20k ppd :)
psu wise...hmm....for two cards like that a good 500 watter will do very well...for 4...hmm...600-700 watter. add whatever hdd, dvdrom...you can find good deals here.




Vidia Single Cards
---------------------------------

GTX 280______________######¦)##¦]############| 50W-79W-178W ²
GTX 260______________#####¦)##¦]######## 44W-65W-136W ²

9800 GX2_____________########¦)#¦]##########}| 69W-83W-182W ²
9800 GTX+____________######¦)#######}' 52W-117W !
9800 GTX OC__________########¦)#¦]###########}|' 68W-82W-183W ² (875/1100 1.528v)
9800 GTX_____________#####¦)¦]######} 45W-54W-108W ²
9800 GT______________####¦)#########} 35W-116W ~
9600 GT______________###¦)¦]##}' 27W-34W-61W ² (512MB)
9600 GT______________###¦)###|' 26W-59W § (256MB)
9600 GSO ____________#####}| 46W
9500 GT______________##¦)#|' 19W-35W § (256MB)

8800 Ultra____________##########¦)#########' 85W-161W *
8800 GTX ____________########¦)#¦]#####} 70W-83W-132W ² (768MB)
8800 GTS ____________####¦)##¦]####|' 38W-58W-99W ² (512MB G92)
8800 GT OC __________####¦)¦]####}' 36W-41-86W ² (512MB 700/1025)
8800 GT _____________####¦)####}| 35W-39W-78W ² (512MB)
8800 GT _____________###¦)##| 31W-50W ^ (256MB)
8800 GTS OC_________#######¦)#¦]####}' 60W-78W-117W ² (640MB 576/1350)
8800 GTS ____________######¦)#¦]####| 58W-71W-106W ² (640MB)
8800 GTS ____________######¦)#¦]###}|' 56W-69W-103W ² (320MB)
8800 GS _____________###¦)###|' 27W-59W §

[Goalieman077]

wht about throwing some nvidia cards n my current rig would that be possible?

[SugarJ]

Absolutely, if you take the ATI card out. They don't mix nicely. Honestly, fire up a VMware client, and you'll get 7k PPD out of your CPU. Be patient, see what happens with the folding driver for the 5870. But you can play along right now!

[Lima]

Originally Posted by SugarJ

Absolutely, if you take the ATI card out. They don't mix nicely. Honestly, fire up a VMware client, and you'll get 7k PPD out of your CPU. Be patient, see what happens with the folding driver for the 5870. But you can play along right now!

That sounds pretty good. The part about waiting to see where the ATI driver goes.

[Perineum]

depending on how big of a video card you want to go with it'll make sense to either make 2 machines or one.

If you are using cards like 9800GTs that only require one power plug then get a 4 PCIe motherboard and do it right.

[Goalieman077]

Yea I think I will build one seperate. Ewhat about some 4x pcie slot boards? I have only ever seen the evga 762

[Dead Things]

If you can find them - the MSI K9A2 Platinum AM2+ boards are a folder's dream because they're (relatively) cheap and have 4 *dual-slot* PCIe slots - most 4PCIe boards have at least a couple of the slots jammed together. But yeah, there are a lot of great AM2+ and AM3 boards with 4 PCIe slots. Fewer on the Intel side, and what ones there are tend to be premium or enthusiast or workstation boards that will east up a good chunk of your budget.

So if you wanted to focus on multi-GPU folding, I would have to recommend an AM3 build with the Athlon X4 620 and a board with lots of available PCIe slots - something like the ASUS M4A79T or the MSI 790FX-GD70.

BUT... Based on PPD/watt figures - the best thing going right now is bigadv. With an overclocked i7, you can get about 50-60k points per project, or about 20-30k PPD. You'll clearly still need a GPU for your system, and the GT240's are about to launch which will offer the best PPD/watt of any folding card we've seen so far (my own speculation). So you could get a system with an i7 860 and a cheap GT240 in lieu of getting a bunch of heavy-hitting GPUs and wind up with roughly the same PPD (somewhere in the range of 20k to 35k for the whole system) while saving big-time on hydro costs.

Clearly you would have to shell out more cash upfront for something like that. i7 860 + 8GB RAM (you need >4GB for bigadv) + P55 mobo + GT240 + all the other paraphernalia... my guess is it would probably run you about a grand before taxes & shipping. That's why most people go the upgrading GPU route for folding boxes, because it requires a lower initial outlay of cash. But believe me, *looking at my hydro bill as I write this* - it catches up to you pretty quick!