Streamlining Charlie's folding farm

[3.0charlie]

I've been thinking about this project for a while, and finally decided to jump straight into it after finding ... The farm was as such:

The Four Horsemen - the workhorse, uptime past 100 days and counting, not a single hickup. Housing quad 6128s, it's folding for ~225k - 250k ppd. The board is drop-dead stable, and as it stands now - with 32Gb installed, it's ready anytime for an upgrade.
Deux - the small form factor folder (well, it is small for a 2p board...). Still folds WUs, and was at one time the ppd / W champion with dual 6128s. With the change in bigadv of last year, the ppd was nerfed to ~85k - 90k ppd, with very low power consumption still (250w).
One - the latest addition, the black sheep, the unwanted one, the experiment... whatever. Using for the first time and the last time a Bulldozer Interlagos chip (the 6272, to be more precise), the hype, the dream of reuniting BD and folding basically fell apart when the first WUs were uploaded... what a pathetic chip. For folding, that is. Can't sell the damn thing, not even on ebay since Newegg.com decided to offer the 6272s for a lower price than I already paid for...

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So.

One will become the Wife's rig upgrade. She does use a lot of the Adobe CS5 applications, and her existing rig (P5Q/Q6700/4Gb/5770) was showing its age... going to 16 cores, 16Gb and a new GTX570 should make her happy. And you married men out there, you know what means a happy She-who-must-be-obeyed, right? More parts...

Unfortunately, for the grand scheme of things, this means Deux will be sold. As is, no parting. For a Folder wishing to drop the GPU folding and jump into SMP and bigadv, the board / chips combo is a great starter. I'll make a very nice deal, and quite possibly leave the SSD part of the deal... Easy setup once received. Change the config. file, and start FaH the usual ./fah6 way... The combo will be offered sometime this coming week. Alongside Deux will be 4x 6128s, at dropdead prices. Which ones are those? They are the chips installed in the 4p. And they will be replaced by quad 6174s, of which 2 are already on hand (and being tested in Deux as I type this). Bought for 600$ each (with shipping, customs and taxes included), they will be the new hearts of The Four Horsemen. Hello ppd... and slight power consumption increase.

Why the change? I figured that going from 6128s to 6174s on the 4p would make more ppd than keeping the 2p, for less power consumption than both rigs combined. Kinda makes sense. But all this would have not been possible without the very low price of the 6174s - because dropping 2400$ on 4 chips is something all by itself.... Great ebay seller (out of LA), ships same day using FedEx Express. PM me if you want more info.

Oh, forgot to add. What you don't know can't hurt you, right? Well, One will still fold. SMP WUs only, using the -SMP 14 flag. As such, the Wife will never notice the lag if all cores were used, there is plenty of Ram on the board and in return, I get an additional ~16k ppd... but shuuut. Don't tell her that...

[BrainEater]

That's a sweet upgrade.It'll make all the difference in the world on adobe.

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Going from 'farm' to 'garden' eh ? hehe....



edit ; on second thought , lets talk about 'deux' .I might have a home for that.

[Zink]

That will be one weird photoshop rig but it should be a nice upgrade. For some things you should be more than three times faster than the q6600. 48 cores on the 4p is also great plan instead of running multiple rigs. When your 4p is putting out 500k ppd the 16k from your wife's pc might not be that important.

[CoolHandL]

Originally Posted by BrainEater

edit ; on second thought , lets talk about 'deux' .I might have a home for that.

Beat me to it.....

[3.0charlie]

Adobe uses cores quite well, and the Mercury engine should work mighty fine with the GTX570. And 16Gb of ram is overkill, but that's what I had on had (and I still have another 4x4Gb available...). She'll be pleased, I'm sure. As for the ppd, when you look at it that way, 16k vs. 500k, meh. Then again, it's 16k on 75w, pulled from the wall...

Ross, PM replied to.

edit: Luc too...

[CoolHandL]

I'd love to give Deux a Good home.
PM Sent.

[CoolHandL]

[3.0charlie]

Yup, it's all packed up and ready to be shipped tomorrow afternoon. One is already performing in its new role, and the last 2 6174s are on their way Home, scheduled arrival by Wednesday.
I wonder how long I'll last until I build another rig...

One last picture of Deux before disassembly, this morning... Take good care of it.

[Supergrover]

I wonder how long I'll last until I build another rig...

John your track record is ungood.

[3.0charlie]

Yeah, I know...