Anyone have a cheap cruncher setup?

[TallBill]

Been outta the game for a while now, heck I haven't even had a PC for a while. Was looking at the 8 core amds, dunno how those stack up on price efficiency on crunching. Looked like I could run Linux off of a thumb drive on a headless/diskless machine for $275 or so. What do you think? Has anyone done this recently?

Most likely I'll be building two PCs, one for gaming and one straight cruncher for the hell of it. How do the 8 core amds do with DC?

 

[TallBill]

Also curious how much RAM is recommended for this type of thing. Would be running various projects over time. If I can crank out massive work on a $250-275 box I could easily see building up to 4 machines over time.

 

[Uppsala9496]

I am running at FX-8120 box. Slight overclock to 3.9ghz. 8 GB ram. All told it is a good crunching box.
I run SIMAP on it along with WCG. It has always performed well in the Prime Grid races. Look up the last couple of PG races to see how I stacked up with the team (have one fx-8120 and two 1055t's crunching).

 

[ZipSpeed]

If you live near a Microcenter, they have the 3570K for $190 and 3770K for $230.

http://www.microcenter.com/product/388577/Core_i5_3570K_34GHz_LGA_1155_Processor

http://www.microcenter.com/product/388575/Core_i7_3770K_35GHz_LGA_1155_Processor

As for the amount of RAM, allocate 2 GB per core. That should be plenty for most DC projects out there.

 

[StitchExperimen]

Since you been out of the game there is a new twist and that is using GPU processing imagine your gaming rig running CrossFireX 7950s on a i7 3770K o/c at 4.6GHz the video cards run with the crossfire turned off and each card makes 110,000 ppd depending on the project on some projects it's better to run Nvidia the points difference is that much. For example a single cpu core or hyperthread crunches in 1 1/2 hours where the GPU crunches in ~30 seconds in WCG Help Conquer Cancer. 18 concurrent units processed with a i7 3770k @ 4.6GHz with 2 Radeon HD 7950 GPUs at ~ a combined 220,000 ppd. The GPUs are o/c doing OpenCL computing and are able to be set at 1200MHz sometimes with stock voltage.
I think there are some cheaper cards that I have been told that will do 100,000 but not CrossFireX. And 2 7950s in CrossFire will do Crysis 3 in high everything.

 

[TallBill]

Hmm. Might have to look into just one box with two cards then. Wouldn't be that high end of cards though.

 

[lakedude]

I think the diskless idea is great. Saves money on the disk and the OS.

Word to the wise:

I've burned up a MB with tri-SLI and a video card in Cross-Fire crunching 24/7 . The MB actually caught on fire! The video card that quit working was the top one that is air starved from the other card being in the way (plus heat rises).

If you go with dual or triple cards make sure there is space between them...

I bet that AMD does pretty well for crunching. All the cores will be used for sure. I've got a 1055t that does OK but the new ones are sure to be better.