Best bang for buck on computer farm

[jasong42]

I just got a job recently and my bank account is steadily rising, but my out of pocket expenses are staying exactly the same. I'm an,"Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!"(Bible reference, don't remember the details) kind of guy, so I'm looking for a way to *ahem* encourage the economy.

Basically, I want to start a computer farm and don't know what cpus, motherboards, or RAM to buy. Or anything else.

Here's the scenario: You have $150-$200 monthly to spend or carry over to the next month(figure $2000 for a year) June-September $0.06KWH, October-Mar $0.048KWH(1st 1000 hours,2nd $0.029KWH). You want a computer farm that can handle the broad range of projects available, so there is 1 or more of both AMD and Intel computers.

You can make your advice as general or specific as you want. If you know of any up-to-date websites that give the wattage of the different cpus and motherboards, that would be absolutely FABULOUS.

Basically, I'm looking for advice(especially cpu and power usage advice) about how to spend my money. I am ignorant about many things(like overclocking), but hope this is the beginning of a very rewarding hobby through help from this forum.

 

[networkman]

I Corinthians 15:32

You should read the verses around it too to get the proper context though.

 

[mrwizer]

I have always wanted to get a few dual opteron low power (55w) systems, although this would put you out of your budget with $2000 a year.

I like the Athlon 64's on the 939 platform. You could get a 3000+ 90nm for a good price, and almost always get to the level of the 3500+ without much trouble. Although I am not a huge fan of Intel's latest, some of the hyperthreaded cpu's do fairly well at DC projects. You may also look at the Semperon's, as they offer a fairly good performance to price ratio. Perhaps some of the others can offer you power details.

 

[Amaroque]

I would have to say the best "power consumption vs performance" CPU out rite now is the Winchester cored A64's. But for DC, you will be better off waiting for Toledo. 2c A64 goodness.

 

[jasong42]

Originally posted by: networkman
I Corinthians 15:32

You should read the verses around it too to get the proper context though.

Hmmmmmmmmm, I just want to say that I assumed a totally different meaning when I made the quote. In my case it was more along the lines of the verses having to do with ...don't plan for tomorrow because you don't know what a day may bring...sort of thing(Can you find THAT verse, too? )

 

[Wolfsraider]

for me its p4c or e ht enabled

outpost usually has cpu's and motherboard combos near the 200.00 mark

 

[The Reaper]

Take a look at this guide dually xeon crunchers. You can run four instances on one setup for somewhat cheap.

 

[vrmuds]

You don't live in Alaska do you?? There are some datacenters that move up there just to save on cooling costs.... Imagine in the winter, you pratically don't need to cool.....

 

[thunderroller]

stop jokin

 

[vrmuds]

Originally posted by: thunderroller
stop jokin

Sad thing is I really am not.. I heard there was this company which was hosting servers there for businesses and charging them a monthly fee to have it there... And the reason why they choose Alaska was for the savings in the cooling.

 

[jasong42]

Originally posted by: vrmuds
You don't live in Alaska do you?? There are some datacenters that move up there just to save on cooling costs.... Imagine in the winter, you pratically don't need to cool.....

Actually I live in Arkansas, so the exact opposite of what you were talking about.

Posted by The Reaper(Edit from jasong:Apparently, I need to work on my editing skills, lol)Take a look at this guide dually xeon crunchers. You can run four instances on one setup for somewhat cheap.

I've heard about Xeons. From what I've heard, it's kind of like buying a Volkswagen and paying $400 to upgrade to a sports car.(monetary amount came out of my butt. It doesn't mean anything)

 

[GLeeM]

You are doing well to think about electricity costs. I think some here are also trying to say that air conditioning costs can be important too. At least after you get more computers

I have heard of a way to run two computers from one power supply. There are also disk-less farms, use network and server to run many computers without hard drives or monitors. Run the whole farm from the server, connecting remotely. No disk, no monitor, no video card (get mobos with on board video) equal electricity savings.

I put together one of those LV 1.6 Xeon systems. The C1 stepping, I get it to 2.5 without any mods. Don't know electricity usage, sorry.

To give you an idea on what it will do, I have been running two instances of FaD, one Einstein@Home and one Folding@Home BigWUs. I have been running FaD since the beginning of the month and have ~70,000 points (check my stats for more accurate data, I think I ran one for a day or two and three for a day or two). Four instances of FaD should do better than double what I get because the F@H instance works the computer harder than FaD (I think).

It will do ~25 Seti Classic WUs per day.

 

[Spacehead]

Here's some good reading on computer power consumption. Also read the 3 links provided by RaySun2Be. Some of it's a bit outdated, but interesting none the less.

Text

 

[ShotgunSteven]

Originally posted by: vrmuds
You don't live in Alaska do you?? There are some datacenters that move up there just to save on cooling costs.... Imagine in the winter, you pratically don't need to cool.....

It would only work during the Winter... we do get Summers up here, you know. I had actually thought about trying to OC a machine and just storing it out on the porch while it was running.