cheap ways to build "crunchers"?

[TallBill]

Just out of curiosity.. what are a few ways to build cheap, efficient crunchers...

mobo, proc, psu, nic, ram, HD?

I'd probably use these for a few other things too.. networking, OS installations.. practice with various software

 

[deerslayer]

xp 1600+
k7s5a
ram of your choice
cheap video card
there's a link to a 400w psu around here somewhere, i think Evadman has the linky
find yourself a HD in fs/ft or hot deals

 

[ken008]

Buy an all in one MB. A refurb from Newegg Video, sound, lan onboard . Mount it in milkcrate and hook it up to a KVM . Durons and XP`s are pretty cheap these days. A 500mb HD will handle w98.

 

[mastertech01]

Ive had pretty good luck, except for the shippers just shopping on the FS trade forum. For D2OL I have found the most efficient cost/performance has come from Tualatin Celerons in the 1.1-1.3GHZ range, 256MB PC133, and a mobo with as much onboard you can find reasonable. Cheap PCI video cards are easily found if no onboard video. I have had a large surplus of SCSI stuff so I use all SCSI subsystems. They are reliable, can be gotten cheaply, and most OS support most all SCSI controllers. I have found Free Mandrake 8.1 is the fastest OS for D2OL as well. I also use KVM switches for cutting down to a bare minimum on mouse, keyboard, and monitor needs. I have found a source locally for 10/100 PCI network cards for 8.00 new, and they work great with all OS. I have also found locally a very nice midtower case for each system for only 29.00 each with 300 watt PSU. The tualatin Celerons work great with only a modest heatsink and fan and case cooling. You can run them on a slot one motherboard with a modded slocket also. I would guess my average box setup like this is about 300.00 or less.

 

[Evadman]

$17 400 watt PWS (linkworld) Seems to like K7S5A's. Never had a problem.


<edit>
As for hard drives, you can always go with either a zip disk ( and 98' ) or a diskless cruncher that runs from floppy. Not sure if diskless options exist for D2OL and other projects.
</edit>

 

[Crazee]

Definitely a motherboard with integrated everything, it just makes it easier. A good one is the Gigabyte GA-7VKML it has the VIA KM266 chipset which features integrated graphics and NIC. You can adjust the voltage on the processor so overclocking is easier with it than alot of other integrated boards and it only costs $68.00 at newegg 🙂

You can pick up an Athlon 1600 for 51.99 and 256MB PC2100 DDR for around 70.00. Pick up some old used hard drives in FS/FT for under $20.00 (2.1G, 3.2G, 4.3G are plenty big enough) and you are ready to go.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Im planning on making some diskless nodes when the paychecks start rolling in again. Im thinking k7S5a's + athlon xp something+, the network boot bios (I think this is the right board...).

 

[Evadman]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
Im planning on making some diskless nodes when the paychecks start rolling in again. Im thinking k7S5a's + athlon xp something+, the network boot bios (I think this is the right board...).

correct, the K7S5A has the network boot option in the bios.

 

[joinT]

Has anyone written a good "beowulf" type guide for building & setting up diskless crunchers ?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: joinT
Has anyone written a good "beowulf" type guide for building & setting up diskless crunchers ?

Send me a bunch of system and I will 😀

 

[deerslayer]

How does a diskless cruncher work?

How does the network boot work?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: LyNx01
How does a diskless cruncher work?

How does the network boot work?

Im no expert and you can probably find better explanations out there...
Bacially a computer boots up, gets the signal from the hardware to look on the network for instructions (instead of hard drive/cdrom/floppy). It uses bootp(?) and DHCP to get some initial configurations, tftp to get some files that I guess it loads into a ramdisk of somesort. You can use NFS to give it some actual disk space and all is set.

 

[muttley]

check out LTSP.org
everything on server
can run on as little as 32 megs and you add the memory u need for the project. Uses most linux you like.
Building one shortly.

muttley

 

[TallBill]

looks cool.. but looks like i'd need a dumbed down explanation/instructions