[H]ard|DCer of the Month - February 2007/January 2
Joined
Sep 24, 2002
Messages
5,028
I know this will sound daft but if you want cheap & low heat think dual core.
The way it work is .........
Cost.
Take the money you would spend on the second CPU, MoBo & PSU and add it to the price of the first CPU.
You will now have around $180 for a CPU.
The lower end of the dual core CPU's is now down close to this price.
Power.
A single CPU uses around 70 watts at full power.
Double it for the second blade.
Now add 1/3 for PSU, MoBo, Ram, ect, etc.
You will end up using around 180 watts.
A Dual CPU uses around 100 watts.
Add 1/3 for extras.
You end up using around 130 watts.
A saving of around 1/3 power & heat.
Plus you will have twice the room to put each blade in so you can use better after market cooling.
Hence a better overclock/ more stable system in summer when the heat is on.
Thats why all my blades are now powered by X2's
24 gigs of folding power pulling only 700 watts from the wall.
Plus an 8 port Gb switch.
4 more gigs of ram for main box.
Spent just over £3,000 that day.
You should be able to build similar blades for around $500.
Old farm was 4 blades of AMD MP's for 16 gig folding power using 700 watts power.
New farm is five blades of AMD X2's for 24 gig folding power using 700 watts power.
Its an easy 25% more PpD for the same cost in electricity.
How well would a VIA based system work? While they may not have the power of the more mainstrem processors they are much smaller and use ~10 watts at max power. Most dont even use any cooling.
$300? The most exspensive one I find is about $220. The new C7s are about at $200 as are the dual processor C3 boards. You can find the C3 boards in the $130 range though you sacrifice speed.
You might consider getting a bunch of these. $80 for a fine CPU and a pretty good motherboard. The Semprons seem to be pretty darn good overclockers, too.
What about the AMD Geode processors? Those are very low power as well, and they fit in socket A so the mobo would be cheap.
I was looking bor some parts to get a similar set up going, but I didn't even consider using a blade system... Where could I find the necessary parts for a setup like that?
I haven't researched the MB completely, but according to Newegg it takes a dual core, has integrated video and takes DDR ram (cheaper and almost everyone has some laying around). It is also passively cooled except the CPU, so there are no annoying little fans to wear out on you. I'm also not recommending the enclosure. Never done a rack in my life, but like the idea.
Thoughts?
P.S. I just bought my wife a new rig - 2.8GHz Intel Dual Core - 1GB of RAM, etc from Dell for $600. It's an awesome folding rig. Dual core for the win.
Yep, it supports PXE (page 11). And you would have to run two instances to get full usage out of it. I happen to have written a linux distro that netboots things and runs multiple instances out of the box If you'd like to try setting that up, I'd be glad to help you.