Any recommendations for inexpensive secondhand GPUs?

[MeeLee]

Trying to minimize the amount of e-waste, I plan to keep the HDD as long as it works properly (aka doesn't reduce the PPDs too much). But if I replace it, of course it'll be for a SSD.

Bought a Athlon 200GE on eBay and a GA-A320M-S2H motherboard + 4GB 2666MHz ram (the highest ram frequency this CPU can handle).
+ Reusing old PC case (no name stuff), HDD (250GB Maxtor) and power supply (Corsair HX520w)
Total cost of the upgrade : Around 125€


THank you for the advice, but I don't want to go intel, I spent 30€ for a 2x 3.2 GHz CPU (+hyperthreading), Included video chip, 35W TDP only despite being in 14nm. It's a bargain, and compatible with my Ryzen 5 (so if I replace the Ryzen 5 2600 in my gaming PC for something like a Ryzen 7, I can give a new home to the Ryzen 5 2600 inside the rig just by removing the cheap Athlon).
I can also use with the athlon the cooler provided with the Ryzen 5 (but I don't use because bought a Coolermaster Hyper 212 for the Ryzen), allowing me to give the Athlon an overkill cooler for free.

Celerons of similar price range burn more power (G4920 have a TDP of 54W for example), need more expensive motherboards, I don't have good cooler for them and they are not interchangeable with my main PC.



I did several tests under Lubuntu with the old hardware already (Intel E5300, 2GB DDR2 800MHz, Asus P5K-PL AM), and will do some more with the new hardware once I'll get it. I try to avoid windows for this kind of use.


I try to keep the prices low, as it was supposed to be a "reuse old PC as it is, just replacing the Video Card" project. I didn't plan to buy a whole upgrade kit. Since it doesn't work with the old hardware, I choose the upgrade way instead of giving up the project, but I spent much more than planned already. So no 7nm Ryzen or 10th gen Intel for me

That system sounds like a good match, even for an RTX 2060 or 2060KO!
Just check if it has PCIE 2.0 or 3.0, and how many PCIE ports it has at what speeds.
PCIE 2.0 x8 or 3.0 x4 ports are fast enough for everything (excluding a 2080 Ti) for Linux.
PCIE 2.0 x4 ports are fast enough for GTX GPUs (or likes).

The harddrive to SSD swap, is indeed not going to make your PC fold significantly faster, but it does save energy and heat.
And it makes the interface so much snappier!

[ZePompom]

That system sounds like a good match, even for an RTX 2060 or 2060KO!
Just check if it has PCIE 2.0 or 3.0, and how many PCIE ports it has at what speeds.
PCIE 2.0 x8 or 3.0 x4 ports are fast enough for everything (excluding a 2080 Ti) for Linux.
PCIE 2.0 x4 ports are fast enough for GTX GPUs (or likes).

The harddrive to SSD swap, is indeed not going to make your PC fold significantly faster, but it does save energy and heat.
And it makes the interface so much snappier!

The PCIe 16x is a 3.0, so will be usefull if I buy a powerful GPU later on. The two 1x slots are only PCIe 2.0 though, so if I use risers for additional cards I must take care to not take very powerful ones.

For now, Since I found a cheap GTX 1050 Ti on ebay, I'll go for GTX 1050 Ti + P106-90 (instead of planned but much more expensive GTX 1650 Super + P106-90) but I could replace the 1050 Ti later on for something better (And give the 1050 Ti to a friend for example, or grab a second riser to do a 3 cards setup with the powerfull one on motherboard's 16x slot and 1050 Ti + P106-90 on 1x slots)

So Atlhon + HDD + 4GB RAM + GTX 1050Ti and P 106-90 for now.

And maybe later Ryzen 5 2600 (from gaming PC) + SSD + 16GB RAM + GTX 1660 (from my gaming PC) + GTX 1050 Ti + P106-90 later on
(+ a new PSU too, if I go the triple card way)

I can upgrade it bit by bit. WHen I have some money to spend


P.S : but for now (well, soon, I'll assemble the upgrade kit next week) I'll go only with the P106-90. For the chap GTX 1050 Ti I made a deal with a friend.
He have an old ATI HD 7xxx and struggle a lot, especially under photoshop (he tend to uses it a lot for drawing).
He should get a GTX 970 for free when one of his friend will replace it for an RTX 3XXX, but in the meantime he's still stuck with his old card.
So I lend him the 1050 Ti until he gets the GTX 970.

[bruce]

A GTX 1050 Ti has years of service left.

[MeeLee]

The 1050 Ti and 1650 are pretty close in terms of performance. The 1650 Super is a small step up (about 50% faster) than the 1050 Ti, but only a few percent faster than a GTX 1060 (P106-90). It wouldn't be a big upgrade. If I were you, I'd test that 106p on both the PCIE 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and when the time is there to upgrade, decide which is best to sell.
The 106 may still run fine on the 2.0 port, might run faster than the 1050 Ti, or not..
Might even sell for more than a 1050 Ti.

It's a decision you can only make.

[ZePompom]

The 1050 Ti and 1650 are pretty close in terms of performance. The 1650 Super is a small step up (about 50% faster) than the 1050 Ti, but only a few percent faster than a GTX 1060 (P106-90). It wouldn't be a big upgrade. If I were you, I'd test that 106p on both the PCIE 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and when the time is there to upgrade, decide which is best to sell.
The 106 may still run fine on the 2.0 port, might run faster than the 1050 Ti, or not..
Might even sell for more than a 1050 Ti.

It's a decision you can only make.

Roughly :
1050Ti or P 106-90 : around 200k PPD
GTX 1660 : around 450k PPD
GTX 1650 Super : I would expect between 400 and 450k ppd.


Since I sent the GTX 1050 Ti to a friend for some time, I'll run the rig with the P106-90 only, in the PCIe 16x 3.0 slot, and see how much PPD I get (compared to the 150k PPD I got when I used it in my gaming PC throug a PCIe 2.0 1x riser)

Once I get back the 1050 Ti, I'll test with P106-90 in 16x 3.0 slot and 1050 Ti in PCIe 1x 2.0 slots, then test the opposite, see if it makes a difference.

I'll probably stay like that for a while, until I upgrade my GTX 1660 in my gaming PC, then the rig will have either old PSU with GTX 1660 (MB) + P106-90 (riser), or a new, more powerful PSU, with GTX 1660 (MB) + P106-90 (riser) + GTX 1050 Ti (riser). But there is more chances I stick to the 1st option (keep the PSU and stick to only two Video cards).

[ZePompom]

Yay, it works, managed to set up the network monitoring so I can monitor the rig through my local FAH control.



Some more tests and I'll put the rig to its place, and then wait for the rubber pads to come (To lower vibrations, even if still ok for now) and wait for my friend to send me back the GTX 1050 Ti.


Indeed the P 106-90 is around 200k PPD when directly in a 16x slot, while it was 150k througt riser. So I guess the final output of the rig will be 200+150k PPD, not awesome, but still better than nothing.

(Also installed BOINC so as long as I only have one Video Card, one core manage the video card for FAH and the other contribute to WCG)

Very far to be the best folding rig, but still kinda proud it FINALLY worked. Even if I had to upgrade it


Before :





After :



Now waiting for GTX 1050 Ti, then Ryzen 5 2600, then GTX 1660.

[ZePompom]

Meh, crashed this morning, but I think I see why, I though 4GB of ram would be plenty enough, but seem it's not, so I created a huge swap/exchange file, and it already host 1GB of data.

Maybe I should have stick to my initial plan of 8GB ram

If the swap solves the problem but appear to noticeably slow down the folding I'll buy more RAM.

Anyway, this little Zotac P106-90 is stable around 56°C with fans around 60%, pretty nice.

[bruce]

The CPU chart shown by Sparky here would be instructive, but you need to add the columns for PF Delta and Commit size as well as the ones for Working Set. That'll tell you how busy your paging file is.

[ZePompom]

The CPU chart shown by Sparky here would be instructive, but you need to add the columns for PF Delta and Commit size as well as the ones for Working Set. That'll tell you how busy your paging file is.

Thanks, I indeed noticed all FAH WU are not the same in terms of required RAM. Same for BOINC, it appears BOINC was also running a high demanding ram WU.

I did a little script to keep track of ram usage in a text file every 10 minutes. So if it crash again, I'll be able to open the file and see how was the ram was before the crash.

Code: Select all

#!/bin/bash

echo "" > ./LogFreeRAM.txt
unset LANG

while true
do
	date +"%d/%m/%Y %T"
	printf "\n" >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	(date +"%d/%m/%Y %T") >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	free -m >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	#swapon >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	sleep 600
done

Output (add this block at the end of the file every 10 min) :

Code: Select all

01/07/2020 16:29:41
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          3,4Gi       2,7Gi       285Mi        71Mi       367Mi       354Mi
Swap:         128Gi       974Mi       127Gi

The fact almost 1GB of swap is already used tend to make me think it was indeed a RAM issue, but wait and see.

But with my 128GB swap partition, it shouldn't get full,except if there is a memory leak.
(Just deleted my useless win 7 test partition and turned it into swap one )

[MeeLee]

If your system is folding unattended, typing 'sudo init 3' in a terminal will close your gui, and save a few hundred megabytes (150 for the lightweight Lubuntu, more for bigger releases).
If you're mainly GPU folding, having exactly matched ram doesn't matter so much. You could easily add 2GB of slower or faster RAM, without much performance penalty, so long the motherboard has the free slots available.
RAM will be cheaper than replacing a harddrive.

[ZePompom]

If your system is folding unattended, typing 'sudo init 3' in a terminal will close your gui, and save a few hundred megabytes (150 for the lightweight Lubuntu, more for bigger releases).
If you're mainly GPU folding, having exactly matched ram doesn't matter so much. You could easily add 2GB of slower or faster RAM, without much performance penalty, so long the motherboard has the free slots available.
RAM will be cheaper than replacing a harddrive.

Yup, I tried that, but with swap partition enabled, it now run smoothly. Swap seem to be used only for big units, but mostof the time it's almost empty, even with GUI running.

But not knowing yet if swap would ruin the performances or not, I started looking for RAM yesterday, and I found a nice bargain, 16GB stick for 50€ (my current 4GB stick costed me 27€ ...), it's the exact same stick (brand, frequency, latency), just in 16GB while the one I currently use is a 4GB.
https://www.hyperxgaming.com/unitedstat ... 16FB3%2F16

So even if the swap seem to do its job (no crash) and foldng doesn't suffer from it, I ordered it, it's overkill for folding but will probably be useful when I'll put the Ryzen 5 in there (and/or for later use, like if later it become someone's daily PC).

So I'll either run the 16GB stick in single channel, to save few watts, or run in weird 4+16GB configuration (giving me 8GB in dual channel and the remaining 12GB in single channel).


For now, this issue is solved, now trying to make the P106-90 a little ness noisy, lol.

I have a 120mm fan blowing fresh air directly toward it but its fan is still noisy...
It gets much better when I just leave the case open but ... DUST!

Or I turn it into something like this :

[bruce]

... with swap partition enabled, it now run smoothly. Swap seem to be used only for big units, but most of the time it's almost empty, even with GUI running.

That's the way it's supposed to work.

...even if the swap seem to do its job (no crash) and folding doesn't suffer from it, I ordered it, it's overkill for folding but will probably be useful when I'll put the Ryzen 5 in there (and/or for later use, like if later it become someone's daily PC).

[ZePompom]

That's the way it's supposed to work.

Yup, no memory leak.

But unlike what I initially though, 4GB of ram is not always enough

So I'll upgrade the ram sooner than expected, even if not mandatory.

[ZePompom]

I know it's silly but I love how ridiculous it looks

[MeeLee]

As long as you don't see the red light for the disk access on all the time...
Using swap greatly reduces HDD and SSD lifetime.

They do sell screw on filters for the fans, that take care of the largest dust particles (hairs, clogs of dust, sandy or grainy things...), but reduce airflow by a bit.
Case fans are usually quiet.
If yours aren't, curved bladed fans usually are.
Some pcs come with really crappy fan (straight bladed, loud fans).
I have system fans running at anywhere from 20% to 80% being inaudible in a quiet room. 80%-150% it's audible, and only past 150% (18V) it becomes obnoxious, but the flow is so high, I could almost use it as a hairdryer, if I had any hair .
Most people won't have the option to go above 12V on their PCs anyway.