Folding Forum

List your piece of junk machine that you leave under your desk and let it fold 24X7.
I am just curios how many other people run there old machine for this.
Don't include your personal machine, or that really cool one you built to gather up those points.
Just the old clunkers. Beats throwing it in the trash !

Mine is an old IBM Think Center, single core Pentium 4 @ 3.0 Gig Hz with 2 Gig Ram
Running Classic client.

Some beat up Lian Li alu case, 650W PSU, EVGA 680i MB, Core 2 Quad QX6700&2.6GHz, Arctic freezer Pro7, PCI wireless card, 2Gig Corsair Dom PC8500DDR2, BFG GTX260@1404MHz, ASUS 8800GTX@1566MHz.
Win7 x64, SMP 4 and 2 GPU2 clients. Headless. Maintain with TeamViewer.
Occasionally Gentoo linux SMP with 2 Wine GPU2 clients. Less PPD since GPUs mess with SMP and no overclocking utility for the GPUs. Maintain with SSH.
15700 PPD Winter room heater.

An oldish cheap (even when it was new) Lenovo laptop. I run the classic client on a Yonah-based Celeron M @1.6 GHz. 512 MB of RAM.

I used to run the Classic and GPU clients on a pair of P4 Dell boxes that I had upgraded with beefier power supplies and AGP 3850's, but my parents got tired of paying the power bill on them, so the cards got sold off for a decent price and the processors no longer fold.

I don't know about others, but I wouldn't consider David's box a clunker. There's some decent parts in there.

Zagen30 wrote:I don't know about others, but I wouldn't consider David's box a clunker. There's some decent parts in there.

I'll say. 2.6 GHz is a clunker? Up until earlier this year, I was using a 450 MHz Pentium III. That's clunker territory.

Next week i'll be "clunking" a q6600/8800gt combo, with a 520hx. But currenty its an e2180.

Box puts out about 8000ppd curently.

See, with Intels switch to new sockets, it made anyone who switch from a 775 to i7 rig, have a clunker that an be a real beast.

Just image nexdt year, when 2011 comes out!

I have a HP business model bought "off-lease" for $129? at Tigerdirect. Think it's a P4? Dunno. Put a rebated GT430 in it ($59?) and it makes 5k PPD. Since it's a slimline case with a 150W powersupply, that was about the most I could do with it.

But it is still used for work. Runs WinXP Pro and MS Office to edit spreadsheets.

2 Clunkers - (Laptop & desktop are both underwhelming)
Both run Windows XP
a) Toshiba Satellite M45-S551 laptop with 2 GB mem, Single core Pentium M 740 CPU @ 1.73 GHz
Runs CPU Uniprocessor client - ~ 100 PPD 24/7.

b) HP Pavilion a475c desktop PC, one core Pent 4 Hyperthreading @ 3.2 GHz
Runs GPU 3 Systray client 24/7 (~1230 PPD with 511 point WUs, or ~ 1640 PPD with 384 point WUs when they were being served). Also run an additional CPU client - ~ 80 PPD. Coexists well with 511 point GPU WUs but not with 384 point GPU WUs

Aftermarket Power Supply: Cooler Master Elite RS-400-PSAR-J3: 400W

Mem 2GB (2 x 1 GB) PC3200 MB/sec
Hard drive 160 GB Ultra DMA 7200 rpm

Aftermarket Video graphics HIS H467QS1GHA Radeon HD 4670 IceQ Native HDMI 1 GB DDR3 AGP Graphics Card
Core clock Overclocked from 750 to 835 MHz, stock memory clock 800 MHz.
Separate PSU connection (because there were excess PSU connectors that could be adapted to the GPU)
GPU Runs ~57 deg C when folding – 96% GPU load

Monitor ASUS VW266 25.5” LCD (1920 x 1200, HDMI input)

HP desktop connected to APC Back-UPS ES 750 battery backup system. Laptop runs off of normal house current.

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 Laptop with a mobile intel pentium 4-m CPU running at 2.0 Ghz with 1 Gig of ram. It is getting about 40 PPD. I figure that ever little bit helps and a lap top isn't using all the much Elec. This machine is about 7 years old. It has gone through a couple of hard drives, but keeps chuggin' along.

clunker or clunker,comparered to other systems I guess it is.
asus P5N-D s775 with e5300 upgraded to Q8400 later,mostly for its two pci-e ports,the cpu is decent enough but not a big hitter.
actually getting a second one where the e5300 goes in,and two more gpu´s in production,that makes two "clunkers"

HP nx9005 laptop XP2500m 448M XP-32

Gets about 45-65PPD, I keep it running because it has a proper serial port, which is important when connecting to some flavors of networking gear. Also, being a beta tester, I can catch oddities on old platforms when testing new cores.

I just decided to make an HTPC for watching streaming TV (Hulu or Boxxe). It isn't used that much so it is basically just folding 24x7. I had an old Dell 8400 with a 3.2GHz P4 not being used. Since it is attached to a TV, I needed a modern video card with an HDMI output. The Dell had a PCI-e slot I got a GTX 460 to fold with. It is now getting 11,000 - 14,500 PPD. Not bad for a $129 investment.

If I plan to have it on all day for other purposes, I'll occasionaly run some classic WUs on a Compaq Presario R3000, Athlon XP-M 2800+.

My HTPC will be a Q6600 I'm retiring from the farm since getting a third i7 up and running. Of course, it's also going to be my gaming machine (2x GTS450) and do a little folding on the side.

Very good info, It gives me some ideas, I had not considered using a laptop, also the used tiger direct PC for $100 is another idea. Also in my reading I heard someone mention using the folding machine to heat the house during the winter. That is really a cool idea. Pardon the pun. If I am going to use the electricity anyway why not burn those watts in a computer doing some good. 1 watt = 3 btu, now that is getting my creative little mind something else to do. OH NO more $$$$ gone.
Thanks everyone for the ideas and reading material.

uncle fuzzy wrote:...2800+

I have one of those.

Old HP desktop running XP/Classic client. Running nonstop for @4 years now, although I might be upgrading soon.

[email protected] wrote:Very good info, It gives me some ideas, I had not considered using a laptop.

At the risk of over-generalizing, laptops are designed to maximize battery life which is almost the opposite of what FAH needs. Be sure to disable the power-saving features of the CPU so FAH actually keeps folding 24x7 while you're connected to the mains. Both the CPU and the GPU (if you happen to have one that's supported) will not be high-performance hardware, but all processing is useful.

My laptop folds 24x7 when I'm not planning on a trip. Before any trip, I use the -oneunit flag to finish the current WUs cleanly.