Folding Forum

Hello,
I was curious, if you guys had $1000, what rig would you build to get the most PPD for that amount of money.

cameronpalte wrote:Hello,
I was curious, if you guys had $1000, what rig would you build to get the most PPD for that amount of money.

Well for a folding rig that also can be a general purpose one I would get a 2nd hand cheapo with a good PSU and whack a GTX 780ti in it.
The card costs around $US 700 depending on where you are and my one currently getting just over 200k ppd So that leaves you under $300 for everything else.
Needs a good PSU though.
Oh and don't forget the power costs in your calculation.

What would you use to get everything else for $300? Also I would prefer AMD Graphics cards.

too hardware specific. Too maintain neutrality, PG, and the forum focus on software support and not detailed hardware recommendations.
many hardware sites have DIY build guides and extensive build forums where you can get help.

What Kiore was saying is that a basic build like found on Tech-report, or Tom's Hardware, etc. etc.

For GPU folding the processor load is pretty low, so no need for expensive high performance CPU, MB, Memory, etc. etc. etc.

He was just giving you a sense of the proportion you might want to spend on the GPU in comparison to the rest of the system.

The details are unfortunately, up to you.
Also, many teams sites also have extensive forums where you can find help with builds.

PS, you might find AMD cards in tight supply for a few months yet if the litecoin mania continues.

Build the PC you want, and whatever is left over, spend on the GPU. Or, as recommended above, build the cheapest PC possible, and spend the rest on the GPU.

I would go the first route, and then overspend on the GPU.

I was suggesting a 2nd hand system with a powerful gpu would meet the $1000 criteria of best F@H system measured in PPD (on current performance). The reason I suggested an NV card was not a fanboi rah rah but that it can run on a free OS.. However if there is an OS already in an old system that will work with a AMD card and that is the flavour you prefer then go that way.
Really this is the only way to get best PPD system for that price. A best system for power efficiency, silent running or that you can also use for X specialized function for $1000 could look quite different.

Ok, thanks for the advice guys.

kiore wrote:

cameronpalte wrote:Hello,
I was curious, if you guys had $1000, what rig would you build to get the most PPD for that amount of money.

Well for a folding rig that also can be a general purpose one I would get a 2nd hand cheapo with a good PSU and whack a GTX 780ti in it.
The card costs around $US 700 depending on where you are and my one currently getting just over 200k ppd So that leaves you under $300 for everything else.
Needs a good PSU though.
Oh and don't forget the power costs in your calculation.

200k ppd???? Wow....makes my 4k ppd look pretty piddly.

Are you finishing WU's every few seconds or are there WU's that much larger if you have that kind of power available?

Are you finishing WU's every few seconds or are there WU's that much larger if you have that kind of power available?

combination of factors.
GPU can do an insane amount of calculations
Core i7-4770K (Haswell) 4 cores @ 3.5GHz AVX2 =177 GFLOPS
amd 290x= 5632 GFLOPS

So 31x the theoretical processing power.

The WU are done in a few hours.

The points also are rewarded for getting results done faster, allowing the distributed chain of calculations to be done faster.
This multiplier is the quick return bonus(QRB)

however, the points generated are no longer a matter of political debate.

the same wu can now be run (bench marked) on either system.
Hence, the points should reflect the actual, rather than the theoretical, difference in speeds between the two processors.

cameronpalte wrote:Hello,
I was curious, if you guys had $1000, what rig would you build to get the most PPD for that amount of money.

Given the current uncertainty around certain parts of the project I would invest in a GPU build, small low power system with a cheap cpu and the best PSU and GPU you can afford to buy and run.

At this point in time I would not advise investing money into 2p or 4p machines

A lot depends on what ELSE you plan to do with the computer. Nathan's suggestions are reasonable if you're buying it JUST to fold. If you plan to use it as (one of) your main computer(s), don't be TOO cheap with the CPU. The incremental costs between a really cheap CPU and a mid-range CPU are pretty small and the differences in electrical costs are negligible. The potential PPD earned by a few extra CPU cores is also insignificant compared to what the GPU is going to earn but it would be greater than zero if you decide to use them.

Seeing how PG is still releasing Core_15 WU's I would not recommend getting an NVIDIA GPU. Unfortunately that leaves AMD GPU's that are not only hard to get but have had their price marked up due to coin mining.

Kind of like a rock and a hard place but right now GPU folding is the way to go... next year who knows what is going to happen. So if you can find either 7970's, R9 280x's or R9 290(x) at a good price then I would suggest going that way.

Bleeder wrote:Seeing how PG is still releasing Core_15 WU's I would not recommend getting an NVIDIA GPU...

A second hand Fermi GPU could be viable in the short future. If you happen to have a Kepler GPU and the system is dedicated to F@H, you could switch over to Linux since FahCore_15 is Windows only. WIth Linux, you either fold FahCore_17 WUs or you don't.