# The Official Team TPU Crunching Farm Planning Thread



## Chicken Patty (Mar 16, 2011)

Hello team,

Wanted to create this thread to have a place where we can discuss our future plans for our crunching farms.  Upgrades/downgrades/replacements/hardware shuffling, whatever.  Post'em up and let's see what we have in mind for the future.


I'll start it off:

For my 2nd cruncher below, I have another X2 coming my way.  However, I am going to be passing on that rig to my GF for her birthday on May 10.  Once I do that, I will be building an intel rig to boost the PPD of my farm.  Something at least quad core with HTT.

Expected completion date is about end of may or early June.


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 16, 2011)

I have a Asus P6T board on its way, should be here today or tomorrow but when it gets here, i will HOPEFULLY be able to OC to 4Ghz


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## Chicken Patty (Mar 16, 2011)

Awesome, time to let those PPD fly!


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 16, 2011)

I believe this will be my last build for a long time. i will only add parts as they fail


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## DannibusX (Mar 16, 2011)

Good thread.

Not to be off-topic, but I originally clicked on this thread through the active discussion at the top of the main forum page.  I thought it was going to lead me to a thread about Farmville on Facebook and I _was_ going to troll it.

I no longer will.  Have a good day!


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 16, 2011)




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## erixx (Mar 16, 2011)

DannibusX said:


> Good thread.
> 
> Not to be off-topic, but I originally clicked on this thread through the active discussion at the top of the main forum page.  I thought it was going to lead me to a thread about Farmville on Facebook and I _was_ going to troll it.
> 
> I no longer will.  Have a good day!



Me too. no idea about farms and such. Funny thread title, bravo. hehe


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## garyinhere (Mar 16, 2011)

DannibusX said:


> Good thread.
> 
> Not to be off-topic, but I originally clicked on this thread through the active discussion at the top of the main forum page.  I thought it was going to lead me to a thread about Farmville on Facebook and I _was_ going to troll it.
> 
> I no longer will.  Have a good day!



Glad to see you have Trolling Standards lols

I have the xeon going and the cruncher i won last year... Had to quit folding my power bill was getting out of hand  Should have a 965 up pretty soon. I have it I jst need to get it set up with the client and OC. Don't really have any plans on expanding. Looking for another xeon system combo used if I can find one at a good price though


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## Feänor (Mar 16, 2011)

OK. I'll be able to finally fill my x58 motherboard with good cards. I got an msi x58 pro-e, but when three card are in, there about a 1/4 of an inch between them, goddamn it's hot! So i bought a open box gigabyte x58 udp3 for 140$, will sell the msi, and hopefully be able to fill the board with the three cards i've got : msi gtx 460 768, gigabyte gtx 460 768 and my good old evga gtx 275 co-op. With my 950 in i'll be able to pull around 60000 ppd. I'd like to have another rig, but i'll have to wait until i've got more money to spend on it... For now i think it'll do the job!


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## Bow (Mar 16, 2011)

I have only had this rig running for 2-3 weeks, not sure when I willl start anything new.


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 16, 2011)

Feanor said:


> OK. I'll be able to finally fill my x58 motherboard with good cards. I got an msi x58 pro-e, but when three card are in, there about a 1/4 of an inch between them, goddamn it's hot! So i bought a open box gigabyte x58 udp3 for 140$, will sell the msi, and hopefully be able to fill the board with the three cards i've got : msi gtx 460 768, gigabyte gtx 460 768 and my good old evga gtx 275 co-op. With my 950 in i'll be able to pull around 60000 ppd. I'd like to have another rig, but i'll have to wait until i've got more money to spend on it... For now i think it'll do the job!



This is WCG not F@H


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## Chicken Patty (Mar 16, 2011)

I'm just wondering what to replace the 3rd rig with after I finish the 2nd one.  It's only a Pentium D for now, if I can get a other quad with HTT that would be awesome.  

At that point it would be about 8-9k ppd from rigs 2&3.  Then about 3.5k ppd from my thuban.


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## Chicken Patty (Mar 16, 2011)

Title was changed.


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## ERazer (Mar 16, 2011)

well im still alive tho i kinna back down of cruching im waiting which flatform im going to upgrade


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## HammerON (Mar 16, 2011)

Well - hopefully (after a week since payment) I will be getting the Asrock X58 motherboard so I can start crunching on the i7 920 that has been sitting doing nothing for a month. All of those poor puppies (remember CP?)


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## Mindweaver (Mar 17, 2011)

The Puppies!... lol I had to do it..hehehe  

Great thread CP!  I hope to have another 2600k or a BullDozer in a few months.


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## brandonwh64 (Mar 17, 2011)

Ok well i got my new P6T board and i still cannot get this chip stable AT ALL over 3.5ghz  im starting to think i have a dud chip. it will boot and go into windows with 1.275-1.3v but when i try ITB it BSOD after 5 seconds 



HammerON said:


> Well - hopefully (after a week since payment) I will be getting the Asrock X58 motherboard so I can start crunching on the i7 920 that has been sitting doing nothing for a month. All of those poor puppies (remember CP?)



DO you need a EVGA X58 SLI LE board?


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## KieX (Mar 23, 2011)

I have a work in progress atm. Have no intentions to replace sister's E6300 or my work i7 930 but I'm almost finished with my bedroom's crunching farm:


Spoiler










3 out of those 4 are the new Sandybridge i7 2600K (4.6GHz, 4.4GHz, 3.8GHz). Next up will be to replace the Rampage 3 Extreme with another 2600K. Then I'll take my time to OC them all to 4.6GHz.

Estimate around 24K PPD @ 600Watt. And hope to complete it all before end of April. Heat and noise are actually incredibly low.


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## Chicken Patty (Mar 23, 2011)

That's just lovely Dan.  dying to get a 2600K!


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## 4x4n (Mar 23, 2011)

Kick ass set-up you have there KieX. Hoping to get a 2600k some time this summer.


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## Bow (Mar 23, 2011)

I sure would take parts donations to build another Cruncher


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## mjkmike (Apr 3, 2011)

It's my birthday at the end of the month.  Last year I gave myself an I7930 and a 1055t.  This year I think it will be another 2600k and then wait for bulldozer.  Crunch on and Crunch harder


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## Delta6326 (Apr 4, 2011)

Well i just added 5 new crunchers! they are all Intel p4's 2 at 3ghz and 3 at 2.8ghz all with 2gb ram they run from00:00 to 23:00 everyday!!

But i have a question when  I first set up the program and type in my username and pass does it automatically send the point towards me and tpu?


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## KieX (Apr 4, 2011)

Delta6326 said:


> Well i just added 5 new crunchers! they are all Intel p4's 2 at 3ghz and 3 at 2.8ghz all with 2gb ram they run from00:00 to 23:00 everyday!!
> 
> But i have a question when  I first set up the program and type in my username and pass does it automatically send the point towards me and tpu?



Awesome stuff 

To answer your question: yes, once you entered your username and password the points go to your account with our team. If you want to double check they are added correctly log into the WCG site and check your Device Manager, the new additions should appear in that list.


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## Delta6326 (Apr 5, 2011)

Sweet it worked hope the results start coming in. They won't be much but its better then nothing at all.


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## Disparia (Apr 5, 2011)

10 blades per unit, 4 cpus per blade, 12 cores per CPU (Opteron), so 1920 cores per rack.







Oh, was this thread not for imaginary farms? Well in that case I recently added a 'core' towards WCG recently, giving FAH and WCG two cores apiece. :/


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## stinger608 (Apr 5, 2011)

Jizzler said:


> 10 blades per unit, 4 cpus per blade, 12 cores per CPU (Opteron), so 1920 cores per rack.
> 
> http://theburnerishot.com/photo/WGC-Crunch-Rack.png
> 
> Oh, was this thread not for imaginary farms? Well in that case I recently added a 'core' towards WCG recently, giving FAH and WCG two cores apiece. :/



Man, I was thinking to myself "my god, how in the hell can anyone afford 1,920 cores for crunching let alone the cost of utilities

And then I read below the image
Good one Jizzler!!!!!


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## Disparia (Apr 5, 2011)

Yeah, I haven't won the lottery yet. But if I did, would certainly dedicate a rack each to WCG and FAH.

For the FAH rack, hmmm... probably 56 GPU (8 per 4U) and 96 CPU cores, keeping the same UPS and switch.


Hey, what part of Wyoming are you in? I have an aunt and uncle in Riverton.


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## stinger608 (Apr 5, 2011)

Jizzler said:


> Hey, what part of Wyoming are you in? I have an aunt and uncle in Riverton.



About 200 miles away in Cheyenne. Awesome seeing someone with relation in Wyoming. Been to Riverton many times. Several times to watch the balloon festival!!!


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## Disparia (Apr 5, 2011)

I haven't been there in... wow... 14 years. But my wife, kids and mom went to visit recently. In fact, they went and saw a balloon festival! 

Last time I was there I attended some some festival as well. Parade, classic cars, and a burn-out contest - even got a piece of rubber from a blown out tire that hit my face as souvenir 

Also camped in the mountains near there. Was memorable as the rainbow trout were quite tasty. I could really go for some fresh caught fish right now.


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## Delta6326 (Apr 8, 2011)

does any body know how much ppd ech will get per day and which will give out more ppd
the Intel Xeon E3-1275 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz 4 x 256KB L...

Or

Intel Core i7-970 Gulftown 3.2GHz 6 x 256KB L2 Cac...


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## KieX (Apr 8, 2011)

Delta6326 said:


> does any body know how much ppd ech will get per day and which will give out more ppd
> the Intel Xeon E3-1275 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz 4 x 256KB L...
> 
> Or
> ...



SandyBridge chip will do 9 WCG points mer MHz so @ stock 3.4GHz will do ~4372 PPD. The Gulftown does a little more work per MHz so at stock speeds should still yield more PPD. But for crunching the SB makes more sense since it consumes so much less power for 24/7 use.


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## mstenholm (Apr 8, 2011)

KieX said:


> SandyBridge chip will do 9 WCG points mer MHz so @ stock 3.4GHz will do ~4372 PPD. The Gulftown does a little more work per MHz so at stock speeds should still yield more PPD. But for crunching the SB makes more sense since it consumes so much less power for 24/7 use.



Well, lets have some watt figures to go with it - 970 @ 4.1 GHz takes around 270 W from the wall and produces around 7500 PPD. (and it does 62 kPPD at folding)


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## KieX (Apr 8, 2011)

mstenholm said:


> Well, lets have some watt figures to go with it - 970 @ 4.1 GHz takes around 270 W from the wall and produces around 7500 PPD. (and it does 62 kPPD at folding)



I presume you mean this is a dedicated rig? It would work out as:
7500/270= 27.8 PPD per Watt

A dedicated Sandybridge at 4.6GHz draws 155W and does ~6000PPD (But this is only comparable if the one you mentioned is dedicated too):

6000/155= 38.7 PPD per Watt


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## Delta6326 (Apr 9, 2011)

thanks, i have been thinking about making a rackmount server, depending on my job career choice.

I was thinking of something around these lines


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## KieX (Apr 9, 2011)

Delta6326 said:


> thanks, i have been thinking about making a rackmount server, depending on my job career choice.
> 
> I was thinking of something around these lines
> http://img.techpowerup.org/110408/Capture0133.jpg



Looks good. But thought I'd mention: H series motherboards don't allow you to OC the CPU so you might as well save a little and get the non K version. If I assumed correctly that you want to run at stock speeds on this for stability reasons?

If my deductive skills are weak and you do want to OC, you'll need to get the P series version of the motherboard (with K cpu)


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## Delta6326 (Apr 9, 2011)

KieX said:


> Looks good. But thought I'd mention: H series motherboards don't allow you to OC the CPU so you might as well save a little and get the non K version. If I assumed correctly that you want to run at stock speeds on this for stability reasons?
> 
> If my deductive skills are weak and you do want to OC, you'll need to get the P series version of the motherboard (with K cpu)



well i was hoping to use the H series so i don't have to get a graphics card. so i can use the onboard graphics of the cpu. and with turbo boost at 3.8Ghz i think it will be good for stability so no OC. I would love to get one of these and fill it up


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## KieX (Apr 9, 2011)

Delta6326 said:


> well i was hoping to use the H series so i don't have to get a graphics card. so i can use the onboard graphics of the cpu. and with turbo boost at 3.8Ghz i think it will be good for stability so no OC. I would love to get one of these and fill it up



I would love to be able to have something like that too. I think Jizzler's post is coming to mind again.. 

As for your blade/rack the H makes perfect sense in that case. If you do go for K I suppose it will be easier to re-sell at a future date if necessary. Your components look perfect to me in that case.


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## Delta6326 (Apr 9, 2011)

Yeah thats where i kinda got the idea but this won't be a anytime soon project. as i need to get many things done such as college and get a high paying job.


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## KieX (Apr 9, 2011)

Delta6326 said:


> Yeah thats where i kinda got the idea but this won't be a anytime soon project. as i need to get many things done such as college and get a high paying job.



All the best, then


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## Chicken Patty (May 20, 2011)

Anybody else got anything in the works?


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## HammerON (May 20, 2011)

Just dreams


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## Chicken Patty (May 20, 2011)

HammerON said:


> Just dreams



Then share them with us


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## Disparia (May 20, 2011)

Chicken Patty said:


> Then share them with us



Multiple motherboard gravity flow water cooling system.

Was thinking about it as I have a radiator I never got around to installing in my van, it's a little larger than 2' x 3'. Could attach a $20 box fan if the heat generated demanded active cooling.

Would use _N_ + 1 pumps, so it can survive a failure.






Now I just need like... 20 systems or so to try this out on, and the cheapest blocks I can find


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## twilyth (May 20, 2011)

I plan on upgrading my 2 X6 1090Ts when the Bulldozer/Zambezi chips come out next month.  If they really perform as well as expected (should kick ass on floating point operations), I might even replace the i7-920 or possibly the 2600k's.  Both chips are still current enough that I should be able to sell the chips and boards to help offset the cost and I can recycle the memory.

But we'll have to see.  AMD is keeping performance stats close to the vest as of my last search about a week ago.


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## Chicken Patty (May 20, 2011)

interesting stuff guys.  I never got around to upgrading but if I stop having surprises, I might just be able to build another rig.


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## KieX (May 22, 2011)

Downsizing my farm for summer. Like others here, heat is a massive problem. So I've sold my sister's E6300 and put one of my 2600K in her computer. Plan to sell the i7 930 I have at work too.. so I can move another of my 2600K's out of my room.

Essentially I'll be down to 3x 2600K's. One is my sister's, the other is at work... leaving me with just 1 in my room. Think I can manage to sleep in a room with just one. This move also frees up the other shelves for winter


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## Chicken Patty (Aug 11, 2011)

Any update guys, thread has been dead for a bit, I know there has been some new builds and plan since the last post.


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## KieX (Aug 26, 2011)

Got an i5 2500K coming tomorrow. Will be the last cruncher of my current farm. It's the perfect balance for me in terms of electricity cost and heat.


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## trn (Sep 16, 2011)

Delta6326 said:


> does any body know how much ppd ech will get per day and which will give out more ppd
> the Intel Xeon E3-1275 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz 4 x 256KB L...
> 
> Or
> ...



The E3 Xeon's can be great buy's for stock clockers.  My every day rig is an E3-1230 (which is a good buy at about $230) and it gets 4,000 - 4,500 or so.  Plus I didn't have to spend on a fancy mobo, or cooling fan or have to deal with crashing issues.  Overall a good buy for a no hassles cruncher.  A bunch of those in micro ATX boards with basic air cooling and ram would make a nice efficient easy to manage farm.


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## KieX (Oct 26, 2011)

So, we have powerful SB-E round the corner, power efficient Ivy Bridge in the near future and even BD allows for i7'(ish) performance for AMD motherboards...

Anyone planning on getting some of these new toys?


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## (FIH) The Don (Oct 26, 2011)

im going to start saving up for X79 rig, as im 95% certain it will be pretty freakin expensive, but well worth it lol

anyways, its "only" cpu and mb i need to upgrade, then get 2 sticks more of ram for quad channel action.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 26, 2011)

Not sure what I'm going to be building, but I will most likely have a 2nd AM3 board soon.  So probably another Thuban. . For now that'll be good till I can figure out how to fit more rigs at my place.


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## (FIH) The Don (Oct 26, 2011)

they should get fairly cheap now when BD is out


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## F150_Raptor (Oct 27, 2011)

Chicken Patty said:


> For now that'll be good till I can figure out how to fit more rigs at my place.



I think you need a new htpc for your living room.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 27, 2011)

F150_Raptor said:


> I think you need a new htpc for your living room.



I live in an efficiency, so yeah


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## KieX (Oct 29, 2011)

Was thinking of going SR3, but in the end decided to save some money and go for more energy efficient rigs.

Will build one last 2600K cruncher and then get whatever is the best single CPU SB-E combination. Should bring myself up to 60 crunching threads and just under 40K PPD. Most of them will be Ivy Bridge compatible, so they should last a while and get even cheaper to run.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 29, 2011)

KieX said:


> Was thinking of going SR3, but in the end decided to save some money and go for more energy efficient rigs.
> 
> Will build one last 2600K cruncher and then get whatever is the best single CPU SB-E combination. Should bring myself up to 60 crunching threads and just under 40K PPD. Most of them will be Ivy Bridge compatible, so they should last a while and get even cheaper to run.


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## mjkmike (Oct 30, 2011)

I have a 990FXA-UD7,  but the chip is not in stock yet at Memory Express.  Plan on getting the new 2011 when they come out.  Also got a Corsair 650D and 4x4 Vengeance LP for my 2600k.  Will be making that my main rig with the Vertex3 240g and the 6990.


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## KieX (Oct 30, 2011)

That's sweet Mike. Got an ETA on the chip?


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## mjkmike (Oct 30, 2011)

They just got the FX-6100 in so I'm looking at another week or two.


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## KieX (Nov 25, 2011)

As far as new crunchers go 1x 3930K system costs the same as 2x 2600K systems... and 6c/12t is never going to out-crunch a similar CPU with 8c/16t.. yet for some reason I am tempted :/

Waiting on some #'s to decide on that purchase. Or for common sense to take over control of my wallet.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 25, 2011)

Keep us posted on what you find.


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## twilyth (Nov 27, 2011)

KieX said:


> As far as new crunchers go 1x 3930K system costs the same as 2x 2600K systems... and 6c/12t is never going to out-crunch a similar CPU with 8c/16t.. yet for some reason I am tempted :/
> 
> Waiting on some #'s to decide on that purchase. Or for common sense to take over control of my wallet.



Are the TDPs the same?  I'm guessing they're similar so you'd use half of the electricity, but at those prices, BFD.  It would take decades to break even.  I do understand the temptation.  I was thinking about 2P server with a low end Opteron like the 6272.  We're probably better off waiting for the Ivys.

I've been able to avoid doing a complete reinstall on the systems I use all of the time by migrating to another cpu and/or m/b by the same manufacturer.  I did manage to go from AMD to Intel once I  think, but it's a safer bet if you stay in the same family.


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## KieX (Nov 27, 2011)

twilyth said:


> Are the TDPs the same?  I'm guessing they're similar so you'd use half of the electricity, but at those prices, BFD.  It would take decades to break even.  I do understand the temptation.  I was thinking about 2P server with a low end Opteron like the 6272.  We're probably better off waiting for the Ivys.
> 
> I've been able to avoid doing a complete reinstall on the systems I use all of the time by migrating to another cpu and/or m/b by the same manufacturer.  I did manage to go from AMD to Intel once I  think, but it's a safer bet if you stay in the same family.



Stock 95W for SB and 130W for SB-E. But from everything I've read and seen, it seems that SB-E performs the same as SB up to 4.5GHz, above that speed the regular SB are a lot more efficient for crunching per Watt.

But yeah, initial cost is quite high with twice the price for just 50% more cores. Like you said, IvyBridge is going to be the best crunching platform since current SB. Those with compatible motherboards get to just plug in the new processor too 

I think CPU's are like women, you don't mind if they're blonde or brunette so much as what they can do for you. Think you should always get into bed with AMD or Intel based on best PPD/Watt.


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 27, 2011)

I haven't done any in depth research/reading on best PPD/Watt, but SB definitely seems like the winner as of now.  I mean, if you are just looking to build a cruncher, you can do it for under $600 if you know what you are doing.  I'm talking about a dedicated cruncher, just a decent PSU/the CPU/board/RAM/ and you can run windows off a USB Drive or a small HDD.  I mean for something that can give you about 5k ppd, that's not bad.  Remember this is all parts new and from scratch.  Now, considering we all usually have spare HDD's and RAM laying aground, it minimizes the cost A LOT.


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## KieX (Nov 27, 2011)

Chicken Patty said:


> I haven't done any in depth research/reading on best PPD/Watt, but SB definitely seems like the winner as of now.  I mean, if you are just looking to build a cruncher, you can do it for under $600 if you know what you are doing.  I'm talking about a dedicated cruncher, just a decent PSU/the CPU/board/RAM/ and you can run windows off a USB Drive or a small HDD.  I mean for something that can give you about 5k ppd, that's not bad.  Remember this is all parts new and from scratch.  Now, considering we all usually have spare HDD's and RAM laying aground, it minimizes the cost A LOT.



My new main rig is 4.6GHz @ 1.33v with all the RAM and a GT520. This is good for ~6000 points and pulls:






That works out at *34PPD per Watt.*

The dedicated crunchers run 4.5GHz @ 1.25v with single stick of ram and a HD5450. Those crunch 5700PPD at 155W which is *36PPD per Watt*.

The old i7 920 was 233W crunching at 3.8 and worth 4700PPD = *20PPD per Watt*

I think F150 Raptor's Quad AMD is actually the same as SB.. around 36PPD per Watt, which is pretty efficient, so his initial cost will probably be returned on electricty if he keeps it running a couple years. But I'm just using rough estimates, maybe he knows better.


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## (FIH) The Don (Nov 27, 2011)

i can definately vouch for the low cost of the SB, my electrical bill havent been this low since i got the SB compared to when i had the old 1366, and even 1156


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## F150_Raptor (Nov 27, 2011)

KieX said:


> I think F150 Raptor's Quad AMD is actually the same as SB.. around 36PPD per Watt, which is pretty efficient, so his initial cost will probably be returned on electricty if he keeps it running a couple years. But I'm just using rough estimates, maybe he knows better.



Your right in the ball park KieX.  It's roughly around 600 watts, and averages 21,000 ppd.  So it's around 35 ppd per watt.  It could be better or worse though, I've never checked it.


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## KieX (Nov 27, 2011)

F150_Raptor said:


> Your right in the ball park KieX.  It's roughly around 600 watts, and averages 21,000 ppd.  So it's around 35 ppd per watt.  It could be better or worse though, I've never checked it.



That is sweet


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## Chicken Patty (Nov 28, 2011)

Really good information guys.  SB is awesome


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