# XS member builds a 100k PPD farm



## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

Saw this over on XS a few minutes ago, and was all like 'damn, that's incredible'.  So I had to share it with you guys  

Here are a few samples:


















More available at the source 

This guy is amazing, nearly 80k today!


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## p_o_s_pc (Oct 12, 2010)

wow that is just insane. All of them water cooled that is sweet. I'm sure his bank account isn't too happy with him ATM.


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## mlee49 (Oct 12, 2010)

I'd love to dedicate half of my garage to a project like that and then another half of my years annual salary to the goodies   

More power to him!


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

It's sure incredible!

For comparison, today his output was about 25% of TPU's entire WCG team's output! 

I applaud what he is doing, some day I wish to be able to DC on a scale like this.


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## (FIH) The Don (Oct 12, 2010)

HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!

that is insane dedication lol 

lookin at the pics, i dont hink he lacks the funds lol

but it is nice to see some of the other guys over there sending him free stuff to help him with that HUGE project


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 12, 2010)

This is the kind of thing I'd do if I had access to unlimited capital. Except, it would be a whole rented house full, and they'd all be 980x's. 

Pretty awesome though.


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## SystemViper (Oct 12, 2010)

so what do you think a very rough ballpark would be
for his monthly nut


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

(FIH) The Don said:


> HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> that is insane dedication lol
> 
> ...


Yeah, it looks like based on his car he has some money to burn 

And a lot of guys have been sending him HDDs and RAM and whatever...they're a cool team, just like us 


Soylent Joe said:


> This is the kind of thing I'd do if I had access to unlimited capital. Except, it would be a whole rented house full, and they'd all be 980x's.
> 
> Pretty awesome though.



Many of his are the Xeon equivalents 

EDIT @ SV:  He said that each hex-core setup is around 200w, so maybe 2.5kw for all, which is not quite $5 a day at our electric rates


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 12, 2010)

That's just ridiculous!


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

Ridiculous doesn't even begin to describe it


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 12, 2010)

[Ion] said:


> Ridiculous doesn't even begin to describe it



Ridiculous to the fifth power times infinity?


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

Something like that


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 12, 2010)

[Ion] said:


> Something like that



At least I'm closer


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

I just can't imagine spending this much money 

I can see spending enough to get a consistent ~25k like Mind, but I can't imagine paying as much as 75-100k PPD must cost.


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## Kantastic (Oct 12, 2010)

Wouldn't it be more efficient to buy SR-2's & save on power supplies & hard drives? Possibly even a pump per system?


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

I'm not sure TBH.  It very well could be, but the PSUs and HDDs he's using can't be more than $75 per system (combined)


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 12, 2010)

If I only had the space to do that, I can save up the funds to do so.  Oh, and I WOULD!


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

That's the spirit 

What I've learned is not to overshoot myself, I went overboard w/ getting more GPUs for FAH earlier this year and the result was that I got banned from DC for a couple months....slow and steady does it


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 12, 2010)

[Ion] said:


> That's the spirit
> 
> What I've learned is not to overshoot myself, I went overboard w/ getting more GPUs for FAH earlier this year and the result was that I got banned from DC for a couple months....slow and steady does it



I was about to ask why you got banned, then it hit me.   Slowly but surely you make it anywhere!


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

400w+ heat output when it's 100F outside = pissed parents.  But now I can justify the 400w heat load, it's getting cold overnight


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## Wrigleyvillain (Oct 12, 2010)

Soylent Joe said:


> This is the kind of thing I'd do if I had access to unlimited capital. Except, it would be a whole rented house full, and they'd all be 980x's.



And two weeks later the local SWAT team kicks in the door looking for the dope plants.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 12, 2010)

Wrigleyvillain said:


> And two weeks later the local SWAT team kicks in the door looking for the dope plants.



That reminds me of the Nvidia commercial that AMD/ATI did.  I mean it's fucked up, but it was effin' hilarious!


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

Yeah...I have that vid on my phone 

But, I guess 2.5kw isn't _too_ much, IIRC that's what Buck's farm was at one point, and I've seen other members of different DC teams with multi-KW FAH/WCG farms


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## DrPepper (Oct 12, 2010)

Heh if he needs any more money he can just render an entire movie for hollywood.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 12, 2010)

^^^


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## [Ion] (Oct 12, 2010)

DrPepper said:


> Heh if he needs any more money he can just render an entire movie for hollywood.



True, true.  That's a lot of computing power!


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## [Ion] (Oct 13, 2010)

A bit of an update:


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## Radical_Edward (Oct 13, 2010)

0.o



o.0



Holy crap.


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## [Ion] (Oct 13, 2010)

Yeah.  Absolutely amazing!

Best I've ever had in my BOINCview farm is about 14 threads (an i7, 2 duals, and a pair of singles)


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 13, 2010)

That's just ridiculous as I said before.  Geez, servers are gonna crap out from all the results getting returned


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## [Ion] (Oct 13, 2010)

Ridiculous, I won't argue with.  I am very impressed with anyone willing to spend this much on a DC project.

However, I doubt that it will cause any issues for the WCG servers


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 13, 2010)

[Ion] said:


> Ridiculous, I won't argue with.  I am very impressed with anyone willing to spend this much on a DC project.
> 
> However, I doubt that it will cause any issues for the WCG servers



Not literally 

I just can't get over the it!


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## [Ion] (Oct 13, 2010)

I know you didn't mean it literally 

I am just in awe, I have already gone back and read the thread again twice today 

Absolutely amazing!


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## niko084 (Oct 15, 2010)

DrPepper said:


> Heh if he needs any more money he can just render an entire movie for hollywood.



I dunno about that...






Pixars rendering farm

Can you imagine that running WCG?
I can't... I think that system brought them back down to 1 frame per cpu hour or something.

Now for the kicker-
1,024 Intel 2.8GHz Xeon processors


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## Soylent Joe (Oct 15, 2010)

niko084 said:


> I dunno about that...
> 
> http://milomix.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/85940485_a63a57a00d.jpg
> 
> ...



I wonder if they're constantly rendering. They have to have some free time right? Pixar doesn't put out movies _that_ often. Surely they could switch the units over to WCG for a little between-rendering crunch time.


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## theonedub (Oct 15, 2010)

I wonder what would happen if he got into F@H as well


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## DrPepper (Oct 15, 2010)

niko084 said:


> I dunno about that...
> 
> http://milomix.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/85940485_a63a57a00d.jpg
> 
> ...



Bah they're probably P4 xeons no match for 10 core i7 hex cores.

/sarcasm


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## niko084 (Oct 15, 2010)

Soylent Joe said:


> I wonder if they're constantly rendering. They have to have some free time right? Pixar doesn't put out movies _that_ often. Surely they could switch the units over to WCG for a little between-rendering crunch time.



Maybe we should write to Steve Jobs and convince him to do so 

Maybe we can all tell him we will buy Ipods and Mac's if you does it.


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## jasper1605 (Oct 15, 2010)

niko084 said:


> I dunno about that...
> 
> http://milomix.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/85940485_a63a57a00d.jpg
> 
> ...



But can it play crysis?


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## DrPepper (Oct 15, 2010)

jasper1605 said:


> But can it play crysis?



Yes it can. A single core i7 running crysis = 7.36FPS using windows WARP and a Penryn quad @ 3.0GHz = 5.69FPS. Assuming linear scaling at best times that by 1024 and I'd imagine it could run crysis very well.


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## [Ion] (Oct 15, 2010)

theonedub said:


> I wonder what would happen if he got into F@H as well


Well, each hex core could be ~50k PPD.  So that's ~500k right there  


DrPepper said:


> Yes it can. A single core i7 running crysis = 7.36FPS using windows WARP and a Penryn quad @ 3.0GHz = 5.69FPS. Assuming linear scaling at best times that by 1024 and I'd imagine it could run crysis very well.



Crysis also needs some GPU power


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## theonedub (Oct 15, 2010)

[Ion] said:


> Well, each hex core could be ~50k PPD.  So that's ~500k right there



I was thinking more along the lines of filling up all those empty PCIe slots


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## [Ion] (Oct 15, 2010)

Oh.  Well that would work too.  But 500k PPD is still very nice


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## Delta6326 (Oct 15, 2010)

DANG! if i had the money i would try and top this off


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## [Ion] (Oct 15, 2010)

He pulled over 90k yesterday!  




93,725 to be exact!


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## [Ion] (Oct 15, 2010)

And nearly 150k today!


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## DrPepper (Oct 16, 2010)

[Ion] said:


> Well, each hex core could be ~50k PPD.  So that's ~500k right there
> 
> 
> Crysis also needs some GPU power



Not if your using warp  

Warp being windows advanced rasterization program.


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## [Ion] (Oct 26, 2010)




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## mlee49 (Oct 26, 2010)

Ion, whats the number to get your badge here?  Is it 100,000?

Also, anyone whos a member on XS may have got the email from Movieman about the next WCG event in November.  I'm glad to say I'll be participating.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 26, 2010)

I haven't, 


150k, that's insane


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## [Ion] (Oct 26, 2010)

mlee49 said:


> Ion, whats the number to get your badge here?  Is it 100,000?
> 
> Also, anyone whos a member on XS may have got the email from Movieman about the next WCG event in November.  I'm glad to say I'll be participating.


Yep, 100k.

I haven't decided if I'm going to participate


Chicken Patty said:


> I haven't,
> 
> 
> 150k, that's insane



I did


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 26, 2010)

What the heck?   what are the details of the challenge?


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## [Ion] (Oct 26, 2010)

They're having a challenge Nov1-8 where they're asking everyone to join WCG and see if they can manage the best PPD they can.  I think they've emailed it out to everyone....PM me your email and I'll forward it to you


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## twilyth (Oct 27, 2010)

I haven't read all the comments and I don't mean to piss anyone off, but unless you were going to piss away the $5-10k (or more?) that just the chips cost you, I don't get the point.  I have OCD so I understand about compulsions - the kind that you really don't have a lot of control over - and even I don't understand this sort of behavior.

If you've got the money to burn, and burning it is what floats your boat - hey, no problem here.  Free country, yada, yada.  But I really don't get it.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 27, 2010)

twilyth said:


> I haven't read all the comments and I don't mean to piss anyone off, but unless you were going to piss away the $5-10k (or more?) that just the chips cost you, I don't get the point.  I have OCD so I understand about compulsions - the kind that you really don't have a lot of control over - and even I don't understand this sort of behavior.
> 
> If you've got the money to burn, and burning it is what floats your boat - hey, no problem here.  Free country, yada, yada.  But I really don't get it.



Not sure how rich this guy could have been, but if I had 10k to spare I would waste it on a farm, why not?  Just my two cents of course.


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## ebolamonkey3 (Oct 27, 2010)

Man at this point, I'd think a SR-2 rig would be more efficient.

http://www.overclock.net/overclock-net-folding-home-team/823208-old-farmer-new-tractor.html

But that WC system... man, that's EPIC!


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 27, 2010)

ebolamonkey3 said:


> Man at this point, I'd think a SR-2 rig would be more efficient.
> 
> http://www.overclock.net/overclock-net-folding-home-team/823208-old-farmer-new-tractor.html
> 
> But that WC system... man, that's EPIC!



Yeah, you definitely don't see that everyday.


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## twilyth (Oct 27, 2010)

Chicken Patty said:


> Not sure how rich this guy could have been, but if I had 10k to spare I would waste it on a farm, why not?  Just my two cents of course.



I agree.  That's part of what I was trying to say - if that's what you like and what you're passionate about, that's great.  Personally, I would have a few other things on my list before that, but then most people would probably have the same opinion of my "priorities".  

I didn't mean to judge, but just to say as someone who is already a few standard deviations from the mean as to what is considered "normal", I still have a hard time with it.  That doesn't make it good or bad, just strange - and as I said, that's coming from someone who, by my own admission, is already pegging a lot of folks' strange-o-meter.


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## Chicken Patty (Oct 27, 2010)

twilyth said:


> I agree.  That's part of what I was trying to say - if that's what you like and what you're passionate about, that's great.  Personally, I would have a few other things on my list before that, but then most people would probably have the same opinion of my "priorities".
> 
> I didn't mean to judge, but just to say as someone who is already a few standard deviations from the mean as to what is considered "normal", I still have a hard time with it.  That doesn't make it good or bad, just strange - and as I said, that's coming from someone who, by my own admission, is already pegging a lot of folks' strange-o-meter.



Well of course, priorities are priorities.  I thought you meant you wouldn't do it regardless.  Yeah if I had things to take care of then no, but if I didn't boy would it be cool to do something like this. 

However, If I were to do this, I'd put them all on air.  Probably less than buying a water block for each board, etc.  Good air cooler and that's it with a fan blowing on the components.  I'd have the room air conditioned, sure he has money to do that if he bought all of that.


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## Flak (Oct 27, 2010)

I live in the midwest and see a noticeable increase in my energy bill when I fold for a solid month with just an i7, 9550 and 6600 (hence the many breaks the wife makes me take)....  I'd be able to afford these machines he has, but the month to month cost would kill me.


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## streetfighter 2 (Oct 27, 2010)

Flak said:


> I live in the midwest and see a noticeable increase in my energy bill when I fold for a solid month with just an i7, 9550 and 6600 (hence the many breaks the wife makes me take)....  I'd be able to afford these machines he has, but the month to month cost would kill me.



Holy hell that's my opinion exactly, less the part about being able to afford the machines.

I've got quite a few computers, most of them aren't that old and I used to be active in several distributed computing projects but power prices have skyrocketed near me and I can't afford it any more.  When I turn this puppy up to 100% she churns out 250W and thats just one computer!  I have several I could be running and all said and done they cost around $80 a month.  For that price it's actually cheaper for me to rent a server for $80/month and get twice the "PPD" per dollar that I can do on my own.


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## [Ion] (Oct 27, 2010)

Chicken Patty said:


> Not sure how rich this guy could have been, but if I had 10k to spare I would waste it on a farm, why not?  Just my two cents of course.


I sure would too, that would be awesome! 


ebolamonkey3 said:


> Man at this point, I'd think a SR-2 rig would be more efficient.
> 
> http://www.overclock.net/overclock-net-folding-home-team/823208-old-farmer-new-tractor.html
> 
> But that WC system... man, that's EPIC!



I've seen that over at OCN....at his peak, he was doing ~250k PPD for FAH


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