Folding Hardware Deals

[twilyth]

ATI 5850 with 1gig ddr5 for $150 - overhalfsale.com

5870 with 2gig ddr 5 for $270

Both new, OEM, with warranty

edit: sale over in 23 hours (and change)

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Everyone needs a GREAT PSU: SeaSonic X Series X650 Gold for $100 with free shipping and NO MIR! Yes, it's 80 Plus GOLD rated. Ends 11/21

 

[hertz9753]

A couple of refurb GTX 500's.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ZT-50302-10M-R&cat=VCD
http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ZT-50203-10M-R&cat=VCD

 

[johnspack]

Oh friggin drool on those 560 tis... that's what i need. dam nice price too.

 

[BUCK NASTY]

GTX460 deals!

Geeks.com has brand new Zotac GTX460's 768mb for 89.99! These are the good reference models with the heatpipes. They currently have 33 30 available. 90 bucks for a 90-100K ppd card? It's a no-brainer.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=ZT-40401-10P

The also have a brand new Nvidia reference GTX460 1gb for $99.99! Their model number say's "ENGTX460", so I believe it's an ASUS. They currently only have 1 available.

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?InvtId=ENGTX460-PCIE-1024-CO

 

[[Ion]]

Sweet! Are you going to buy some?

 

[NastyHabits]

Sweet! Are you going to buy some?

I just bought one.

 

[BUCK NASTY]

Sweet! Are you going to buy some?

It's tempting. I was trying to pick up some 560ti's locally, but the owner thinks their still extremely valuable(read= CL lowballin' fail). 3 of these would equal 2x 560ti's in PPD. I'll decide this weekend.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Deal expires at 11:59pm PT on Saturday, 3/9/2013!

SeaSonic SS-660XP 660W ATX12V / EPS12V 80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply
$90 after $20 MIR! That's $56 off!

The only caveat is that some of these have a whine under load, but it looks like Seasonic has updated the model to address that.

jonnyGURU review

 

[xvi]

More of a note than a deal/sale, prices for HD 5000 and HD 6000 series cards seems to have fallen on eBay. I lowballed a 6950 2GB yesterday and won it.

I know the 5800s and 6900s are popular for bitcoin mining and I suspect the AISCs are finally appearing in the wild, pushing the difficulty up, making GPU mining very impractical.

Pulling information from here, a 5870 (usually close to $150) does about 393 million hashes a second. The new $250 AISC is supposed to do 5 billion hashes a second at much less wattage. I suspect the AMD GPUs are not only undesirable now, but there will be a flood of them as miners dump their cards in favor of AISCs.

What this means for people such as myself, is that it's going to get cheaper to crunch/fold.

 

[bogmali]

I remember someone looking for some GTX-480's a while back and if you are still looking, JohnnyFive just posted a pair for sale on this thread.

 

[[Ion]]

Are there any particularly good deals on HD7930/HD7950 cards? I think that my i7 system could use another GPU for some games and FAH goodness

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Are there any particularly good deals on HD7930/HD7950 cards? I think that my i7 system could use another GPU for some games and FAH goodness

Newegg has an MSI Radeon HD 7950 Twin Frozr graphics card on sale for just $177.99. The regular list price is $219.99, but you can go down to $197.99 with a 10%-off promo code (VME10BTS)
Got that from The Tech Report's Deal of the week

 

[[Ion]]

Newegg has an MSI Radeon HD 7950 Twin Frozr graphics card on sale for just $177.99. The regular list price is $219.99, but you can go down to $197.99 with a 10%-off promo code (VME10BTS)
Got that from The Tech Report's Deal of the week

And it's unfortunately OOS now--a shame, as CF7950s would be unstoppable for FAH or Civilization V

 

[thebluebumblebee]

How about $180 after a $30 MIR? MSI R7950-3GD5/OC BE Radeon HD 7950

 

[[Ion]]

That looks like a bad HD7950 (weak cooler)--obviously a great price for such a potent card, though. I'll think it over

 

[Ahhzz]

So, looking to replace the 9500GT with something with maybe a little more kick to it for folding... Where should I be looking, and what should I be looking for. The Home box could use the upgrade. The work pc will have to stay "un-modified", I'm afraid, but I can at least bump the home box.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

So, looking to replace the 9500GT with something with maybe a little more kick to it for folding... Where should I be looking, and what should I be looking for. The Home box could use the upgrade. The work pc will have to stay "un-modified", I'm afraid, but I can at least bump the home box.

let's start with your budget

 

[xvi]

For a short answer, given the recent deals on HD 7000 series cards, I believe it's generally accepted that the HD 7750/7770 and 7850/7870 cards offer a rather good price/performance ratio.
I haven't folded since the HD 4000 series cards had workunits though, so I may be wrong.

 

[Ahhzz]

For a short answer, given the recent deals on HD 7000 series cards, I believe it's generally accepted that the HD 7750/7770 and 7850/7870 cards offer a rather good price/performance ratio.
I haven't folded since the HD 4000 series cards had workunits though, so I may be wrong.

That's what I'm really looking for. I'm not going to spend $200 or more for a vid card solely for folding. I'd just like to get a bit more "oomph" out of the home server, and a vid card seems to be the best way to handle it. Ideally, I'd rather be solidly under $100. Is this card ($50 after MIR) a solid pickup? And if not, maybe if someone could point me to the specs to focus on (streams, memory, ramdac, whatever).. Thanks

 

[xvi]

Stream processors and core speed are going to be your two factors, if I'm not mistaken. Someone may have to correct me on this.

I've found a couple of threads on Folding performance. Taking the performance and dividing by the price you can get the card for will show you the card's F@H "value" or how much folding you get per dollar. (I've always felt like it was important to get "a good deal")
I can't find any numbers for the HD 7750, but it shouldn't be too terribly far below the 7770. $50 isn't that bad of a price, really.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

CORSAIR HX Series HX750 750W for $85 after promo code EMCWXWR26 and MIR

Refurbished Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JD 80GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drive Bare Drive for $17

 

[laptop-hpc]

I'm no expert on server CPUs, but Opteron 6164's seem pretty cheap on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/sch/Computer-Components-Parts-/175673/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=opteron+6164&LH_PrefLoc=1&_sop=15
Like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-AMD-Opteron-6100-Series-6164-HE-12-Core-CPU-OS6164VATCEGO-/221231401307?pt=CPUs&hash=item33826b495b
They're 12 core Magny-Cours @ 1.7GHz, 85W TDP, could make for a (relatively) low power 4P system.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

laptop, Pande wants WU's completed as quickly as possible, so they've thrown a bone out there for us in the form of a Quick Return Bonus. While you are correct about the low power requirements of that CPU, the faster ones don't consume all that much more power and are not all that much more expensive, especially considering the cost of everything else that comes with a 4P build. I quite sure that the PPD/watt is better with the faster CPU's, even with their increased power usage. Consider this, the 6172, 6174, and the 6176 are 115 watt CPU's, or 30 watts more per CPU or 120 watts per 4P system. How much does it cost to run a 120 watt light bulb for a month? $2-3?
6164 1.7GHz $100
6172 2.1GHz 130!
6174 2.2GHz 150
6176 2.3GHz 275
6180 SE 2.5GHz 240

laptop, you are correct to point out power usage. I've seen people come and go and those that go normally leave because of their power bill.

 

[xvi]

I'm no expert on server CPUs, but Opteron 6164's seem pretty cheap on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/sch/Computer-Components-Parts-/175673/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=opteron+6164&LH_PrefLoc=1&_sop=15
Like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-AMD-Opteron-6100-Series-6164-HE-12-Core-CPU-OS6164VATCEGO-/221231401307?pt=CPUs&hash=item33826b495b
They're 12 core Magny-Cours @ 1.7GHz, 85W TDP, could make for a (relatively) low power 4P system.

Performance per watt should be pretty good, especially with four of them, but I'd be concerned that the cost of the motherboard would negate any price/performance benefit.
$100 x 4 Opteron 6164 (+$25 cpu cooler?)
$633 SuperMicro Quad G34
$100 half decent used PSU
$66 4x4GB DDR3 ECC
$50 hard drive
~$1350 total, or $337 per processor (not bad, actually)

My Phenom II X6 1100t at stock appears to have roughly the same compute as one Opteron 6164. There shouldn't be much advantage at all unless you went for a 4P. Being that there would be 48 cores, any bump in clock speed would be hugely beneficial.