Building Cheaper Folding Rigs

[road-runner]

I was thinking about adding a few more rigs and was wondering if anyone has done this and if it will work, I do not see why it will not. I have multiple IDE drives and 20 pin PSU's and cases left from the P4/Athlon farm. I was thinking about getting the IDE to SATA adapters so I can use those drives, and 20 to 24 pin ATX cable adapters. If I do this I will only have to buy motherboards, quad cores, and RAM, maybe better coolers if I want to OC.

[oblivescence]

You could always try booting them remotely off the network and then use them as diskless machines if you want to be adventurous and save some money and power by avoiding the cost of the adapters and running the hard drives. I don't know how to do it, I tried once, but I don't think my hardware supports pxeboot, but I didn't really try all that hard.

[road-runner]

You could always try booting them remotely off the network and then use them as diskless machines if you want to be adventurous and save some money and power by avoiding the cost of the adapters and running the hard drives. I don't know how to do it, I tried once, but I don't think my hardware supports pxeboot, but I didn't really try all that hard.

Good suggestion, now that you mention it. I remember reading on how to do that, I remember it said if you had a Linux server on the network and it advertises on the network that it would save the files on that drive also. I will try it, I may have to take Ubuntu desktop off one rig and put the server version on it, but that should work!

[oblivescence]

If you get it to work, let us know how you do it.

[NCC10281982B]

I've used cd based systems. And overclockix LTSP (diskless). I'm going to try resurrecting something like this pretty soon.

[romeo55]

AFAIK, there are no CD based SMP clients. However, the CDs do take advantage of cores by running separate clients for each cpu/core like in the olden days, but nowhere near the points values of SMP.

 

But I believe setting up a small server and "share" an HDD will work nicely, PXE network booting comes to mind here, it's been awhile since I read that guide. But I remember looking at it and going "too much work."

 

Also, have you thought of splitting up PSUs, like fueler has done? Granted, I'm not sure if you want to go that hardcore or not, that and how good are the PSUs you have?

[road-runner]

AFAIK, there are no CD based SMP clients. However, the CDs do take advantage of cores by running separate clients for each cpu/core like in the olden days, but nowhere near the points values of SMP.

 

But I believe setting up a small server, PXE network booting comes to mind here, it's been awhile since I read that guide.

 

Also, have you thought of splitting up PSUs, like fueler has done? Granted, I'm not sure if you want to go that hardcore or not, that and how good are the PSUs you have?

I have thought of splitting the power supplys, but the biggest I have laying around is 550 watt, I am not so much worried about the electricity, I was really just asking would those adapters work. After the diskless was brought up that sounded better but is more complicated also. I think I will just try the adapters, I already have one IDE to SATA adapter that came with something somewhere down the line. Linux is free so I do not have to buy any O/S. Probably two more quads will slow down some of the tire tracks on my back.

[romeo55]

I have thought of splitting the power supplys, but the biggest I have laying around is 550 watt, I am not so much worried about the electricity, I was really just asking would those adapters work. After the diskless was brought up that sounded better but is more complicated also. I think I will just try the adapters, I already have one IDE to SATA adapter that came with something somewhere down the line. Linux is free so I do not have to buy any O/S. Probably two more quads will slow down some of the tire tracks on my back.

 

The adapters work fine, I used them and all they really do is take power from a +12v, +5v, +3.3v, and ground and stick it to the new 4 pins.

 

I wouldn't worry as the 24pins were really meant for the increasing CPU power draw (this was instated back in the power gobbling P4 days) and increased PCI-E power consumption (something like 77watts to AGPs 35). But you already know that C2Ds and quads aren't power monsters, and I doubt your going to be sticking any high power graphics powers in anyways. Even then, I doubt it would cause any problems.

[Waco]

But you already know that C2Ds and quads aren't power monsters

Quads under 100% load use a considerable amount of power...

[road-runner]

The adapters work fine, I used them and all they really do is take power from a +12v, +5v, +3.3v, and ground and stick it to the new 4 pins.

 

I wouldn't worry as the 24pins were really meant for the increasing CPU power draw (this was instated back in the power gobbling P4 days) and increased PCI-E power consumption (something like 77watts to AGPs 35). But you already know that C2Ds and quads aren't power monsters, and I doubt your going to be sticking any high power graphics powers in anyways. Even then, I doubt it would cause any problems.

No it will be cheap less than $40 nvidia cards as I found out Linux does not like ATI cards so much. I have a couple of old P4s rigs wasting electricity folding, so I think I will get a couple 20 to 24 pin adapters and one more IDE to SATA on my next order and put something better in there place.

[romeo55]

Quads under 100% load use a considerable amount of power...

 

Not as much as the old P4s. Heck an old Pentium D 820 drew 131 watts+ at full load. Source I won't even bother looking up the 830, 840. And those were only dual cores! The 9xx (65nm) series were better, still much higher than todays C2Ds and a little higher than the quads.

 

The q6600 draws in the area of 95-110w, depending on the revision.

Source 1

Source 2

 

But you're right, the quads do draw a lot of power, more than I thought it did. But again, I believe the extra four pins were primarily for the increased PCI-E power specs, and he isn't running any high end GPU.

[cchalogamer]

While i havent tested with the newest batch of motherboards/CPUs most if not all older desktop 24 pin pwr boards will work fine with good 20 pin PSUs WITHOUT adapters. (only tried on one core 2 based system (E6400 on P5B-E) and yes it worked just fine) As for IDE/SATA adpaters...why? Last I checked all boards still have an ATA 100 connector...even if some of them are slower and you're limited to two devices, who cares? If these are folding only PCs then you'll just take a little boot up/install time performance hit and take all this saved $$$ to add one more extra PC

 

Also ATI video cards work just fine under Ubuntu...heck i can even link you to a nice app created to help you install their drivers if you need to, or you can do what I do for F@H only PCs and just run the default vesa driver and not put up with the extra VGA driver hastles. (Granted not a wonderful solution for the day to day desktop system, but jsut fine for the use here) Heck why even run them in runlevel 5, runlevel 3 would be much better anyway to take away the xserver overhead and add that power back to the folding at hand