Found an old machine and want to fold with it

A forum for discussing FAH-related hardware choices and info on actual products (not speculation).

Moderator: Site Moderators

Forum rules
Please read the forum rules before posting.
MeeLee
Posts: 1339
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:16 pm

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by MeeLee »

sptn. wrote:
gunnarre wrote: In the end it tourned out to be an 2,2 GHz CPU (E1500). I would be lucky when an 1060 would be a suitable option. That's exactly what I found to be my budget-solution. I found some for ~100€ in the bay.
That CPU could run 2 GTX 1070 GPUs in Linux, so long your motherboard supports them.
I would presume that 2x GTX1080, or 1080Ti would be somewhat bottlenecked.
sptn.
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2020 10:05 am

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by sptn. »

That sounds good, but I have just one Slot, so only one card. Also because I am limited to max. 420W Power consumption.

Just in case I would decide to build an "budget" folding rack with a graphic card. Is there a list about what componends to use? I am sure someone did that already. Could not find anything using the search..
manalog
Posts: 9
Joined: Thu Sep 17, 2015 3:08 pm

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by manalog »

Your motherboard supports Intel® Core™2 Quad Processors (https://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/in ... cpusupport).
This means that for a very low cost you could upgrade your cpu to something that is still not very energy efficient, but anyway more than decent for Folding@Home or Boinc.

If you look on Ebay, you could find a lot of Xeon processors compatible with your motherboard. Your socket is 775 while Xeon's socket is 771. These two sockets are compatible with an easy modification of the motherboard (you just have to cut a tiny piece of plastic with a knife). By upgrading to Xeon Quad Core you could get a good quad core system with less than 20$.
For example, my computer (Abit IP35-V motherboard) had a shitty Celeron E1200 (similar to yours)... With 20€ I put a Xeon L5420 on it.
Xeon L5420 is built on 45nm, it's 2.5gHZ Quad Core and has a TDP of only 50W. If you are lucky and get a L5450 for a low cost, then you would have 3gHZ Quad Core with the same 50W TDP. Definitely a good and cheap system for distributed computing.
If you do not want to modify the motherboard (I assure you, it's very very easy) you could look for 775 quad core processors, such as Q9400, even if they are built on 65nm and consume 65W)

I drive a Nvidia 750Ti with no bottleneck of any sort with a single core of my L5420. Probably you could use a 1650 without any issue, but I cannot assure you about it.

Then, of course, if you spend 400$ for a Ryzen system you will double the performance with the same energy consumption... But not anyone has 400$ to spend for volounteer computing.
sptn.
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2020 10:05 am

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by sptn. »

manalog wrote:Your motherboard supports Intel® Core™2 Quad Processors (https://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/in ... cpusupport).
This means that for a very low cost you could upgrade your cpu to something that is still not very energy efficient, but anyway more than decent for Folding@Home or Boinc.
If you look on Ebay, you could find a lot [...]
Then, of course, if you spend 400$ for a Ryzen system you will double the performance with the same energy consumption... But not anyone has 400$ to spend for volounteer computing.
Thank you for this advice. Upgrading to the highest possible CPU the board supports is also planned. I found several suitable Q9xxx CPUs for ~20€. I got a cheap 1060 now and want to get Ubuntu Running first. If I get this to folding I will Upgrade the CPU.

Money is not the problem but I just wanted to "recycle" the hardware I have with the lowest possible investments to get some results.
I do not want to imagine the discussion unfolding when I spend money on something and have to explain this to my wife. Hiding it under cover right now :lol: :oops:
PantherX
Site Moderator
Posts: 6986
Joined: Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:33 am
Hardware configuration: V7.6.21 -> Multi-purpose 24/7
Windows 10 64-bit
CPU:2/3/4/6 -> Intel i7-6700K
GPU:1 -> Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti
§
Retired:
2x Nvidia GTX 1070
Nvidia GTX 675M
Nvidia GTX 660 Ti
Nvidia GTX 650 SC
Nvidia GTX 260 896 MB SOC
Nvidia 9600GT 1 GB OC
Nvidia 9500M GS
Nvidia 8800GTS 320 MB

Intel Core i7-860
Intel Core i7-3840QM
Intel i3-3240
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300
Intel Pentium E5500
Intel Pentium E5400
Location: Land Of The Long White Cloud
Contact:

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by PantherX »

sptn. wrote:
manalog wrote:...Hiding it under cover right now :lol: :oops:
Hey, you found the surprise for <insert next significant event> :mrgreen:
ETA:
Now ↞ Very Soon ↔ Soon ↔ Soon-ish ↔ Not Soon ↠ End Of Time

Welcome To The F@H Support Forum Ӂ Troubleshooting Bad WUs Ӂ Troubleshooting Server Connectivity Issues
bruce
Posts: 20824
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:13 pm
Location: So. Cal.

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by bruce »

I'm running one machine with a 2-way CPU. FAH for Windows will not support more than one CPU. I'm uncertain about LInux.

A Celeron tends to consume more power than other CPUs for equal performance.
sptn.
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2020 10:05 am

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by sptn. »

So I got ubuntu 20.04 running now.
As an complete newbie to Linux it was quite easy to install, what surprised me to some point.
Only question I have: Is it usual, that the Linux setup and first startup is very slow? After finishing the setup I bootet it just once to see if the components were recognized by the OS. The installation took about 30-45 minutes and the startup at least 5 minutes.
When checking 'Settings->Info' I found the correct CPU, RAM, GPU and HDD storage, what tells me that Linux can work with the hardware. But is 4 Gig of ram and an 2,2 GHz Celeron to slow for Linux?
I will perform a BIOS and Chipset update, due to the fact that the whole thing is >10 years old. Maybe this speeds things a bit up.
HaloJones
Posts: 906
Joined: Thu Jul 24, 2008 10:16 am

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by HaloJones »

If you're booting off a physical disk rather than an SSD, it may take a while to start up. You can disable a lot of the desktop stuff if it's purely for folding but the best answer is to keep it running 24/7
single 1070

Image
gunnarre
Posts: 559
Joined: Sun May 24, 2020 7:23 pm
Location: Norway

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by gunnarre »

5 minutes a bit much for a linux bootup even from a slow harddrive. If your SATA drive cable is bad or bent too much, your drive might be running at a slower than normal disk speed. Or you might be pausing on some other hardware error.

If you can remove the "quiet splash" from your boot options, you will get to see the bootup procedure while it's happening, so you can see any error messages during boot. Otherwise, you might look through the system logs or "dmesg" to see if something else is making your boot slow.
Image
Online: GTX 1660 Super + occasional CPU folding in the cold.
Offline: Radeon HD 7770, GTX 1050 Ti 4G OC, RX580
MeeLee
Posts: 1339
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2019 10:16 pm

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by MeeLee »

At initial installation, some Linux versions (aside from configuring the PC, and installing the OS) perform a live update, so it may take a bit longer.

You may also want to check your BIOS, to see if no trusted platform, or network booting is enabled. Generally the less devices are enabled on boot, the better.
I just keep SSD and USB options open. If your bios supports boot with floppy, CD ROM, or other it's best to disable those.
Also, make sure your bios is optimized. CPU isn't overheating, RAM is running fine, no DMA errors (like PCIE cards conflicting with one another).
The list is very long.
For $20 you can buy a 64-128GB (256GB for a few bucks more) SSD, which speeds up booting by a lot!
bruce
Posts: 20824
Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2007 10:13 pm
Location: So. Cal.

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by bruce »

Unlike other platforms, Linux is expected to need rebooting once every few years. 8-)
Rel25917
Posts: 303
Joined: Wed Aug 15, 2012 2:31 am

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by Rel25917 »

bruce wrote:Unlike other platforms, Linux is expected to need rebooting once every few years. 8-)
Windows on good hardware can go for a long time without rebooting just fine. Crap hardware and sometimes crap software are the problem. I have an old win xp computer that currently has 491 days uptime. It gets rebooted due to power outages more than any other reason for the last 5 years.
PantherX
Site Moderator
Posts: 6986
Joined: Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:33 am
Hardware configuration: V7.6.21 -> Multi-purpose 24/7
Windows 10 64-bit
CPU:2/3/4/6 -> Intel i7-6700K
GPU:1 -> Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti
§
Retired:
2x Nvidia GTX 1070
Nvidia GTX 675M
Nvidia GTX 660 Ti
Nvidia GTX 650 SC
Nvidia GTX 260 896 MB SOC
Nvidia 9600GT 1 GB OC
Nvidia 9500M GS
Nvidia 8800GTS 320 MB

Intel Core i7-860
Intel Core i7-3840QM
Intel i3-3240
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300
Intel Pentium E5500
Intel Pentium E5400
Location: Land Of The Long White Cloud
Contact:

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by PantherX »

FYI, Windows XP and Windows 7 no longer receive any patches so can be left as is. However, with Windows 10, it does need to be re-booted after patch Tuesday. In my experience, Linux can update without rebooting except the kernel update. My uptime for Linux system was many weeks while Windows would never cross 4 weeks.

BTW, I do think we have gone off-topic so let's continue with the original topic and open up a new thread if anyone would like to talk about OS uptime :)
ETA:
Now ↞ Very Soon ↔ Soon ↔ Soon-ish ↔ Not Soon ↠ End Of Time

Welcome To The F@H Support Forum Ӂ Troubleshooting Bad WUs Ӂ Troubleshooting Server Connectivity Issues
sptn.
Posts: 51
Joined: Wed Sep 09, 2020 10:05 am

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by sptn. »

So we performed all the Updates and things are working way better now. Still kind of slow but that might ne caused by the HDD and CPU. Forgot how slow they were compared to todays SSDs.

The Celeron is Folding but takes 2.4 days for one ~2500Point WU. As expected not usable for Folding. Running the System monitor in the back while messing around shows that the CPU sometimes is on 100% just from doing almost nothing than updating. So no wonder why the System is slow. I got a Core 2 Quadro now and I am curious how this will speed things up.

But back to folding: a Problem that my collegue experienced with his GPU when he installed Linux on his IdeaPad is now occurring at my machine.
GPU seems to stuck at Download. He solved the problem by installing the CUDA Toolkit while nothing else worked. But theoretically the GPU should work only with OpenCL I guess.

I will show the log tomorrow, but maybe there are some quick thoughts.
PantherX
Site Moderator
Posts: 6986
Joined: Wed Dec 23, 2009 9:33 am
Hardware configuration: V7.6.21 -> Multi-purpose 24/7
Windows 10 64-bit
CPU:2/3/4/6 -> Intel i7-6700K
GPU:1 -> Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti
§
Retired:
2x Nvidia GTX 1070
Nvidia GTX 675M
Nvidia GTX 660 Ti
Nvidia GTX 650 SC
Nvidia GTX 260 896 MB SOC
Nvidia 9600GT 1 GB OC
Nvidia 9500M GS
Nvidia 8800GTS 320 MB

Intel Core i7-860
Intel Core i7-3840QM
Intel i3-3240
Intel Core 2 Duo E8200
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300
Intel Pentium E5500
Intel Pentium E5400
Location: Land Of The Long White Cloud
Contact:

Re: Found an old machine and want to fold with it

Post by PantherX »

sptn. wrote:...But back to folding: a Problem that my collegue experienced with his GPU when he installed Linux on his IdeaPad is now occurring at my machine.
GPU seems to stuck at Download. He solved the problem by installing the CUDA Toolkit while nothing else worked. But theoretically the GPU should work only with OpenCL I guess...
For Nvidia GPUs, you would need:
1) Ensure that Linux is fully updated.
2) Install the proprietary drivers by Nvidia
3) Install OpenCL package (sudo apt-get install ocl-icd-opencl-dev)
4) Install FAHClient

For AMD GPUs, you would need:
0) Luck & Knowledge
1) Ensure that Linux is fully updated.
2) Install the proprietary drivers by AMD (it has to be the correct version for your GPU)
3) Install OpenCL package (sudo apt-get install ocl-icd-opencl-dev)
4) Install FAHClient
ETA:
Now ↞ Very Soon ↔ Soon ↔ Soon-ish ↔ Not Soon ↠ End Of Time

Welcome To The F@H Support Forum Ӂ Troubleshooting Bad WUs Ӂ Troubleshooting Server Connectivity Issues
Post Reply