Folding Forum

ZePompom wrote:Trying to minimize the amount of e-waste, I plan to keep the HDD as long as it works properly (aka doesn't reduce the PPDs too much). But if I replace it, of course it'll be for a SSD.

Bought a Athlon 200GE on eBay and a GA-A320M-S2H motherboard + 4GB 2666MHz ram (the highest ram frequency this CPU can handle).
+ Reusing old PC case (no name stuff), HDD (250GB Maxtor) and power supply (Corsair HX520w)
Total cost of the upgrade : Around 125€


THank you for the advice, but I don't want to go intel, I spent 30€ for a 2x 3.2 GHz CPU (+hyperthreading), Included video chip, 35W TDP only despite being in 14nm. It's a bargain, and compatible with my Ryzen 5 (so if I replace the Ryzen 5 2600 in my gaming PC for something like a Ryzen 7, I can give a new home to the Ryzen 5 2600 inside the rig just by removing the cheap Athlon).
I can also use with the athlon the cooler provided with the Ryzen 5 (but I don't use because bought a Coolermaster Hyper 212 for the Ryzen), allowing me to give the Athlon an overkill cooler for free.

Celerons of similar price range burn more power (G4920 have a TDP of 54W for example), need more expensive motherboards, I don't have good cooler for them and they are not interchangeable with my main PC.



I did several tests under Lubuntu with the old hardware already (Intel E5300, 2GB DDR2 800MHz, Asus P5K-PL AM), and will do some more with the new hardware once I'll get it. I try to avoid windows for this kind of use.


I try to keep the prices low, as it was supposed to be a "reuse old PC as it is, just replacing the Video Card" project. I didn't plan to buy a whole upgrade kit. Since it doesn't work with the old hardware, I choose the upgrade way instead of giving up the project, but I spent much more than planned already. So no 7nm Ryzen or 10th gen Intel for me

MeeLee wrote:That system sounds like a good match, even for an RTX 2060 or 2060KO!
Just check if it has PCIE 2.0 or 3.0, and how many PCIE ports it has at what speeds.
PCIE 2.0 x8 or 3.0 x4 ports are fast enough for everything (excluding a 2080 Ti) for Linux.
PCIE 2.0 x4 ports are fast enough for GTX GPUs (or likes).

The harddrive to SSD swap, is indeed not going to make your PC fold significantly faster, but it does save energy and heat.
And it makes the interface so much snappier!

MeeLee wrote:The 1050 Ti and 1650 are pretty close in terms of performance. The 1650 Super is a small step up (about 50% faster) than the 1050 Ti, but only a few percent faster than a GTX 1060 (P106-90). It wouldn't be a big upgrade. If I were you, I'd test that 106p on both the PCIE 3.0 and 2.0 ports, and when the time is there to upgrade, decide which is best to sell.
The 106 may still run fine on the 2.0 port, might run faster than the 1050 Ti, or not..
Might even sell for more than a 1050 Ti.

It's a decision you can only make.

bruce wrote:The CPU chart shown by Sparky here would be instructive, but you need to add the columns for PF Delta and Commit size as well as the ones for Working Set. That'll tell you how busy your paging file is.

#!/bin/bash

echo "" > ./LogFreeRAM.txt
unset LANG

while true
do
	date +"%d/%m/%Y %T"
	printf "\n" >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	(date +"%d/%m/%Y %T") >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	free -m >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	#swapon >> ./LogFreeRAM.txt
	sleep 600
done

01/07/2020 16:29:41
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:          3,4Gi       2,7Gi       285Mi        71Mi       367Mi       354Mi
Swap:         128Gi       974Mi       127Gi

MeeLee wrote:If your system is folding unattended, typing 'sudo init 3' in a terminal will close your gui, and save a few hundred megabytes (150 for the lightweight Lubuntu, more for bigger releases).
If you're mainly GPU folding, having exactly matched ram doesn't matter so much. You could easily add 2GB of slower or faster RAM, without much performance penalty, so long the motherboard has the free slots available.
RAM will be cheaper than replacing a harddrive.

ZePompom wrote:... with swap partition enabled, it now run smoothly. Swap seem to be used only for big units, but most of the time it's almost empty, even with GUI running.

...even if the swap seem to do its job (no crash) and folding doesn't suffer from it, I ordered it, it's overkill for folding but will probably be useful when I'll put the Ryzen 5 in there (and/or for later use, like if later it become someone's daily PC).

bruce wrote:That's the way it's supposed to work.