Folding Forum

I don't know where you are from, but I have a P3 450 MHz Slot 1 doing nothing somewhere in my garage ...

You can find a lot of pentium III boards with Processors here. Some with memory.

http://shop.ebay.com/_Computer-Componen ... II868c3be5

In my personal opinion, a P3 450 is just not worth the electricity it uses (electricity is expensive here in California). I just built a dedicated folding rig (q6600) for about $700 (using an old monitor). I probably could have spent a low as about $500, but I wanted to get a good silent Heatsink/Fan, case fans, and PSU (Can't hear it at all from my bed, only a few feet away). Buying a retail cpu, and using cheaper fans/PSU (if you don't care about noise), will save a decent bit of money over even what I paid). A Q6600 gives so much more performance per watt than a P3, that I feel more people should consider it if they plan to have a dedicated folding rig.

My machine isn't using that much power, as there is no video card installed (using integrated video), and the monitor is only on for about 10 seconds per day (long enough for me to make sure the system is still running).

Even the folding performance difference between my folding rig (Q6600), and my gaming rig (P4 3.4e) is extreme. I can't imagine trying to run Folding@home on a P3 450. It just wouldn't be worth the electric bill IMHO.

My slowest machine is a first-gen Athlon 1GHz getting about 35PPD. It is barely worth it. It's my mom's, and I wouldn't even be folding on it if she wasn't already leaving it on 24/7. I have a couple old P-II's that I decided I wasn't going to try for folding. I've started building her a nice little C2D.