Folding Forum

Hello,

I just recently joined the F@H effort (2 days ago) and am currently running it on my home PC (I5, Radeon 5800). I've had a mini windfall at work by getting quite a few of their old servers they were replacing:

5x Dell PowerEdge 2950's
2x PowerEdge 1850's
Fujitsu RX220
HP Proliant DL580

I was thinking of setting these up to fold. Would they be efficient or is the architecture too old? I haven't opened them yet to see what they have inside. I'd really appreciate it if someone cared to advise on the viability of folding on these and what the recommendation is in terms of O/S etc.

Kind regards.

FAH works find on any equipment that is as new as early Pentium chips which supports SSE and on Windows/Linux/MacOS. If used exclusively for FAH, 64-bit Linux is (very) slightly faster, but probably not worth the effort to switch. Newer technology tends to reduce the heat generated and power consumption so the electrical costs are often what drive people to upgrade from old equipment to newer but that's a personal decision and may be part of the business decision that led the company to discard useable equipment although tax law is an important consideration for them, too. You can make your own decisions in that regard. FAH is grateful for whatever you choose to contribute.

Servers like those generally have a lot of disk space which FAH won't need. Unless the graphics has been upgraded with a modern GPU (which is unlikely) you won't be able to fold on the video subsystem.

Not sure if you could sell a few and build one or two faster and more efficient systems. The new builds would also pay back over time using less electricity.

You can CPU fold on any or all of those machines using Linux or Windows (Excluding Windows Server 2000 or NT). Their productivity will depend on their specific CPU's which is unknown and will likely vary. GPU folding will be determined by what GPU's they have but it is unlikely that they will have a card recent enough but you can add one if any have a PCI-E slot.

I agree with 7im, selling them for one or two modern machine(s) will likely be more productive.

Thanks guys, that is great advice! I'll try to open them in the coming week or 2 to see what they have inside.