Enjoyable moments with F@H/BOINC

[log234]

I was a bit curious about what people enjoyed most about Folding At Home or BOINC?

[Solrix]

You need to add the option "Non stop except when gaming"

[Musikman]

The idea behind F@H and Boinc is amazing. It's such a unique and yet effective way to donate resources to the community through advancing medical and scientific research. It's also a lot of fun to race with friends to see who has the most points. A friendly competition for charity is the best kind of competition in my opinion.

 

Edit: I'm lookin at you @OrangeQuill 

[tobben]

well the corsair psu for my server crapped out on me, currently shipping to Netherland for rma, and i must say, life is empty when you're not contributing to science. (also alot more silent, and cold, not to mention im almost starving to death because i no longer have a way to cook food)

[ionbasa]

When I discovered my first prime number:

http://www.primegrid.com/primes/?section=primelist&userid=35802

http://primes.utm.edu/primes/page.php?id=97042

 

 

(1281 x 2^594565) + 1

 

Here is the full number

http://www.primegrid.com/primes/?section=decimal&primeid=14657

[FloRolf]

I'm usually folding non stop (except while gaming which i rarely do) but right now i only get Core15 WU's which make my gpu coil whine so i dont have it running when i'm at the pc cause its freaking me the fuck out.

[flibberdipper]

After spring break, Vengeance will being folding non-stop again. Right now I'm putting all the weight on my grandma's HP while it's idling.

[Almercenary]

well my PC just sits there running, soooo why not??? Once I get out of home Ill make a dedicated rig.

[Lifter-X79]

I like lending out my processing power when I'm not using it. Unfortunately winter is long gone here in Florida, so leaving it running while I sleep puts my room at ~80F. So to keep it running at a reasonable temperature I stuck a fan in my doorway.

 

My most enjoyable moment was passing 1,000,000 and my next will be 10,000,000. I've only got 3 million to go.

[Judahnator]

I just enjoy it keeping my room nice and warm. Also, if i want to roast a hot-dog i can just hold it near my servers exhaust. Cooks it right up

[n0ah1897]

I pretty much fold all the time except when I game. I do it partly for medical research and partly for competition. It's pretty easy to get wrapped up in competing for that top spot on a leader board when all you have to do is nothing. Plus folding is kind of like a sublime way of boasting your computer's superiority over someone else.

[Guest]

I really enjoy folding now that I've passed 24h nonstop folding for the first time. For me it doesn't really matter that I don't have a dedicated 3xTitan or 4P Opteron platform to net me 100,000s or 1,000,000s of points; I do what I can. My H440 system easily does 30K+ on most WUs while keeping quiet and keeping the 1230V2 under 55°C and the GT 640 under 64°C. The XPS 8500 nets me about 18-21K on the 3770 alone, it hits 75°C regularly but it's cheap and old so I don't care. My rooms are always cold and folding doesn't make a difference as much as hour-long sessions of BF2:PR. I also don't know if Core 17 was updated, because I can actually use my computer normally without it being unusable when the GT 640 is folding.

 

There's a lot of skepticism towards all these distro computing projects; a lot of people think that they can't make a difference. Well, the truth is, most of us will never know whether the data actually does any good, because only a select few labs in the United States have the opportunity to harness the power of F@H, but every bit counts. It's sad because I have a lot of wealthy friends who have extremely powerful desktops (4930K + triple SLI Titans) who also never fold because they don't feel the motivation to do donate their computer's idle cycles and some extra electricity bills. As for myself, I have seen enough people (including loved ones and friends) fighting losing battles with cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and multiple sclerosis to convince me that these diseases are alarmingly real and tangible. I am, however, happy to hear reports that F@H data has helped some researchers publish new findings.

[alpenwasser]

Initially, my thought process was "I want awesome hardware, but I don't

really game anymore, so what else can I do with that computing power?",

and then I landed at F@H.

Eventually I got a bit fed up with F@H's non-GPU support under Linux

and its closed-source nature, so I switched to BOINC (I'm not saying

F@H is a bad thing, just that those two aspects about it make me prefer

BOINC personally). I really love the thought of contributing something

to science, and with BOINC I have lots and lots of projects/fields of

research to choose from.

Also, I will admit, I'm a bit of a stats whore.

Well, the truth is, most of us will never know whether the data actually does any good, because only a select few labs in the United States have the opportunity to harness the power of F@H, but every bit counts.

That's kinda cool in BOINC. If one of your PCs takes part in calculating

a result that then gets published in a paper or something like that (the

criteria are a bit fluid I think, and it also depends on the project),

you get a certificate from the project, in, like paper form and framed

and stuff (depends on the project I think as said). Plus, of course, a

very special badge in your project stats. I've seen people who've had

several of those badges, so in the very long run, that's what I'm hoping

for (although I will admit it's a rather unrealistic goal, but still,

one can dream).

[terrytek]

I actually like when my GT610 can fold better than my Q6600. Odd. 

[tobben]

*snip*

that was pretty much what i was going to reply to him but i completely forgot.. folding is one thing but boinc is a different story entierly, it also allows different people to create new projects, and usually they publish bits and pieces that you can read about to see where it's headed and if they have made any cool discoveries.